Businesses of all sizes should be using Facebook to promote their business, and there are numerous beneficial tools that a business can use. Social media is a great tool that can help you to grow your business and engage your audience over time, especially Facebook.
With a regularly updated Facebook page you will look like a more trustworthy business to the customer. A business without a Facebook profile is likely to look untrustworthy, or at least out of touch with modern times. As mentioned, in a past blog article – Social Media & Business: Why it’s a must! Having just a website alone is no longer all you need to operate a business and interact with your clients.
How can you use Facebook to promote your small business? Take a look:
Create A Page For Your Business
You must have a separate page from your personal profile, and customize it to include relevant information. You should add as much information about your business as possible, including photos that reflect what your business is all about and your address, contact information, website, business hours, and products. Bear in mind that the information you include should be consistent across all platforms for SEO purposes.
Below are some stats to illustrate why this is important.
- Facebook is the world’s third most visited website
- 68% of Americans use Facebook
- 47 billion people log in daily from around the world
- Facebook has 80 million small and medium sized business pages
- 78% of American consumers have discovered retail products via Facebook
Post Consistently
Set up a schedule to help you post consistently. If you get into the habit of inconsistent posting, your audience will get bored. You want to provide a consistent stream of useful, interesting information to stay in the forefront of their minds. Usually a minimum of once a day is best, but you may want to experiment with the posting schedule that is right for you. Don’t forget to experiment with the types of things you post, either – in general, posts with imagery get more engagement.
Look into apps that can help you stick to a better schedule if you don’t want to have to check back all day long.
- Shorter posts get about 23% more interaction than longer Facebook posts
- 32% of marketers say visual images are the most important form of content for their business
Engage With Your Audience
Will what you are posting create a conversation with your audience? You want them to feel compelled to interact with you in some way. This isn’t somewhere you’re posting adverts and promotional content all day long – it shouldn’t be, anyway. It’s somewhere you should get social with your audience!
You want to post high quality content, and be relatable and conversational. Having a brand voice can really help with this.
Always respond to comments and personal messages – even negative ones. You can achieve more interactions by using polls and asking questions, too. Encourage people to check in on your page for a small discount if you want to spread brand awareness.
- The average engagement rate for a post is 3.91%
Ask For Reviews
People are more likely to leave a review if you ask politely for one, so consider asking for a Facebook page review from your customers over email or on a card in their order/purchase.
- 47% of people aged 16-24 have posted a product or business review online
- 45% of 35-to 44-year-old internet users have also published reviews
Use The Analytics Tool
The Facebook analytics tool can help you understand which ads drive interest and sales, and this is invaluable for streamlining your efforts. You can do more of what is working and less of what doesn’t seem to be working. Tweaking your efforts constantly will help you to perform better on Facebook.
- An average Facebook user clicks on 8 ads per month
Try Facebook Ads If You Have Trouble Organically
If you are having trouble in the beginning, Facebook ads could help you to get fairly quick results. They are not organic and they are not free, but they are targeted and could potentially help you to reach more people and build up a follower base.
With Facebook ads, you can target people who like your page or by location, age, gender and interests. Plus, Facebook collects data so your ads can be shown to people who are most likely to be interested in what you are offering.
There are many reasons to use Facebook to promote your small business. Remember, if you’re not doing it, your competitors likely are. It’s 2019, and no matter how you have handled your marketing in the past it’s time to use Facebook to get better results than ever.
Sources:
https://blog.hootsuite.com/facebook-statistics/
https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/10-need-to-know-facebook-marketing-stats-for-2019/547488/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2018/04/27/do-people-really-look-at-facebook-reviews-heres-why-it-matters/#421f22a363b7
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/visual-content-marketing-strategy