When it comes to maximizing the potential of your business, it is essential to make full use of every opportunity to advertise, inform, and educate customers. In the past decade, the rise of social media has made waves in B2C communication, completely altering the rules of the game; in 2017 alone, an estimated 2.46 billion people engaged with social media platforms. This metric displays the huge consumer audience readily available to view your brand’s promotion. In order to succeed and prosper in the contemporary world of business, a strong social media strategy is no longer optional, but necessary.
Although a multitude of social media platforms exists, Facebook remains the widest-reaching and most influential platform. The site provides an invaluable platform for businesses to inform, engage, and educate consumers. It is an excellent tool to organically grow your company’s customer base by putting out content that your customers find useful and engaging. Often times, the development of a trusting relationship via social media will yield customer conversations in the long run. It is worthy to note that a business cannot just join Facebook and expect a flood of followers and customers to join their page and buy products. While billions of people (potential customers) utilize Facebook, countless Facebook pages will be competing for the same potential audience attention.
To give your company a competitive edge and to help stand out from the crowd, here are a few ways to optimize your Facebook presence and best utilize the opportunities that the platform provides.
Define Your Audience
Take the time to properly evaluate and profile your ideal customer. Ask basic demographic questions: What is their gender? What is their average income? What are their passions, interests, and hobbies? How can you appeal to them? And perhaps finally, in what communities and online locations do they spend their time? You want to identify as many demographics as possible in order to appropriately focus your search metrics, and increase your efficiency.
With Facebook’s vast user base, it is important to target only the people that you anticipate to be interested in your company and its offerings. This process of refinement will help your company save time and money in advertising and expended effort, maximizing your budget, and streamlining your outreach process.
Provide Constant Value
The key to any social media platform is to provide constant value to potential customers. The intent of social media is not to immediately convert customers, but rather to raise brand awareness and provide lots of relevant and useful information to help educate followers. Posts should not only be pumped out on a frequent basis but aim to provide some value to readers, whether it’s a list of useful resources or a simple guide to a complicated process. Too much fluctuation in the content will lose the audience attention and interest.
Consistency is a major trust signal for followers and customers. Make sure to design a content schedule that ensures quality and quantity in all of your posts. Regular, high-quality content draws followers and bolsters brand perception as your posts will routinely be at the top of people’s newsfeeds. The ultimate goal is to ensure that followers anticipate and look forward to your posts and the only guaranteed way of reaching this goal through content consistency. Not only is a posting schedule of this nature a great method for gaining followers on Facebook, but it is also an excellent method for generating trust that can yield long-term followers and customers. Providing information to continually engage and interest your base is critical for the advancement of your brand. A strong Facebook will help you get there.
Respond to Questions and Comments
According to a recent report, 7 out of every 8 messages to brands on social platforms go unanswered by the company of interest. No matter the size of your company, task an internal person with the responsibility of responding to all social media inquiries. If potential new customers visit your page and find evidence of unanswered questions and queries, that image won’t likely inspire them to do business with you in the future.
The above tips are only some of the many action items you can execute on Facebook in order to grow your audience. Following these guidelines will establish a strong foundation upon which you can build your brand’s social media presence. Bear in mind that many of these pointers can be translated to your companies strategy on other social media sites. As a summary,
- Identify Your Perfect Customer
- Locate Your Perfect Customer
- Help and Provide Value To Your Potential Customers
- Create Excellent and Relevant Content To Retain Your Customers and Follower Base
- Always Respond To And Answer Any Questions Your Company Receives via Social
At Novel Coworking, we as a company are determined to assist and motivate entrepreneurs and small businesses to succeed. Business is constantly changing, and we understand that small business owners do not always have the time, or indeed energy to keep track of all of the various changes. Visit our blog for more trends and tips for your company to grow and flourish.
Want to learn more about how growth marketing can change your business forever? Read the essentials guide here.