Compared to traditional marketing, social media marketing offers new, and relatively, inexpensive ways to grow businesses of all sizes.  So it’s no surprise that companies around the globe turn to social media giant Facebook first as a central part of their marketing plan. The numbers don’t lie.  Facebook touts itself as the most prominent social media channel globally with more than 2 billion monthly average users.  It reaches 20% of the world population with the average user spending at least an hour every day on the platform.  Today more than 65 million businesses use Facebook Pages and more than six million advertisers are actively promoting their company on Facebook right now.  Basically, a large chunk of the world’s buying population is on Facebook, and if your business isn’t—it should be!

BASICS

One of the keys to Facebook’s success is that it’s extremely user-friendly and customizable.  Creating a business page is similar to setting up a personal Facebook profile, but with several additional perks.  Page owners can tailor their business page by adding a logo and cover photo, including vital information in the “about” section, and linking to their company website or other social media channels.  Through the creation of a business page, friends, followers, clients, and potential customers can receive news, updates, and exclusive offers via a simple post. Content creators can (and should) add images or graphics to their posts to further appeal to their audiences, but these basics merely serve as a starting point as Facebook offers so much more!

TARGETING AUDIENCES

Your business can’t grow without customers and great business content needs an audience.  Facebook is here to help! Another feature available via this channel is the ability to find and engage with a target group inside and outside of your page.  Using business.facebook.com, business page owners can explore Audience Insights.  Now, instead of being limited to an audience of friends and existing customers, businesses can obtain demographic and behavioral data about their audience as well as their competitors in order to generate new customers.  Audience Insights can be an important tool in determining the type of content that your audience wants. Business page owners also have the ability to invite people to their page as a way of expanding their reach. Here a personal invitation can go a long way!  Through Facebook Notifications, a business page owner can see the profile of someone who has “liked” a post and then send that user a message to “like” the page and see future posts as well.

ENGAGING CUSTOMERS

Engaging with customers has never been easier.  Similar to a Facebook personal profile, users are encouraged to like, share and comment on a post.  Smart business page owners can interact with customers here, create contests, offer polls and quizzes, “caption this image” post and “fill in the blank” posts.  Another great way to engage customers is to share User Generated Content (UGC) to your page.  People love to see their photos shared on a large platform and, like social media influencers, UGC can grow your brand!  Page owners can also utilize Call To Action buzzwords encouraging current followers to like, share and invite their friends to your page. It’s important to remember that Facebook rates a page’s response time to Messages so engaging with customers quickly is key.  

VIDEO

Video content is king on social media and Facebook has seen great success with its “go live” feature.  Facebook Live videos are watched 3x longer than standard videos and 54% of users say they want to see more video content from marketers.  Statistics like these are good news for social media marketers who are looking to connect with their audience in real-time.  Additional ideas for video use include adding a featured video on your page and utilizing video within Facebook stories.  Marketers can also create Facebook 360 videos allowing for virtual reality as a communication and social interaction tool.  These types of video content can be leveraged through Facebook features like events, promotions, reminders, and links drawing in your audience for a “must-see” presentation.

FEATURES

Business owners can also utilize Groups, the Facebook Marketplace, and the Jobs Board as a part of their overall social media marketing plan.   Through Groups, there is the potential to grow your business page audience and subsequently find new clients and customers through interaction and discussion.  Through the utilization of Facebook Stories, a business page can create still images and mini-vignette videos that capture the attention of their audience, too.  Stickers, emojis, text and CTAs can also be added as well as direct links to a company website. Facebook has also made moving between social media channels easier through its acquisition of Instagram.  Now business owners can connect the two platforms and post both stories and posts simultaneously, saving time. Furthermore, Facebook increased the capabilities of its Messenger service whereby business owners can send automatic messages to subscribers to receive “insider” information and deals thus creating its own “insider” club vibe.  

AD CAMPAIGN

Social media managing tools like Hootsuite and Buffer offer great blogs to help business owners optimize their Facebook Ad campaigns.  Knowing the different types of ads available goes a long way in creating a strategy. Link click ads, video ads, boosted page posts, page like ads, and even Messenger ads are a few great examples of where to start.  Once an ad is created, business owners can then choose a target audience based on several criteria:  people who like the page, people who like the page and their friends, keyword, demographics, and target location among others.  Finally, business page owners can choose the duration and budget for the ad.  

ANALYTICS

In order to measure your business page’s Return on Investment (ROI,) you must review the analytics.  Page owners have an opportunity to review ad performance during and at the end of their ad campaign with Facebook analytics doing all the work.  Business owners have access to in-app performance graphs and charts. This allows for tweaking the ad (if needed) and noting any changes that can or should be made before the next ad campaign begins.  These ready made tools are key.

Facebook has rolled out the red carpet for business owners and marketers over the last few years and even offers tips through its own sponsored ad posts.  Using Facebook’s many options for creating, maintaining and engaging audiences helps marketers to create concrete goals and ultimately measure the success (or failure) of their ad campaign all within one social media channel.