When posting content to your Facebook business page, you should always ask yourself this question: Does this post answer a question my target audience has or educate them on a topic that helps them achieve their goals? If you follow this principle, you will be viewed by your audience as a trusted advisor and your posts will be read and shared.
While you should absolutely post your own content on your Facebook page, if that's all you share, you come across as a pompous self-promoter. By sharing content created by others, you come across as someone who is helpful and trustworthy. You obviously don't want to share a competitor's content, but look to trade journals and business publications to share article and videos that answer those questions that you hear from your customers. As a rule of thumb, at least 50% of your posts should be other's content. Your audience uses Facebook for both business and personal uses - don't be afraid to post non-business related content that expresses your corporate personality. Avoid controversial topics like politics or religion. In today's political environment, you're pretty much guaranteed to alienate 50% of your audience if you post political content.
The content you share should support one of the following objectives:
Some of the types of content to share include:
As we mentioned in our last Facebook article, you should post at least once a day. Keep in mind that your audience is on Facebook during the weekend, so experiment with weekend posts.
Facebook offers statistical information on all of your posts that measures views, likes and shares. Analyze your data to find out which of your posts were most successful and try to draw conclusions about why they were successful. Do you see trends in your successful posts? If so, try to incorporate those trends in your future posts.
Facebook advertising is a cost-effective, targeted method to grow your social media reach and generate leads for your business. Compared with search engine advertising, Facebook advertising is generally less expensive and offers a greater opportunity for targeting the audience you want to reach.
Facebook offers the opportunity to promote your Facebook place or page or an external URL (e.g. - a page on your website). Go to the Facebook Advertising page and choose what you want to promote.
Choose the objective of your ad. Do you want to get more page likes or do you want to promote a particular post on your Facebook page. In my Facebook advertising, I almost always promote a particular post. For me it's the best of both worlds - I still get likes for my page, but I also promote a post that links to a blog article on my website that includes a landing page for lead generation. Facebook likes are important because once someone likes your page, your posts appear in their news feed. This allows you to continue your marketing process with that person.
While creating your ad may seem daunting at first, Facebook makes it easy for you. If you're promoting your page:
That's it, you're done!
If you're promoting a post, the ad will be the post. Here's an example of a post promotion ad.
Facebook provides 4 ways to segment your audience:
The image below shows an add targeted to people living in Maryland, Virginia or the District of Columbia over the age of 21 who are interested in marketing, internet marketing, social media marketing, business, social media, advertising, small and medium enterprise or small business. You'll note the reach of this targeted group is 386,080 people.
Facebook allows you to set a daily budget for your ad. It's a good idea to experiment with a small budget and ramp up your spend as you optimize your advertising strategy. Try starting at $10 per day until you're happy with your campaign. One important note: the default state for advertising is for your ad to run continuously. Make sure you uncheck that box and add a start and end date for your ad. A good way to get a feel for Facebook advertising is to run a 7 day campaign with a budget of $10 per day.
When setting your budget, you can either be charged with a cost per impression or a cost per click. If you're promoting your page and optimizing to maximize page likes, the default charge is a cost per impression - you're charged every time your ad appears on the page of someone in your defined target audience. If you're promoting a post that links back to your website, the default charge is a cost per click - you're charged only when someone clicks on your ad and is redirected to your post.
Facebook provides detailed analytics relating to your ad campaign. Here's a screenshot of a campaign I recently ran on Facebook promoting a post that linked to a blog article on my website:
I was able to combine this data with analytics data from my HubSpot internet marketing software and here are the results of my campaign:
I'm now in the process of developing a strategy for my next Facebook advertising campaign. I was very pleased with the results of the campaign described above.
Facebook is an excellent social media network for both B2C and B2B lead generation. It has a massive audience that cuts across all demographic sectors. By strategically posting content and promoting it with Facebook advertising, you can generate tangible business results quickly and inexpensively.