Using Facebook for Marketing

Overview

Facebook is by far the largest social network in the world, it has over 1.4 Billion users worldwide and more than 30 Million in the UK alone. This does not mean that Facebook is always the best platform to target your social media marketing efforts but it does mean it should always be considered.

Facebook allows you to connect with your customers in a number of ways; Sharing a status update, sharing photographs and videos and allowing your customers to message you directly.

Building Facebook followers can take considerable time and effort but fundamentally it is achieved by creating relevant content that your customers would wish to share with their friends or engage with by liking or commenting on it.

Think about Facebook as a means of starting a conversation rather than a place to make announcements.

Facebook Demographics

96% of social media user have a Facebook profile, over 40% of the UK population use Facebook (60% of online adults).

Facebook has no real gender bias, but it's users are increasingly skewing towards an older demographic (almost 50% of users are older than 35). Younger people are starting to favour other networks such as Instagram

Facebook Marketing Tips

• Use a business "page" not a personal profile see Facebook Help
• Present a personality and be consistent
• Share content from other sources that may be relevant
• Post regularly but not too often
• Try posting at different times of day and consider posting the same content more than once with different words
• Try posting content in the form of a question to elicit comments
• Photographs are the most visible content in a news feed, use them often
• Add your own words and commentary if you are sharing a link
• Humour works but only if you can do it well
• Use post scheduling which will allow you to review before a post goes live
• Monitor your efforts using Facebook Page Insights

Facebook Pitfalls

• The visibility of your post on a followers' Facebook news feed is not automatic even if they "like" your page, it is dependent on a "secret" algorithm. Your post is more likely to be seen if others engage with it or if a follower has engaged with one of your posts previously.
• Increasingly Facebook is driving business users to need to pay to make their posts visible
• When you post on Facebook your update will only initially be seen by a proportion of your followers, visibility will increase if initial followers "engage" by liking, commenting and/or sharing.
• Take care to use Facebook with the Pages identity rather than your personal profile when you are commenting
• Buying Facebook "Likes" is a bad idea, see this blog post