Facebook Marketing: The Do’s and Don’ts

Facebook Marketing: The Do’s and Don’ts

Facebook is undisputed as the leader of social media. With 2.4 billion monthly active users, Facebook offers a platform with inexpensive ways to reach a world of potential customers. Facebook for business has marketing tools that are attractive to both large and small companies alike. With such a powerful marketing platform, it is important to follow a few simple rules in order to optimize your marketing strategy.

Do: Spend Time Curating a Beautiful Profile

The most successful business profiles on Facebook are invariably compelling, clean, and eye-catching. No matter how valuable the content you post is, the first thing a potential customer will see is your profile picture, post banner or company cover photo. In this way, your Facebook profile serves as a landing page for potential customers. Make sure to fill out all of the profile fields with the most accurate and up to date information.

Facebook is a great platform to post both photos and videos, giving your audience visual content to engage with. Most companies use their profile as an opportunity to showcase their best branding materials. If you have company culture photos, add them to the “Featured Photos” section so they appear at the top of your profile. If you have a company overview video, mission statement or recent press, take advantage of the “Pinned Post” feature to have your most important content appear first on the page.

Don’t: Pay to Play

If you are the administrator on a Facebook page, you are familiar with the auto-generated advertisements that Facebook creates to encourage paid promotions. Facebook makes rather intrusive recommendations on how to use the boost function to increase your post viewership. While this function claims to do as much as increase your viewership by 150% or more, this is not the most effective way to market your content on social media. Rather than using the Facebook tools that are the most apparent, it is definitely worth your while to research Facebook’s advertising resources to get the most for your marketing spend. Facebook offers over 70 free courses for marketing and advertising players to learn the most effective way to achieve business goals using the Facebook platform.

Do: Develop a Strategic Posting Schedule

The most successful business profiles on Facebook participate in a regular posting schedule. Posting consistently causes the Facebook algorithm to recognize your content and serve it to your customers on the news feed. Using the built in app analytics, Facebook Page Insights, you can determine who your audience is, what type of content they engage with and the best time of day to post. For the best results, create a social strategy and posting guidelines that are tailored to your audience.

Don’t: Share Content that Isn’t Related

Facebook users like and follow pages that offer content that interests them. It can be tempting for Facebook marketers to share anything that they believe is relevant to their target audience. In theory, this posting strategy would make your company page content interesting and diverse to attract new page viewers. However, social media users follow pages with a certain expectation for content. If they want to see top news from Time, new deals from Amazon, and Daily Cute Animals videos, then they are going to follow each page accordingly. However, sharing content from other pages occasionally is a good way to foster engagement. Make sure to have a good balance of shared and original content that is relevant to your brand. Spamming your page with memes is more likely to make viewers stop following your page, or simply scroll past your posts in the feed.

Do: Respond to Messages, Comments, and Tags

Nothing promotes positive views of your brand in the eyes of a potential customer like having a positive, personal interaction. Engaging with your followers online creates a brand experience that makes your company unique. For example, Wendy’s use their Facebook page not only to broadcast their messages and advertisements, but also to publicly respond to complaints by customers. This is beneficial because Facebook tracks how fast business profiles respond to messages and comments. Pages with a faster response rate are given preferential treatment for display in users’ news feeds. As such, responding to notifications quickly can significantly aid you in reaching your Facebook marketing goals.

Building a consistent and authentic brand image is essential for Facebook marketing success. Overall curation of Facebook marketing content can take time, but it is certainly worth it. What other tips and tricks of the trade have you picked up through your experience with Facebook marketing? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!