Social Media Strategy: How to Use Facebook for Business

As the largest and most popular social media platform in the world, it’s likely you and most of the people you know have personal Facebook accounts. It’s likely you even follow brands and organizations you are loyal to on Facebook.

But do you know how to use Facebook to support the growth of your own business?

In this article, we’ll discuss how to use Facebook more strategically to reach prospective clients and make professional connections.

How to Develop a Facebook Strategy to Grow Your Business

Because Facebook is the giant of social media, it’s important to take special care when developing your social media marketing strategy.

So before you consider any of the following points, take time to set SMART goals for your social media strategy as it relates to Facebook. Make sure the goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely. What are you currently achieving on Facebook? How would you like to improve?

If your business has already established its Facebook presence, you’ll also want to mine the data available to you from your website and social media’s business pages. When you do, take note of what pages, blog articles, and social media posts have worked to engage your target audience in the past.

Knowing who you want to reach and who you are reaching will help you develop a social media strategy that will help you develop the Facebook strategy your business needs to be successful.

1. Study Your Social Mentors to Know What Content Works

Not only does each social media platform have its own style of content, different industries lean toward different types of posts, as well. Since Facebook embraces a variety of types of media (see point three), search for and identify a handful of business that can be like social media mentors to your company. These businesses should in the same or a related industry as your company, of similar or a slightly greater size, and have a following and level of engagement that meets or exceeds your social media goals.

Follow these pages and take note of what posts have been most successful. Consider creating content for your business that emulates the qualities of these posts. Then don’t stop watching.

2. Post Different Types of Media for Increased Interest

After you have made note of your company’s successes and identified other successful businesses you’d like your social media strategy to emulate, consider trying new types of media posts to add generate fresh interest in your Facebook business page.

Here are types of posts to consider:

1. Status: The original Facebook post now allows for larger text on shorter posts and adding a colored background for more pop.
2. Images: Posts with images drive more engagement, but use eye-catching, high-quality photos. Virtual reality or 360 degree features fall under this category. Consider doubling your efforts with Instagram in this way. 
3. Video: Video is in high demand but are often watched without sound. So video should be visually engaging and always have captions. Facebook Live is a form of video that is timely.
4. Links: Links are perfect for sharing industry information but especially information from your company blog or website. Find your most engaged content and share it on Facebook – even more than one time. See point three for pacing these shares and re shares out over time.
5. Stories: New to 2017, Facebook’s little-used Stories are in-the-moment content clips and are connected to Instagram. How this feature can be maximized for business is yet to be seen…But it may be worth investigating.

3. Schedule your Posts for Consistent Engagement

Planning the publication of content is one of the most important aspects of using Facebook for business. Many small businesses haphazardly share content as it is published on their blogs, or as they see it on the web. While this does add content to your Facebook business page, it does not necessarily engage your page followers.

If posting consistency is an issue, and the engagement on your business page is as haphazard as your posting, note not only the type of posts that work but also of the day of the week and time of the posts that receive the most engagement. (If you don’t have any posting history to look at, use your social media mentor’s pages to discern this information.) Then consider using a social media scheduling platform like Hootsuite or Sprout. If you are Hubspot customer, its software also offers an internal scheduling option.  

4. Don’t Wait to Engage

We’ll mention it again, but quality over quantity will always prevail. Earlier in this post, we did a deep dive into the types of content on Facebook. Now it’s time to choose which pieces of content you think are worth advertising in front of a much larger audience.
Some of the best aspects of your ad content should include:
Identity: Does it relate to your brand and effectively showcase your product/service? Are your logo and business colors correctly displayed?
Reward: What do viewers get out of it? Is it a deal, promotion, offer code, whitepaper or industry guide?
Tone: Does your content maintain the same tone across your entire Facebook page or business in general?
Action: Your content must drive an action, which goes back to your Facebook goals. A clear and precise call to action is best.

5. Consider Boosting Posts or Developing Facebook Ads

When it comes to posting content, your company should spend more time developing quality content instead of trying to produce a lot of it. When you develop a quality piece of content, the next step is to promote it. Everywhere. And Facebook is no exception.

Unfortunately, because Facebook news feeds are often saturated with posts, boosting your posted content will ensure your quality content is seen by as many people as possible.

Additionally, just as you can with Google Adwords and with almost as many features to help you target the people your company would like to reach, you can create Facebook ads to either promote products and services, special offers, your Facebook business page, that quality content you’ve developed, and more.

In the coming weeks, we’ll also be highlighting the “lesser used” social media platforms. 

Above the Fold Media provides professional service to its clients that can take their social media strategy to the next level. If you’d like to learn more about leveraging social media platforms like Facebook to grow your business, learn more now.