We all know having a great website or eCommerce website is about providing your visitors with the information that they want at the time they are looking for that information. Your social media profile is the same. People follow you as they are interested in your products and services. You need to motivate, engage and interest your audience with what matters to them. If you want to engage and keep your fans happy on Facebook you need to have your information up-to-date, informative, and engaged.
Branding Consistency
Although you can't brand completely as Facebooks colors are theirs and not yours. You can set your logo, videos and a cover page that showcases who you are. By creating a consistent image between your website and your social media you are building credibility and consistency for people to remember.
Cover Updates
Going on the subject of branding make certain to update your cover and keep it updated as necessary. A Facebook cover shouldn't just be any image uploaded. It's best to make the image specific for the social media. For example, on Facebook the image should be 851 pixels wide by 315 pixels tall. By abiding by their standard you are making a cognizant effort to adhere to their standards while making certain the cover is appropriately sized and conveys the information you want.
Logo Update
Although you may not update your logo as often as your cover you can still make certain it shows appropriately on your page as well as search results. A poor user experience is when someone searches your brand and they can only see a part of your logo as you just uploaded any logo without following the recommended guidelines for Facebook. Facebook suggest the logo be 180 pixels wide and 180 pixels tall.
Videos for Engagement
As Facebook continues to move forward with its video push and its charge against YouTube video is becoming even more important on the social media site. It is recommended to have a video promoting your products and services. We have also seen a great increase for our clients when they rotate this out as well. Engagement on videos for our clients has been higher than posts with images.
When posting on Facebook it is proven people are drawn to images compared to text only posts. We post every day mainly with just text which seems counterproductive but for what we're getting out that works perfectly. We then post with images multiple times each week as that changes things up from what are clients are used to seeing.
Number of Posts
The posting interval varies for every brand and every company. We always recommend starting with the standard for Facebook at three posts per week. As you post find the time(s) that work best for your brand while staying aware that this can change and make appropriate changes as your customer base demands.
Facebook Posts: Balance Between Sales and Information
As you post your information make certain that you keep your content fresh, engaging, and relevant to your audience. Continuously change your posts by using images, links, video, and other media to monitor what works best and provide a change rather than the same old information. If you always post with pictures because you feel that will get the best engagement people will eventually start to ignore your images and your message won't get out as well as you would like.
If you make pushing and promoting your products and services, your number one priority you are surely going to get word out about what you offer but not providing a value to your customers. We have found that one out of every five posts should be sales related. By spreading out your sales pitch you can inform and engage your audience rather than pushing your product on them.
An aspect we always talk to our clients about whether we handle their social media or just providing guidance is "become your customer". You social media site is solely about engaging the customer and providing value to them. Where your website is your employee that is selling and informing about your products and services your social media site is about engaging, communicating and collaborating with your audience.
Creating a Story – About You!
A profile for a business is like that of your personal profile. There is truly a lot of information that can be filled out to inform your customers about you. Let who you are shine through in a visual manner by including those videos, upcoming events you're having, webinars you have scheduled, events you are attending and provide an in-depth about profile of you, your products and services.
Be ready for the long-haul
Social media is not a sprint. Expect it to take months, if not years, to build your brand. Don't pay for fans and followers as they will only skew your results and are people who have no interest in your products and services. It is better to have a few fans that are engaged than a ton who ignore you completely. Items that you should include in your About profile are:
- Your mission and vision statement
- Your values of what makes you a great company to do business with
- A history of the company
- Company miles' stones (like when you opened, expansions, new products, new services, etc.)
- Community involvement
- Success stories and how you help solve your client's problems
- Add keywords and phrases that can help show your expertise in your specific field
The above is a lot of information to include. Make certain to prioritize the display of the information so that it gains the interest of your visitors as quickly as possible. If your most important items are at the bottom and you lose interest half-way through no one will ever see that great information.
Call of Action
Facebook has seven "Call to Action" button options to help promote your company when someone comes to your page. This information is right at the top and is there to bring interaction between your fan and your brand. These buttons are:
- Book Now
- Contact Us
- Use App
- Play Game
- Show Now
- Sign Up
- Watch Video
Analytics
We would be amiss if we left off analytics. Without analytics you don't know what is working and what isn't working, who your demographics are (ages, gender, country, etc.). These should be looked at a minimum of weekly.
Engagement
Engagement is what everything on social media is about. Engage your audience, find out what their needs are and support them. Ask your fans to share your posts so that their friends can learn about you. Most consumers will trust what their friends and families recommend. Engagement starts with just one of your fans and can, and will, grow from there.
Advertising
We do a lot of advertising for clients to help get their message out when starting out. This can be as low as $1 to as much as hundreds of dollars per day for our clients.
Before making your first paid advertising we always advise to truly define what you want to achieve. This may sound like common sense but we run all to often in people just advertising to advertise. They have no clear cut objective in what they are doing. Avoid the your advertise it and they will come. Remember that social media is a marathon and not a sprint. Having a clear guide of what you want to achieve will give you the best possible results.
Promoting / Boosting Posts
Facebook has moved from your company posts from being at the top of your fans timeline to almost never there. They've done this to make money as that's what any business needs to do. Some dislike this practice of Facebook. With boosted posts you can truly target to specific people. By distance, age, gender, and their specific interests. This allows you to get your specific information out to the desired audience that you want. You can increase your reach, actions, photo clicks, page likes, and post likes if done right.
Define your team
Social media is something you truly need to go all in. We always recommend that every company when they decide to go "all in" and who want to engage their customers to create an internal team which can include a social media manager like JM2 Webdesigners. The reason for this is that people do go on vacations and take time off from work. This is where having more than one person can help continue that consistency (just remember to not let everyone have the exact time off). Additionally, when someone runs into an event that might not be great there is a sounding board to work with to continue providing that great customer service experience your customers already expect (and deserve).
Content Calendar
Part of everything that has been a success has required taking the time to define what you want to achieve. By defining what you want to post and when you can make certain you are providing consistency. A content calendar will allow you to do just that. In January of 2015 we created a blog post about content calendar that you can read here.
Testimonials
In our first two years of operation we used to keep testimonials to ourselves and shared the information when asked. This allowed us to "protect" ourselves so that someone wouldn't contact our customer and steal them. We now proudly publish this information as our clients are truly great (and they know it!). By our always going above and beyond for them we know that they won't leave and if they do then the other person was either a better sales person or promised something that we didn't offer that our client felt they needed. Testimonials can help your customers decide to go with you as well as to stay with you.
Conclusion
Give your fans a reason to continue to come back to you. Provide a value to them. Whether it be a free tip or trick that you post, information about your services, or a quick way to getting a question answered. If you are busy running your business and need someone to help you out with your social media (and/or website) we would love to talk to you. We can help by being your social media manager. With that we will help you post, take pictures, engage your audience, support and answer questions, and much more so that you can continue to run and grow your business. You can contact us here, by email at sales@FawkesDM.com or call us at 219-229-1633.
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