If you’re running your company’s Facebook without a social media strategy, you are cheating yourself out of real results. Setting up and using Facebook may be free, but that doesn’t mean your should be shortsighted on the time, effort, and careful planning it takes to boost your business’s social potential. I’d like to spend a few moments reviewing Facebook strategy basics, a primer to help you get started (or recharge!) your company’s page.
Before You Begin
The Insights App should be one of the first things implemented on your page. Much like Google Analytics, Facebook Insights tracts user growth and demographics and what content on your page your fans are reading most intently. Using this tool can help you develop tailored content to your fans, ultimately cutting through the clutter on their feed and creating meaningful touch points of interaction. Facebook Insights is a free app available to add to your company page.
Plan, Schedule, Execute
1) Plan your tone
Your Facebook is an extension of who you are as a company, and as such, it’s important to take into consideration the tone and style of your posts. What kind of voice will your posts have? Fun? Strictly business? It’s best to decide from the start and adhere to that voice for consistency over time.
2) Plan your content
Will you be informative about your product? A news hub of information related to your business? A collection of your fan’s input? There isn’t one right answer, in fact, your page could benefit from incorporating all of these. Refer to the analytics from your Facebook Insights app to better customize your content as you move forward. Don’t be afraid to continue to return to and restructure your social media plan as time goes on; keeping the same kinds of content pushing gets stale and will result in lost followers.
3) Develop content
Now is the time to develop content. This shouldn’t be done day-of, but rather, plan it in advance and decide who on your team will write what. Not all content has to be new or original. You can always incorporate older blog posts, and relevant industry articles. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get creative with some of your content to avoid becoming white noise on your followers’ news feed.
4) Schedule Posts
How often are you planning to post? What days? This is a decision that is a delicate balance, and will absolutely require ongoing revision. Analytics will reveal what is too much– you’ll notice a drop in followers, as well as what the best time of day your audience is receptive to content. Free social content managing tools like Postling and HootSuite allow you to schedule and post without having to sit directly in front of a computer waiting to push content out.
5) Monitor Interactions
You’ve planned your content, you’ve written or collected it, and decided when you’ll post. But that’s not the end of it. Your fans follow you for your content and now it’s up to you to monitor not only their interactions and questions with you, but interactions with one another. Fans can become annoyed and downright irate if you don’t have a hand in guiding community discussions and answering their questions on your posts in a timely manner.
6) Deliver, deliver, deliver
Now that everything has momentum, keep moving. All too often, businesses peter out on their social media efforts after only a few weeks. Stay the course and continue to revise your content lineup and schedule. You should continue to view your analytics, but avoid serious analyzing and re-strategizing until two months after incorporating your social media plan to base your decisions on solid results.
Building Followers
Finally, a word on followers and fans. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your fan count follows that cliché. It takes time to cultivate and build your base of fans, but using your Facebook Insights app, you can track who your followers are and where they are coming from. This can help you hone in on where to target when looking to add fans. And remember, having a lot of followers is not necessarily the most important thing. Think first about your brand and if an abundance of followers would support your social media goals before deciding that bigger is better.
There are many other techniques and ways to get your business moving toward strong ROI’s for your social media investments, but if you follow the steps above, you’ll have a much easier time adapting to your fans’ (and ultimately, customers’) changing demands.