Many business owners are frustrated by the lack of engagement or growth of their social media channels, especially with Facebook. Managing your company’s social media platforms is much different than managing your personal ones.
Many of the business owners we speak with are frustrated by the lack of engagement or growth of their social media channels, especially with Facebook. Sound familiar?
Despite best efforts, poor engagement and minimal page growth are the norms. The reason: no real strategy! It’s the biggest social media mistake. Managing your company’s social media platforms is much different than managing your personal ones. Remember those days when posting random photos of your cat got the job done? Long gone …
Articles across the internet will lead you to believe that creating an effective Facebook marketing plan is a complicated undertaking. It’s not. Here, the Two Step Social team lays out a step-by-step “Facebook Marketing For Beginners” guide!
How To Build an Effective Facebook Marketing Strategy
There are some simple steps to building an effective Facebook marketing strategy, and each step naturally leads to the next.
Steps for Building The Foundation for An Effective Facebook Marketing Strategy
- Set Goals
- Identify Your Audience
- Respect Your Audience
- Understand Facebook’s Algorithm
- Measure Results
1. Set Goals
Building brand awareness and an engaged audience on social media takes time and effort — things few business owners can spare. Seeing a return on your investment of both requires that you start with goals. Begin with the ideal results of your social media marketing plan in mind.
What are some social media goals you should be thinking about? ‘
Do you want to:
- Increase brand awareness
- Drive traffic to your company website
- Communicate with potential customers (via Messenger or WhatsApp)
- Build relationships with followers and strengthen loyalty
Clarity will help to inform your strategy.
2. Identify Your Audience
As most marketers will tell you, the problem with billboard ads is they aren’t very targeted. Tens of thousands of people drive by billboards with no interest in — or no notice of — what’s being advertised. Your mission, as an effective social media marketer, is to avoid publishing content to the masses. Doing so will put you at risk of throwing your marketing dollars out of the (car) window.
Understanding who is in your targeted audience and what their interests are will help to inform what you should post — and where.
How to Identify Your Audience
Assuming your business already has a Facebook page, Facebook’s Audience Insights gives intricate detail about the age, gender, and location of your customers.
If you haven’t yet established a Facebook page, you’ll need to begin by identifying key demographics about your primary customers:
Typical age range. Usually segmented into age categories: 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, and 65+
Typical gender. Shown as male or female.
Location. Usually shows the zip codes in which your customers likely live.
Occupation. Indicates interests and income.
Usage. When your customer base is likely to be using social media.
“Understanding who your audience is, where they live, and their interests give clarity on how to resonate. Resonance is what you’re after!” – Sydney Hancock, Two Step Social
3. Respect Your Audience
If your Facebook marketing strategy is all about self-promotion, then you’re going about your social media strategy all wrong. Hone in on the word, “social.” Being social doesn’t mean talking at people, it means engaging with people. It’s reciprocal; an exchange.
Think of your social channel like a cocktail party. Talking nonstop about yourself and laughing at your own jokes will leave you standing alone — but if you’re a good listener, find ways to connect with people, share humor together, and don’t take yourself too seriously, you’ll own the room! This, in a nutshell, is how you work your Facebook channel.
Your social media shouldn’t be like Mike (sorry, Mike):
Your content should present a mix. The vast majority, about 80%, should be a blend of fun (if your brand allows for fun), inspiration, education, and authenticity. Only 20% of your posts should be promotional, and that’s on the high end!
In his book, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, Gary Vaynerchuk explains the importance of building trust with an audience before hitting the audience with a promotion.
To be a master at social media means to be a community leader by providing value, building up others, and providing services that help them. – Will Brown, Two Step Social
4. Understand Facebook’s Algorithm
As you publish content to Facebook, it’s important to think about what makes Facebook tick.
Facebook makes money by displaying ads. The longer people are engaged on the platform, the greater their ability to maximize profitability. To achieve this, Facebook must keep users entertained by serving up the best content, which the algorithm identifies by way of engagement: likes, comments, and shares.
“As a social media marketer, your job is to create engagement by resonating with your audience. Marrying great content (photography or video) with the right copy results in engagement and greater brand awareness. In a nutshell, this is what great social media marketing is all about.” – Will Brown, Two Step Social
5. Measure Results (and Learning)
When you first begin to publish content, your results will be mixed — some posts will have high engagement; others will have very little. Rather than continuing to post aimlessly, take time to review your data to discern what resonates and what doesn’t. You can do this by clicking on the Facebook Insights page linked to your business account. Click here to read our blog post about Measuring Success.
Test the hypotheses you glean from the data by giving your customers what you think they want, and then review the data again. Rinse and repeat until you find your formula. (And when the data tells you something different, start testing again!)
Closing Thoughts
Don’t get frustrated! Becoming a great social media manager requires testing, testing, and more testing. Today’s best social media managers finessed their Facebook marketing strategy by doing, measuring, and learning. Keep the above five steps in mind, and you’ll begin your social media marketing journey on the right foot! Need help? Contact us today for a consultation!
