Your business has probably already got a Facebook page, and if it doesn’t, you should fix that situation quick smart. Having a Facebook business page has become an essential part of any business’s digital strategy. In fact, in some sectors and industries, it might be even more important than having a website.
So you have your Facebook page set up, you’ve got a fair number of people liking your page, but things seems a little static. You’re not getting much traction with your posts and sometimes it feels like the only engagement you get is with the tumbleweeds gently blowing through your page.
There are definitely things you can do to breathe life back into your page. Here are some simple tweaks and tips that could help drive engagement, leads and sales.
If you have a bricks-and-mortar store it’s important for your Facebook fans to be able to find you quickly and easily via your business page. Facebook has introduced a new Shop Locator function as part of its Local Awareness adverts. The Shop Locator is mobile-optimised and designed to help people navigate easily from their smartphones direct to your store.
Facebook introduced its Audience Network late last year and it’s a powerful way of broadening the reach of your Facebook advertising. The Audience Network allows businesses to advertise not only on Facebook but also on Instagram and also through Facebook’s app network. Video ads can be delivered to these locations via in-stream or in-article formats, which are designed to recognise and optimise the ad depending on whether it is being viewed on site or in app.
Generating actionable and quality leads is crucial for any business trying to capture new customers. Facebook’s Lead Adverts provide a convenient, mobile-optimised way of allowing potential customers to find out more about your business. A lead generation campaign might be just the tonic your FB page strategy needs to start converting likes into solid revenue.
We all know that more and more people are watching videos on their phones, whether lounging about at home, on their daily commute, or anywhere else. Which is why you need to ensure any videos for your business are optimised for mobile. Video shot and cut for other media (desktop, TV, etc) can be modified for mobile, but you’re better off thinking in terms of mobile before you produce a video and create for the medium.
You can be staunchly frugal with your marketing spend on Facebook and try to grow your customer base through organic engagement on the News Feed, or be realistic and spend a little to boost your posts. A little spend on boosting can go a long way, so think about the posts that you think will merit some investment, and then target accordingly to the type of customer you’re after. Boosting posts also gives you an excellent tool for testing out how people react to different types of posts, products and announcements.
This should be baked into your content calendar (you do have one?), so your Facebook posts should be reflecting that. Holidays and seasons, anniversaries and nostalgia all do well on Facebook, and there’s no reason your business can’t join in. Done the right way, it’s a great way of giving your business a human face: letting people know you’re getting ready for the winter chill, so what better time than now to purchase …
There’s a lot of debate about how often a business should post on Facebook. The truth is that you have to work out what’s right for your audience. Too many posts and people will think you’ve got nothing better to do and you should maybe get a life. Too few posts, and people will start to forget you even exist. But if you’re not getting much action on Facebook then maybe you need to think about not how often, but what content you’re posting. If you’re going to post once a day, make it a quality post.
Next week, I’ll have six more tweaks and tips to help revive your Facebook business page.
Fi Bendall is CEO of The Bendalls Group, a business that leads STRATEGY : ADVOCACY : MOBILE delivering the business acumen to drive effective positive results in a disruptive economy for the C-suite. Fi has recently won a Westpac/AFR 2015 100 Women of Influence award.
Fi Bendall is chief executive of The Female Social Network and a Westpac-AFR 2015 100 Women of Influence, who was described by CEO Magazine as “The CEO’s secret weapon”. An expert and pioneer in digital strategy, she has over 23 years’ experience in the digital and tech sectors.
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