You know that you need social media accounts to help you connect more effectively with current customers, bring in new customers, and share information with interested parties. Even if you've had a Facebook profile for years, however, you might not be using your account as effectively as possible. If you want to make the most out of your Facebook marketing strategy, these tips can help.
Evaluate Your Goals
What are you hoping to accomplish through your Facebook profile? Do you want to increase visits to your website? Increase sales? Are you hoping to learn more about your customers so you can provide products and services that are geared toward their needs? If you don't know what you want to accomplish with your Facebook marketing efforts, you won't be able to measure your success--and you might be missing out on a number of opportunities.
Know Your Buyers
Chances are, you've already created clear buyer personas that help you learn who your customers are. Are you connecting those buyer personas to your Facebook marketing efforts? Ideally, your Facebook page should be created with your buyer personas in mind. From your profile image to the content you share, your Facebook page should be designed specifically to interest members of your target audience.
Connect Your Efforts
Your Facebook page doesn't stand in isolation. It exists alongside all of your other inbound marketing efforts: your page, your blog, your ads, and more. When customers visit your Facebook page, they should have the same experience they have every other time they interact with your business. Make sure that your Facebook marketing strategy is part of your overall efforts, rather than a stand-alone endeavor.
Create the Right Content
The content you share on Facebook says something about your business. Every time you post a link, whether it's to something you've written or to a content piece prepared by someone else in your industry, you make a statement about your values, your efforts, or the type of services you provide to your customers. In order to effectively connect with your customers, you need to create the right content--and your Facebook page is an important part of that. Make sure that you're:
- Choosing images that appeal to your buyer personas and encourage them to click through to your website.
- Listening to what customers ask for in order to create more effective, useful content. What questions are they asking on a regular basis? What type of content is most likely to get their attention? When you listen to your buyers, you'll be able to design content that even more clearly meets their needs.
- Only providing content that is genuinely useful. When you integrate your blog as part of your social media marketing efforts, it's tempting to put up the occasional "fluff" piece that has little or no value. While it's fine to post humorous pieces every once in a while--and, in fact, you should!--you should also be sure that you are creating content that will engage and offer benefits for your readers.
- Providing examples and incorporating data in each point that you make. Your audience needs to know that they can trust you and the information you're providing!
- Including both short, engaging posts--asking questions of your customers, for example--and links to longer content.
- Regularly evaluating and testing the types of content that perform the best, from the information your customers want to the length of their ideal post or the time of day it should be posted.
Your Facebook page is the ideal platform for sharing a wide range of content, but it won't benefit your business if you don't know how to share it properly.
Learning to make your Facebook marketing campaign more effective is a long-term investment in your business's success. If you're ready to learn more about taking your marketing efforts to the next level, contact us today to learn more about how we can help.