Are you Overwhelmed with Facebook?

The majority of small businesses now use Facebook as an effective and economical way to market, generate traffic to their business, share their brand’s vision, engage, build relationships and generate sales or leads over their competitors. Having a well-managed Facebook presence and a sound online reputation, a business is now able to attract a specific customer and stand out from their competitors.

1)Awareness.

Know your brand and your target audience. Which social media platform do they use most? What time of the day are they likely to be online checking their accounts? Which of your services are they likely to be interested in? What’s trending? Any current news or special occasions to feature? Content should be planned in advance and should have a specific goal/purpose or strategy.

33% of small business devote 1-5hrs per week on social media. 25% devote 6-10hrs per week. 77% of traffic to your web site comes from social media clicks. Determine which channel drives the most valuable traffic to your business, and then provide the relevant content to engage with that target audience. There are platforms that can assist you with scheduling your social media (eg hootsuite), however content thorough your channels should differ (as the audience there will ‘speak a different language’) and often posting directly to sites has a more positive effect on reaching audiences.

2)Communication.

In order to build a relationship with this audience, you need to build trust and confidence. Your campaigns/posts not only need to align with your businesses core values, purpose and vision, but also engage with your audience, using relevant content and their specific language. The tone can make or break a campaign. It’s important to consider cultural aspects and also the fact that not all humour translates to everyone. Market using emotional connections. It needs to be interesting and worth sharing. 50-60% of audiences check their social media accounts on their mobile devices (78% check facebook), so it is imperative all content is easily discernable on mobiles.

 3)Consistency.

With overcrowded news feeds and an increase in paid advertising, it is important to realise that the one key ingredient to social media, is consistency. Facebook requires an effective strategy with tactical planning, frequency and regularity. Success is also heavily sensitive to time of posting, and your targeted location.

This also includes uniformity and predictability across all your social media platforms. People are so overwhelmed by content, that they scroll through their feeds quickly, so all lettering, graphics and logos need to be quickly recognisable and consistent. All images need to be clear with an emotionally driven tag line.

4)Review.

A solid presence will build trust, shows commitment and reliability, which instils a positive brand experience. However, algorithms are constantly changing so it is important to review your statistics/insights/analytics and make a note of what content worked and why. Pay special attention to the emotional connection and engagement of the campaign, and what the most popular times to post are. Generating shares of your posts leads to more traffic to your site, so keep an eye on what your target audience are interested in. Inspirational and motivational quotes, including questionnaires, games or jokes are often popular, even though they may not be related.

Keep an eye on your competitors. What are they doing and what seems to work? Keep a track of successful posts and the times, then do it better than them.

5)Reputation.

Online Reputation and customer service is everything. Learn from any negative online comments/feedback and deal with it in an open, non-confrontational and respectful manner. Highlight your brand positively, and offer them another opportunity to positively experience your services.

46% of Internet users read online reviews before purchasing, so Incentivise your clients to post their testimonials/referrals online or ask them to write one or do a video testimonial you can repurpose online. Using video for this is highly effective. People are more confident to support and spend their money with businesses who have positive testimonials.

To further boost your online reputation, Collaborate and support other businesses. Regularly tag, share and comment on their posts to indirectly gain credibility and draw traffic to your sites. Also message, like or thank other people for sharing or commenting on your posts. This helps to build a community around your business fostering trust.

YOU The business owner are the best person to manage your Facebook profile for your business, as you are passionate about your business, know your business well, have fantastic (authentic) content at your fingertips and know your clients best.

I empower business owners with the skills and strategy to run their own Facebook profiles successfully.

Still, have questions? Feel free to book a call.