Facebook marketing | Best practices for brands

How Facebook works

Facebook is the largest social network that is still in use by millions around the globe. It's like a viral platform where the shared content gets spreaded like anything, just like a chain network. If one of your follower like or share your content, then his friends will get to know that; and if any of them are interested, they will also share or like. In this manner your content will get spreaded to already engaged as well as new users. 

Facebook is best for following categories : Education, career, crafts, fashion, politics, entertainment, humor, Technology, Engineering, health, lifestyle, Internet, marketing etc. I believe finance has less presence in FB compared to the remaining areas. Here we will go through 15 best practices that might help you build good traffic to your website, brand or even a blog.

Best Practices

1. Create a Group in Facebook

The best practice is to create your own group or join groups related to your brand's field of expertise, in order to participate in the on-going discussions. This seems more beneficial for categories like education, career, exams, society and groups like designers, art, freelancers, products, sales etc. It's a kind of direct interaction with the people who came to resolve an issue. 

Being engaged with them by responding to their queries, staying in contact, sharing your content are all possible ways of building traffic. For whatever query they raise, give a broad and detailed explanation for that, let it be lengthy. By doing so, members will get to know about your expertise in that field. So, without a doubt they will start following you or your brand and therefore they may check your updates regularly.

Don't do the mistake of being in-active after attaining more followers, people usually do this. After feeling that they have good number, they give less response to the queries. This will lead to a break of trust among the new members as well as existing members. Remember, they love your updates and will be happy to see your posts or response regularly, that's why they liked you !

2. Maintain a brand page

Having a Facebook page is like showing your brand's royal status thus making other competitors feel that you are not lesser to them. Your page helps the followers, keep in track of your latest release.  Timely manage your page by posting your new posts to the timeline as soon as you publish it. 

3. Frequency of posting

Frequent posting is needed to keep engaged and also to maintain a track with the followers. It's not mandatory to always post your blog/business related topics. The marketers should also concern on encouraging their followers by posting quite often some interesting and enjoyable things. Post relevant topics from all over the web. Include some entertainment, funny images or videos, inspiring quotes, awesome travel shots and some well wishes like "A very happy morning to you all", these are all some best ways of your brand promotion and engagement. Update regularly about the latest trend related to your area of concern. 

Frequency of posting depends on your topic and audience. Facebook recommends posting a minimum of one post per day. However it depends on the niche as well as audience engagement timings. For this, FB Insight tool helps you analyze the situation and lets you understand how much to post, what kind of posts (article type, text, picture etc) are to be updated and when. 

Facebook mentioned that "If you notice that engagement with your page has decreased, try varying your posts and post frequency. Emulate posts that have been successful in the past and experiment with new types of posts". Below is shown how Facebook Insight page looks. Note that insights will provide you with details about Likes, Reach, Visits, Posts, People.

4. Post repeatedly ?

Unlike twitter, posting same topics repeatedly in Facebook won't be much helpful and also not advisable too. Twitter is a place where people check current tweet updates in their own timeline and mostly won't be checking your brand's timeline every time. Also followers will be engaging at different time based on their geographical location. So, retweeting helps to promote your post to as many as possible. Whereas in Facebook, whenever you update a new post, the same will go to the followers timeline and so there is no need to re-post the topic. So, better don't repost frequently.

5. Post more visual media (Images)

Regularly check FB page insights, this will help you understand how your followers are acting. It will also give you an idea of what type of shares (like photos, links, videos or simple texts) are actually getting more reach. Analysis revealed that followers checked more images than video, text or links. Images are performing well in Facebook. 

These days, social marketers are concerning more on employing visual appeal (just like infographics) to boost social presence in networks like Facebook, pinterest and more; that's because images enjoyed more likes, shares and even comments. It works like a gem. Try to post any of your update with an attracting image or infographic. This will attract the users and therefore will achieve greater reach.   Also images with questioning features are most viewed. 

6. Ask questions

Ask some questions at times, to keep your followers active as well as interactive. Posts that are of the type "Fill in the blanks" receive more response from the followers. Give some special discounts and offers to your followers. Also, tweet the FB links for discounts and offers to expose more. 

