Leverage this Platform through Content Development
Why Facebook is so important for my business? Isn’t every other social media platform has the same influence?
True, social media has become crucial for business growth and success, without social presence you are not anywhere and your ideal consumers will not be able to find and interact with you. So why so much of hype about Facebook? Because Facebook is not one of the largest social media platforms, it IS the prime social media stage that works for both personal and corporate means.
Years before, Mark Zuckerberg developed a social platform that was meant for friends only, at that time, he must not be aware that the same platform will become the chief source of interaction between friends and businesses alike( good job Mark). Back to the main point, your question, why Facebook is so important for your, or any, business and how does it differ from the other social media platforms? Because it is probably the oldest of all the platforms that offer connections and friendly interaction between people. Second, because it is the oldest, nearly everyone is on Facebook, in the beginning it was recognized as an effective means of staying in connection with friends and family regardless of geographical distance. Afterwards, businesses identified the pattern and started considering it for finding more clients and influencing them.
While making your Facebook page and developing content for it, you must have seen many brands and businesses that post on their social media, especially, Facebook, pages without any clear aim in mind. Still, some consider it a mere platform for having friendly chitchat instead of the one that offers heaps of benefits for your business. The result? No customer engagement, no useful interaction and above all, no chance of business and customer expansion.
While dealing with your business’ Facebook page, you must consider it as a proper marketing tool and have a clear and comprehensive plan for it. What do you add in your marketing plan?
- Your audience
- Goals
- Brand message
- Ideal client portfolio
- Ways of promoting your services
- Developing useful content
- Ways to promote your content
- Track results
- Make the required changes
- REPEAT
Like your marketing plan that needs proper planning and implementation to yield results, if you are utilizing Facebook for business purposes, it also requires proper and detailed planning. Still not convinced that why should you have a proper Facebook content marketing plan?
Why to have a separate Facebook content marketing strategy?
Facebook offers many benefits for businesses and brands and help them in a number of ways including:
- It increases brand awareness
- It helps in elevating your reputation as a trustable brand
- It increases visibility
- It gives you chances to increase your client base
- It helps you in promoting your products and services to a wider audience
- It helps you in interacting with your consumers
- It helps you in knowing your customer’s feedback and make the required changes
OK now we are clear that why should you invest in your Facebook content marketing strategy, let’s move to the main point.
How to plan an effective Facebook content marketing strategy?
While planning your Facebook content strategy, focus on the interests of your audience, what they like to read and talk about and what are the things they want to know about. Once you have identified the type of content that appeals to your target audience, the process of designing and implementing content strategy will be both easy and effective.
Below are some of the powerful tactics and steps through which you can come up with a befitting content plan for your Facebook business page:
Who is your ideal client and audience?
Sounds simple and you must have heard the same line over and over again but, this is the very first step while designing any of your business strategies, be it a marketing plan, a social media strategy or simply, the exclusive Facebook content marketing strategy we are talking about, knowing your audience is the building block. To identify that who is your ideal customer, make a comprehensive map and write down the service or the product you are offering or planning to offer, now point out all the benefits and afterwards, state the type of people that will possibly benefit from it. Seems like a lot of work? What should you add in your map? Let’s work together.
- Product
- Age Group
- Gender
- Geographical Region
- Social Segment
- Promotional Tactics
- Benefits
When you are done with the map, you will have a clear idea of who is your ideal and potential audience.
What do you want to achieve from your Facebook page?
The other important question you need to ask yourself before initiating your Facebook content marketing activities is that what do you want to do with your page? Ask any business and you are likely to get answers like ‘I want to earn more traffic’, ‘I want to augment my sales’ or ‘ I want to increase my clients’, we are not saying that these answers are wrong, after all, the ultimate goal of every marketing strategy is to boost sales and customers. But where is the plan and the milestones? You want to gain more traffic through your Facebook page but at what rate and speed? Don’t you think that only stating this is a bit vague?
Instead of just stating that you want to increase sales or traffic, make a reasonable estimate that how many Likes and Comments you aim for in a week or month, this way you will be able to track your progress and make the required changes. The easy way, make a spreadsheet or simply insert a table in Word document and state the monthly/weekly Likes, Shares or Comments you want your page to achieve.
What do your audience and customers want to hear?
You: We have the best office furniture made from premium wood and of contemporary designs.
They: Thanks, but we are not in need of your services, we will consider you when there will be any.
Which simply means that you will most probably never hear from them. What did you do wrong here, your message was clear and in line with your services, what happened then? You approached the wrong audience. This is what happens when you do not give your customers what they need, they will forget you and push you to the backdrop. If you want to have your potential customers listen to you, give them the reason for it, the stance that takes us back to the point number 1, knowing your audience. After you have researched that, which type of people you want to target and attract, research about their interests. The best way to do it is to see the people and brands they follow and stay in contact with, the posts they have Liked, Shared and Commented on. Once you have all the data, design your content around it, Share it on Facebook and initiate interaction to gain Comments.
What is working for your competitors?
Keeping a watchful eye on your consumers is important but keeping an equally watchful eye on your competitors is even more important. How will you know that what they are working on when you will not have an eye on them? And how will you prepare to face what is coming of you will not know that WHAT EXACTLY IS COMING? I think these 2 reasons are enough to convince you to start interacting with your customers. Yes, we just said that, START INTERACTING WITH YOUR CO9MPETITORS. Thinking of how to do it? Obviously, they are not going to give away their ‘secrets to you so how will you get an idea of their doing? Follow and Like them on their social media pages, especially the Facebook page. Another way of doing it is by subscribing to their mailing list, yes it will give them an advantage but it will also keep you aware that what kind of content and things they are sharing on their pages and website. Monitor their Facebook page and see the posts that get most Likes, Shares and Comments but, a word of caution, do not try to copy your competitors and end up producing the same kind of content, this will only make you look like a copycat. Remember, you are only scrutinizing their activities to get an idea and picture of what your potential customers like. Once you get it, your work is done.
What kind of content will you share?
There is a large number of content that you can share on your Facebook page that includes:
- Infographics
- Articles
- Blogs
- Reports
- Trend Reports
- Ebooks
- Videos
- Whitepapers
- Listicles
- And many others
Talking about the latest trends and consumer interest, people are more drawn towards visual content than the all ‘words’ type. While planning your Facebook content marketing strategy, make sure that you include the type of content that interest your audience. While your prime focus will be to share your own content, you can also share articles, blogs and trend reports from other sources. It will elevate your status as an entity that is resourceful and your audience will come back for more.
How often will you share?
How often will you share? Once a day? Twice? Thrice? Or Once a week? While posting and sharing on social media, Facebook in particular, we need to find the sweet spot to strike a balance between much and too much. There is a thin line between being overly promotional and reasonably interactive, unfortunately, many businesses do not identify the distinction and end up being annoyingly promotional and, unfortunately, gain, the consumers identify the difference and keep such brands at an arm’s length. According to SocialBakers, once a week posting formula is so weak that you run the risk of losing your clients while posting more than twice a day is annoying. A sweet spot is to aim for five to ten posts per week. Additionally, Track Social confirmed the latter research by adding that response per post decreases with the increase in the number of posts per day, however, it does not have any significant effect on the page’s conversation.
The steps will help you in designing the strategy that will not only work for Facebook but for other social media platforms also. Your Facebook strategy will help you in creating the posts that your audience love and want to read about and will pave the ground for your next paying clients.
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