With Facebook being the world’s largest social network, it presents massive marketing opportunities for businesses looking to increase their reach. Users spend an average of 50 minutes a day on Facebook. With all that time spent by viewers on a single network, your business can increase its exposure and opportunity to reach its audience by following some essential Facebook best practices for business page management.
Following Facebook Business Page best practices is essential to your overall social media marketing strategy, but don’t just rely on optimal posting times or great content. Also consider your strategy and plan out your end goal first. Perhaps you want to generate more followers and impressions on Facebook while successfully managing more than 400 incoming messages each day?
With your end goal in mind and following our 7 fundamental Facebook best practices, your Facebook Business Page could be a huge success, gaining followers, steering your brand and driving sales.
Also read: Social Media Best Practices For Medical & Allied Health Professionals
1. Be Engaging with Relevant, Meaningful Content
Craft meaningful content that your audience will appreciate. A successful Facebook Business Page will have clear, relevant content that delivers the right message. This informs users of your business, products or services and establishes your business as an industry expert.
Remember that most of your page’s followers are likely to be similar, if not identical, to your subscribers in tastes, values, and interests. Depending on your niche, this tells you a lot about what type of content to post. Curate your Facebook feed to topics related to content focusing on a specific type of standard (eg. environmentally conscious) or a specific type of product (eg. cameras) or service (eg. podiatry).
For example, if your subscription business is related to a specific pastime – like running – your feed should include posts that deal with those topics. It might include your blog posts,
new stories, queries, quotes, or anecdotes, and memes related to your niche.
2. Use Compelling Imagery
Considering that at any point in time there may be posts, stories and statuses cluttering your potential audience’s newsfeed, your post will need to stand out! Using eye-catching, compelling imagery can make all the difference. And sometimes all it takes is a particularly bright, striking or intriguing image to catch their attention. Instead of just sharing a plain text post, why not include a quality image and make it meme.
Did you know that Facebook posts with an image have an 87% interaction rate over plain-text posts? And with more than a third of people being visual learners, featuring high quality photos and imagery in your Facebook Business Page will engage your audience with your brand and content more easily. We all know a stock photo when we see one, so opt for professionally photographed original images.
If you’re hoping your customer will perceive your business as providing a unique product or service then using one-size-fits-all, banal stock photography should be avoided. Poorly scaled and pixelated images on your page look bad and tell your audience that you proper interaction over Facebook.
The idea is to make it as simple as possible for a customer to leave you a review – this link takes the users directly to the review entry window so they don’t have to fuss around searching for your Google Business profile.
3. Be Present with Your Brand – Be personal
To truly inspire engagement on your Facebook page you’ll need to be present with your brand when you share engaging and interesting content. You’ll need to write in the correct tone of voice, your brand’s voice, when you interact with page and post comments, as well as direct messages.
A page that fails to respond to comments and concerns, gives the impression that the page isn’t active or lacks a human voice. Active customer service on social media will determine how your brand is perceived and will influence audience expectations of your business. Show customers that you care by replying quickly and providing great answers to questions submitted by customers and followers.
4. Post Frequently and Timely
Be brief and post regularly. How often? I hear you ask. For most brands starting out and looking to build engagement and post impressions, twice a day will guarantee freshness, consistency and a better chance of being discovered without annoying your audience.
Post in the Afternoon or Early Evenings. As most people tend to look at Facebook over lunch or the end of the day, posting in the afternoons and early evenings is ideal. But vary it up from day to day, to give it a human feel.
5. Respond Quickly and Appropriately
There’s some basic social etiquette that just shouldn’t be ignored when it comes to responding on your Facebook Business Page. Not responding quickly enough or appropriately to a Facebook user who’s asked you a question makes it seem like you’re ignoring them. Let’s face it, no-one wants to give their money to a business that ignores them.
Respond to queries, and if you receive a compliment, thank the person. You’re not just thanking them to be polite, it will reinforce your commitment to creating exceptional customer experiences. If you happen to receive a negative comment, tell them how you’ll improve their customer experience or that you’re keen to take their feedback on board.
You should always respond to comments within 24 hours but think carefully about how you respond to an angry customer. You don’t want to engage in a fight you can’t win!
6. Test Posts
Post times play a big role in your Facebook engagement. When to post depends on your audience and their daily routine. The rule here is to test and retest the engagement on your posts at different times. Learn about Facebook page metrics and how to judge your posts.
With the majority of posts arriving during “peak times,” when most pages, people, and stories are being shared, posting outside of peak times (10am to 6pm), when there’s less competition, can be a simple way for your page to find more engagement. And posting at night, outside of peak time, can capture your audience when they are winding down for the day. It is vital to always test posting times with your unique audience.
7. Use Facebook analytics
Analyse and track the behavior of your Facebook users to give you a better understanding of your audience, what’s working and what’s not. Important metrics worth tracking are:
Organic Likes: The total number of new users who liked your Facebook Business Page by organic reach.
Unlikes: The total number of users that unliked your Facebook Business Page.
Net Likes: The total number of organic or paid Likes minus the amount of Unlikes.
Total Fans: The total number of users who liked your Facebook Business Page from the last day of the report period.
Impressions: The total number of times any content from your Page was seen in a News Feed, ticker or by visits to your Page.
Post Engagements: The total number of shares, comments or reactions to your posts.
Link Clicks: The total number of clicks on links with your content (excluding other clicks like video, photo, or post expansion clicks).
When marketing your business with Facebook you need to be willing to adapt, frequently testing and trying new methods to achieve the best results.
Adhering to the 7 fundamental Facebook Business Page management best practices will allow your audience to engage and learn while your business thrives. For more information on Facebook or to discuss your digital marketing strategy, contact practiceegde.