7. Friends recommend you

Ask your friends and family to promote your page to their friends. It will be more effective if someone suggests your page to others rather than you yourself striving to get highlighted, the later part is difficult and also not effective. Analysis shows that 90% of users trust recommendations from friends and family.

8. Engage female promoters

It's a marketing technique that i'm frankly disclosing here. If say a gentleman posts a topic, then he will receive at the most 10-50 likes only and the same topic if posted by a women will receive 100 likes (just a figure). This is the fact, this actually happens in marketing world. That's the reason why you see more women being engaged in advertisements; even for not-required areas like automobiles !

If you are having some female friends or if your business have female workers, make them involve in social marketing. Instead of you directly getting involved, ask them to recommend and post for you in forums, groups etc. This seems odd to you, but what to do ? this happened to be one of the best way of driving traffic !

9. Be friendly, You are not a machine !

Even though you represent a brand, behave like a human and be friendly with people. Reply to the comments in a friendly manner and keep replying to all the comments; be it be a critic about your post. This world is not always filled with all good people or all bad people. When you are 

improving, there will always be someone who tries to pull you down. However, it depends on your tactics on how to handle such situations decently.

10. Best timings to post

The Best timing to post your content depends on the targeted people demographics and geographics (location). I hope it's not correct to say something like 2pm to 5pm is best or 10pm to 9 am is worst. Something like this won't actually perform well for all categories. Say, if your targeted people are students, then you should be posting during off-college hours like during nights (students usually browse late in the nights !). What I mean is it depends on the kind of people whom actually use our content. Better understand their activities by going through Facebook Insight tool as discussed above.  Also don't post during business or work hours. People won't be engaged in FB during such times. 

11. Design your profile

Like we discussed in twitter best practices, having a visually appealing profile picture as well as backdrop is best for attracting new people. Your profile picture represents indirectly your face and the saying 'first impression is the best impression' still holds good for every activity. Give a brief but detailed description about your brand in 'About me'.

Here is an example of a famous entrepreneur - Kim Garst profile for your reference.

12. Facebook Ads

Whether your brand is small or big, including your brands ad in Facebook is an added advantage for greater exposure to the world. To be precise, big business brands might already have greater exposure, but smaller brands (that still need to grow in terms of traffic) have to be brought to public notice, and this can be effectively done by advertisement. 

Facebook is such a place where some million people spends hours every day. So, promoting your brand in FB is a good decision. Facebook ads allows promotion of your brand to the targeted audience. So, it's no offense in spending some little amount for ads (if you are capable !).

13. Post compatibility 

Also, updates that have more lines or very less lines (characters) were mostly liked by the followers. Know the best timing to post an update. Post timings depends on users and the geography. I mean location of targeted audience. Statistics revealed that Facebook has been used by more mobile users than desktop or tablet users. So, design your website/business page to be compatible with mobiles as well as accessible at ease. 

14. Include Facebook social buttons in your website/blog

If you are running a niche blog or a business promoting sales and services through web site, then include Facebook like and share buttons so as to let users know your presence in social media. 

When someone connects with you say in twitter, then leave them a direct message gently asking them to get connected in Facebook also. You may also include your Facebook links in social network profiles like G+, twitter and Pinterest.

15. Guest posting

Invite guest posting from influencers and ask them to share their views about your brand. Pin such important topics always on the top of the page, so that visitors will go through the most important views about your brand/business. Also guest post on others pages, forums or group giving valuable information regarding that topic. Put your full knowledge to give a very valued and most appreciated post. That will help the followers of the other pages know your capability and hence more chances of getting huge traffic.

Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions by posting a comment below. 

Sharing is caring. Like us in social networks to get updated with latest posts. Subscribe to our free mail service in RSS feeder.

ALSO SEE

Best Twitter marketing strategies for SEO and traffic

Backlinks | How it boosts PagerRanks | comment best practices

11 Tips to get Adsense account approved