FACEBOOK AND BUSINESS

 2017-11-24

When talking about social media. It feels only fitting to look at Facebook first. Without doubt, this is the most popular of all the social media sites, but are you using it to your advantage?

One of Facebook’s biggest strengths is the ability to target your ads. By paying for Facebook ads, you can target specific groups dependent on location, age, gender, interests, Google searches and more. These ads are not free, but they do offer a high ROI. You will gain access to an entirely new customer base anywhere in the world.

However, there are right and wrong ways to use Facebook for business and this could mean the difference between make or break!

See below for the most important Dos and Don’ts when it comes to Facebook marketing:

DO:

• Use a recognizable profile picture. Being recognized is vital if you are to be found and liked by potential customers! It would be wise to have your logo in there somewhere - whether it is your main profile picture or your cover photo.

• Change your cover photos, pinned posts and profile pictures when you run marketing campaigns. These are the most visible part of your profile and if you want to capitalize on your campaign. Matching all of these features will help to focus customers’ attention.

• As mentioned above, always use Facebook’s targeting tools. It is vital to find the right people at the right time. Sometimes paying for things really is the best way.

• Use Facebook insights to analyse your performance. It is also possible to use tracking URLs so you know what's working and what isn’t

• Post at the most productive times of the day. There is no point in posting in the middle of the night when all of your customer and potential customers are in bed. Research shows that posts uploaded between 1-4pm had the best response rate.

DON’T:

• Leave any information blank. A preview of your information is shown under your profile picture and this should contain your website, email address, phone number and location. N.B. Make sure you add a link to Google maps if you want customers to visit.

• Ever be tempted to use a second account. If you do not want to surrender control of your page, set up different settings for different employees.

• Post too often as you will actually lose followers by posting too much. You do not want to overwhelm people. It is better to post a small number of quality posts rather than a large quantity of vague ones.

• Forget about multimedia posts - if you add aesthetic images or engaging videos, your content could get up to 94% more views.

• Delay in responding. Whether positive or negative, always respond to your customer's posts in a timely manner (most people expect to see a response within an hour during trading hours.)

• Assume that you can just copy someone else's strategy. A successful Facebook campaign is all about trial and error and completely unique to your company.