- Jennifer Pilkington
Facebook Strategy in 5 Simple Steps
You know the benefits of building an audience for your business on Facebook. Whether you want to introduce your brand to new folks, engage them with your content, or build loyalty, the reality is, getting strangers to interact and even “Like” your page takes more than posting an occasional motivational quote every Monday. It takes real strategy to focus your time and stay on point to build momentum with an audience, in order to achieve any level of success on the platform.
Follow these five steps to build your strategy and set the foundation for growth opportunities on Facebook.
1 | DEFINE YOUR GOALS
Every effective business plan needs a clear set of plays to win the game. To be successful on Facebook, first you need to define your goals. Social media has a long list of benefits for businesses. Aside from the potential of building likes, followers, and engagement, it’s also a great way to:
- Establish your expertise
- Drive traffic to your website and convert into sales
- Get customer feedback in real time
- Network with other businesses
- Increase brand awareness, visibility among potential customers, and build customer loyalty
TIP: Choose your goals and set up a way to measure your progress. More on that later in this post.
2 | DEFINE YOUR AUDIENCE
It’s critical to have a clear picture of who your business helps and to identify any shared interests they have with your business. These topics can be turned into content that your audience will want to read. Speak to them in ways that will connect both in subject, tone, and language – over time, establishing their comfort level with you and earning their trust in your business.
TIP: Create your business profile based on what your customers want or need.
3 | LISTEN AND LEARN
Actively listen to learn more about your page followers by reading their comments and gauging their reactions to your posts. Also, learn from your competitors by seeing what works for them; which posts would you click on or share, and why? You can also learn from competitors mistakes by noting what types of content get a negative reaction.
TIP: Set up “Pages to Watch” within Facebook’s Page Insights tool. This gives you visibility into the performance of your competitor’s page and posts and shows a comparison with similar Facebook pages. You can add up to 100 pages to watch.
4 | TEST YOUR CONTENT
Your posts should always reflect your brand values and the problems you solve. Even when your content is meant to inspire or entertain, make sure it’s relevant for what you do in order to come across as authentic and trustworthy to your audience. Vary and test your post types (e.g. photos, videos, and links to articles), the time of day you post, day of the week, and your subject headings to see which perform best for your business. Then, do more of that!
TIP: Use the 80/20 Rule – Educate / Entertain / or Inspire, then Promote your business.
Create a rotation of post “themes” that offer value, provide entertainment, or inspire your audience. Train them to look forward to your posts by delivering relevant, and interesting content, with consistency. Remember, they’ve liked your page because they are interested in your product or service, but keep the business promotions to a minimum to avoid the feeling of being “too pushy.” Remember, it is a “social” platform and you are building relationships.
5 | MONITOR YOUR RESULTS
Are you chipping away at the goals you set, building improvements over time?
Facebook offers insights to learn all about your results and measure your progress. Use Audience Insights and Page Insights to understand the demographics of your fans and your posts. These also show the reach and engagement measurements of your posts, so you can see which ones work best allowing you to do some testing for improvements to get even better performance. Facebook Analytics and Ads Reporting tells you what you need to know about your paid ads on the platform.
And there you have it! The five key elements of effective Facebook strategy.
Just keep in mind, social media is often your first impression to potential customers. So, planning your approach is a smart first step to getting the most out of what Facebook can do to help grow your business. Once you’ve built a strong following, there are many ways to scale up including running Facebook ads that send prospects to your website, among other business and marketing goals. But, that’s a meaty subject for another blog post!
Now, need some help planning your Facebook growth strategy? Ask a question or drop us a line. We can help.
How will you create your Facebook strategy?
