If you run a business you’ll no doubt have thought about using Facebook to help promote what you do. But simply posting an advert or a list of product or service benefits isn’t going to cut it…
Here are 9 practical tips you need to know about Facebook to help build your audience and grow your company:
This is the reason I see nothing about football on my timeline, but loads about cycling. I’m a cyclist. If I like, share, comment or follow certain pages, Facebook builds a picture of me and then shows me things that it knows I will like. This keeps me on the platform longer and allows them to sell more adverts.
Facebook likes being able to read what you’re promoting, so your text needs to be in the description. That way it knows if the post is relevant to the person it’s showing it to. If not, it could punish your performance when it comes to reach.
When ‘boosting’ a post on Facebook be sure to untick the Instagram button so it doesn’t use your budget to promote your post to Instagram (unless you want it to).
We always advise you create content tailored for the platform you’re promoting it on. People expect to see different things on Facebook than on Instagram.
If you want someone to sign up for something or register their details, you can do so with a click of button. Facebook can auto-fill your details, making it a frictionless process. You can tell Facebook you don’t want to spend, for example, over £3 for any conversion.
You can see when your audience is online (time, day of the week etc), what the split of gender is, what posts and subjects are popular, what device they’re using – the list goes on. What’s important is ensuring your posts make the most of this information; how will it look on mobile, are you boosting to the right audience? This will drive engagement and therefore the number of people you reach.
Facebook’s algorithm is prioritising video at the moment (135% more reach than pictures). Video doesn’t need to be high budget, but as it keeps people on the platform, it means Facebook can sell more advertising. Facebook is generating over 3,000 years worth of watch time each day! Just think about that for a second.
Don’t worry about the size of the audience following you – focus on the engagement. 10,000 followers who don’t see or interact with your post is worse than 100 out of 1,000 followers who are interacting with you and your product.
Unless the post is extremely popular or you boost it to show it to more people, your organic reach may be limited. You can boost for just a few pounds to get the ball rolling.
Pushing a post to a niche audience (minimum allowed on Facebook is 35,000) is better than pushing it to 1 million generic people. The reason is that if targeted correctly, your audience will find that post relevant and interesting so will be more likely engage with it and therefore Facebook will see it as valuable content and show it to more people.
Facebook is brilliant at helping get your brand message out there but don’t rely on this platform only. Your audience will switch between platforms all the time, so the trick is to deliver content about the same topic in different ways on different platforms.
These top 9 facts are just scratching the surface. If you want to know more about how to use Facebook or gain knowledge on other marketing topics, we host free ‘Sessions’ which cover many different areas and techniques. We also have free drinks and nibbles so it’s a win-win! Sign up to get information about our upcoming events.
