What makes Facebook as the first go-to platform for a student learning digital marketing.
The answer to the above questions is important because most of us (Entrepreneurs, students, and digital marketers) start social media marketing with Facebook marketing.
Facebook is popular because of its reach, and the number of active users (the platform) has on social media.
The Facebook Story:
You already know – how a geek started a small website in college which went on to become Facebook. It is all part of the story they showed in the movie – The social network.
However, what you do not know is the timeline of events and how big Facebook is today.
What started as a simple program “face mash” to compare and rate the photos of two persons as “hot or not” in the year 2003 by a Harvard University student, Mark Zuckerberg is Facebook (today).
• Facebook today boasts of 1.86 billion active users from across the world.
• Facebook also holds the distinction of being the second famous website in the world after Google.
Today, no business can ignore Facebook. If you have a brand, it has to be on Facebook.
• Consider this – 1 in every 13 people on earth is on Facebook.
• Facebook, from being a social networking website, has successfully turned into a news aggregation website. 48% of young Americans said they read their news through Facebook. You cannot ignore Facebook.
What is Facebook Marketing?
Thanks to Google’s constant updates, over the years – SEO has turned into an unpredictable game.
While the SEO champs have been busy unravelling the secrets of how to rank high on google, google has been busy working behind the scenes – outmaneuvering the SEO Champs.
The “unpredictability with SEO” forced the Digital Marketers to look for greener pastures. They went looking for mediums where they have at least some control over the promotions they do.
The launch of social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube was their way out of the strict and changing guidelines of Google.
Today, if you are not on Facebook – you are non-existent!
You are living under the rock – missing all the updated from your friends and family.
The sheer number of users on Facebook makes the platform “a darling of social media marketers”.
Facebook Marketing is the art of promoting a company’s brand/service/product on Facebook, using various techniques.
You start by setting a Facebook business page and promote the page strategically to reach the target audience.
As promised at the start of the blog, I am going to teach you some simple tips to help you get your Facebook marketing rolling. I have also added a few secrets of Facebook marketing to help you run optimal campaigns on Facebook.
Here are the Facebook Marketing tips to help you succeed on the most
Prominent social networking website on the internet:
1 to 2% is the overall engagement percentage of Facebook, and this ratio only comes into picture when you have “Likes”.
Your effort will go waste if you do not have a sizable number of likes.
Also, Facebook users do not want their Facebook profile picking feed from a page which is “so new” in the market.
The Facebook wall reflects what users follow, what they like, and what they do. Hence, a new irrelevant brand might not be worthy of their Facebook page.
The bottom line is “You have to buy Facebook ads in a budgeted manner before you decide to go full throttle with your Facebook content posting strategy”.
Always keep a small yet considerable budget to get some initial likes on your page.
Once the campaign kicks off and those who like the page start interacting with the content, your business is ready for Facebook Marketing.
How well is your Facebook page placed along with your offline brand presence?
Is your company’s visiting card carrying your company’s Facebook link?
How about your company’s address board outside your office, etc., etc.?
Think of all the places where your brand is visible.
Now make sure your brand’s offline presence compliments your online presence and vice versa.
Facebook marketing will get a boost if the offline presence of your brand complements it.
Facebook is one social media platform which has a very easy to use interface to understand the performance of the campaign.
Before you decide to spend some money and time running your campaign, how about you spend some time understanding how the Facebook insights section works?
Facebook insights give you a 360-degree view of your page’s users, the content they are responding to, and the reach of different type of content.
Facebook insights are there to help you understand or counter the explanation given by the Facebook expert on your campaign’s progress.
Everything is available in black and white.
There are no Jargons to confuse you.
You can easily understand what works and what does not work on your Facebook page by going through the statistics shown in insights.
Learn to use the reporting before you decide to kick-start your campaign.
Before you decide on finalising your Facebook strategy, ask yourself the following questions:
Why are you on Facebook?
Why is every single person around the world on Facebook?
What makes Facebook so addictive that every 5 minutes we log in to check updates on our wall?
The answer is “interesting content”.
And, Interesting content does not include your company flooding the Facebook page with things only about your company.
No one wants to like a page which is busy talking only about “themselves”.
Trust me, the biggest mistake most of the Facebook pages do is “they over-promote themselves to the point of irrelevance”.
The content for your brand’s FB page should be a mix of news, jokes, inspiration messages, videos, etc.
Do not shy away from sharing the good stuff from the internet even if it means sharing some content from your competitor’s website.
You are doing your brand a favour by picking content from other pages (with their links added to share).
Facebook users, like all social media users, are suckers for good content. Even if the content does not come initially from your website, it establishes your brand’s page as a page which provides relevant, exciting content.
Few tools that can help you create interesting content for Facebook are:
To ease the process of scheduling the content, feel free to use the free version of Buffer (a market famous scheduling tool) that allows you to schedule the content.
I have a confession to make. Unlike most of the successful social media marketers, I have failed with so many Facebook campaigns.
In fact, one of the recent campaigns I did for a brand did not generate any interest from the prospective users.
The purpose of the campaign was to get website clicks. All it got was likes and shares.
On analysis or introspection (after being scolded regularly by the client) of the campaign, I realised my mistake. The user base was wrongly selected. The user base was just not interested.
Of course, I wasted a few hundred dollars down the drain because of my negligence.
The common mistake most of the brands make on Facebook is “Not understand their user base”.
A kids’ brand needs Mommies as users, not dads.
Similarly, the target customer base for kids play school is not teenagers.
The message is simple “Know what you are promoting and to whom you are promoting”.
The content, promotion, user reach campaigns everything should link to your user base. Do not waste your time and energy by being too generic.
Like me, you will end up with a disgruntled client who would want a refund.
Lastly – Remember “A Facebook campaign is incomplete without a proper website.”
Your website needs a Facebook Like us button displayed prominently on the site and a section to show the Facebook feed.
All the promotions you put on your website need to link to the FB Page. Do not let your Facebook campaign run in isolation.
The cherry on the cake is when the website also shows the latest updates posted on the FB page of the brand.
The above strategy can help you create a seamless brand experience between social media and the website.
How do you increase the user interaction on FB Page?
Other than the usual interesting content, your brand can offer exclusive offers for social media users by putting the best offers on FB Page.
The activity incentivises the FB users who will keep track of the latest FB updates to get deals exclusive to FB Fans.
On an ending note – the success on FF depends on how consistent and persistent a business is with their FB Marketing.
Facebook Marketing (at times) is an experiment where you keep trying new ideas for your users and then use FB insights to see their reaction.
