Facebook continues to be the most popular social media site for Millennials, Baby Boomers, and the Silent Generation, with the best opportunities for businesses to reach their target audience and track their progress. This post reviews how to optimize your account, how to post, and how to access Facebook Insights to see the results of your efforts. It’s not an exhaustive guide to perfecting your Facebook strategy, but it’s a good way to get started!
Page Optimization
With the exception of your website, your Facebook Page is the main way people learn basic information about your company online. It is often the first or second search engine result when people are looking for your company. Therefore, it’s essential that small businesses take every opportunity to optimize their Facebook page for search and make it more accessible to Facebook users.
Organize left hand tabs by how useful and engaging they are to Facebook users. The order will depend on what your company does, who your ideal customer is, and how you plan to post to Facebook.
Complete the “Our Story” segment: This is Facebook’s latest iteration of a business’s “About Us” section. It is located in the right hand column of the page’s “Home” tab.
Like pages that are related to your industry and your customers. This will also help you curate posts from sources other than your own company.
Posting to Facebook
Creating original posts for Facebook is the easiest way to engage users and drive traffic to your company’s website on a regular, organic basis.
Frequency
We recommend that most small businesses post an average 1-3 times per week. This schedule will supply enough consistency to give people a reason to follow your page without spamming them with too many posts.
Sharing photos and videos
Visual media is the fastest growing content on the internet. Here are a few best practices to keep in mind when posting photos and videos to Facebook:
Photos and videos should always be posted separately.
Groups of photos can be more engaging than 1-5 photo posts.
When posting a group of photos, be conscientious of what photos begin the album as these will determine whether users want to see more.
Always include captions that tell the story of what you’re posting.
Sharing original content from your website
Sharing links to blog articles and web pages on Facebook will increase traffic to your website. To increase clicks (and thereby increase traffic), we recommend these general best practices:
Include an eye-catching photo and engaging title to capture your audience’s attention.
Introduce the content with an engaging caption that captures your audience’s interest.
Remember that the key to getting your audience to click is creating content that is appealing to them or gets their attention. Each company’s strategy will be different.
20% Curation
A healthy ratio for original-to-curated posts is 80 to 20. This will ensure that your company can post consistently without deterring followers from too much self-promotion. Curation can be anything from sharing a post from another account to sharing an article or website that you think your followers may find useful.
Share posts from other people that talk about your company
You may be surprised to discover that people are already talking about you on Facebook. On your Community Page, you can see the posts other people have made about your venue. Anyone with a public account allows you to directly share their posts to your page. Otherwise, consider reaching out to the person and asking to share their photos or videos on your page directly.
Keep track of what your competitors are doing
Most likely, your competitors are coming up with interesting ways to create content for social media. Following your competitors or checking in on their pages once a week will give you ideas for emulation or improvement.
Share your company’s posts on your personal pages
Facebook is still meant to cater to people, not companies. As a result, the best way to get a post seen by people is to share it on your personal account. Encourage employees to share posts that they like to broaden your post reach.
Invite people to like your page
If they are liking or commenting on your posts, you can invite them to like your page. This is a good way to grow your audience organically without spamming people who are not interested in your company.
UNDERSTANDING YOUR ANALYTICS
Facebook insights provides the most comprehensive overview of how effective your posts are of any social media site. There are many different statistics they provide, but these are the ones that WDM finds the most helpful:
Post reach (how many people saw your post)
Post engagement (how many people interacted with your post, including likes, shares, comments, clicks)
Page likes (how many people are following you on Facebook)
Page views (how many people visited your Facebook page)
These statistics can help you understand what types of posts are the most successful and which aren’t working. They are also helpful for finding patterns in how your audience acts on Facebook so you can better cater to them.