Tag Archives: facebook marketing tips

Dos and Don’ts for your business Facebook page

Despite all the hype and buzz around TikTok and other social media platforms, Facebook is still the most-used social media platform in the world.

Facebook had 3.05 billion monthly active users and during the 4th quarter 2023, Meta reported that 3.98 billion people use at least one of their core products every month – core products being Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger. (Source – Statista.com)

This is great news for all of us small businesses who use our business page to promote our products or services. Facebook is an inexpensive, and largely free, effective way to connect with your target audience, but there are some things you should and shouldn’t do. This post looks at the dos and don’ts for your business Facebook page.  

DO

First, let’s look at some of the things that are advisable to do on your Facebook page.

  • Pick an easily recognisable image for your profile picture (either of photo of you or your brand logo). People want to know who they are interacting with. Don’t use photos of your pets for your business page – unless your business is about pets, and even then I would use a logo or you and your pet.   
  • Use your cover photo – feature an image that represents who you are and what your business does.
  • Ensure you complete the ‘about’ section of your page. This is your chance to tell your audience a little bit more about you and what you do – you could use your elevator pitch here.  
  • Develop a distinct voice for your Facebook page – so you sound the same as you do on your website and other social media pages. And don’t forget that you can use humour and show your personality!
  • Make sure you include links to your social media pages on your website, so people finding you there know where to connect with you on socials.
  • Post interesting and quality content – make sure that your content isn’t all about selling your product or service – use a variety of posts.
  • Post consistently on a regular basis. You can see from your insights when is the best time to post for your audience.
  • Post engaging images and ask questions to promote engagement, or do the odd fun post, such as those predictive text posts, quotes, or a funny meme.
  • Include links to drive traffic to your website, blog or newsletter sign up.
  • If you share other peoples’ content, ensure that it is relevant to your target audience.
  • If you are attending or arranging an event, post about it.
  • Celebrate your wins and share your successes.
  • Reply to and ‘like’ comments left on your posts.
  • Use hashtags to increase interaction – experts are currently recommending 3-5 hashtags on Facebook posts. Despite being allowed to use up to 30 hashtags on Instagram, the current guidelines (from 2023) suggest 3-5 – the same as Facebook. But you may find more work better for you on Instagram.
  • Mix up your posts with single image, multiple images, and video to gain the most engagement.
  • Check your post grammar and spelling and don’t forget a call to action.
  • This is a hard one but respond quickly and publicly to any customer that complains or leaves a negative comment on your posts. Don’t get angry or defensive and don’t get into specifics about the issue. Just respond positively and then take the complaint offline. This shows other customers that you care about your customers and are responsive to their concerns.    
  • Finally, measure your posts by checking your insights so you know which posts are the most engaging with your audience, or get you the most reach/comments/likes etc. You can then use this to plan your following week’s/month’s posts.

DON’T

  • Invite huge lists of people to like your page or get tied up in follow for follow posts. If people like what you do, they will follow you. Doing follow for follow may boost your followers briefly, but most will unfollow you after a short period, or just never bother engaging with your posts because they didn’t choose to follow you for the right reasons – and this is very damaging to the algorithm.
  • Constantly promote the sales of your products or services – use a variety of posts to keep your audience engaged.
  • Don’t completely flood your feed with posts – if you post several times a day, space them out.
  • Overuse hashtags. 3-5 is plenty per post – any more than that and your post could be seen as spammy. Put hashtags at the end of your caption rather than incorporating then into the caption itself.
  • Don’t post low quality images, memes, or information.
  • Don’t post anything that you wouldn’t like to see in your newsfeed.
  • Don’t be afraid to experiment with your posts to see which are the most popular.
  • Don’t forget to use your insights to help you plan posts.
  • Neglect to post at weekends – you don’t have to post on both days, but this is when most people are at home and scrolling social media.
  • Don’t use abbreviations or jargon.
  • Don’t ever ask for personally identifiable information.
  • Don’t engage in an argument on your business page – if someone has a problem, reply politely, and take it offline.
  • Don’t post anything that could damage the professionalism of your business or that could damage your reputation.
  • Finally, don’t get involved in engagement baiting.

Engagement Baiting

This could be a whole other blog post, but basically engagement baiting is goading people into commenting on posts without it being a meaningful interaction.

Facebook will prioritise posts that inspire back and forth discussion, but using engagement bait will be recognised and post will be demoted in the newsfeed.

Engagement baiting includes:

  • Vote baiting – asking your audience to give their opinion using a like, share or comment.
  • React baiting – Giving your opinion in your post, then saying ‘like if you agree’ – whoops! I’ve been guilty of this one without realising it!
  • Share baiting – Encouraging your audience to share a post if they agree with the content or share to win a prize or be entered into a contest.
  • Tag baiting – asking your audience to tag someone in the comments.
  • Comment baiting – asking followers to comment on the post.

I’m not sure I agree with all of these, but I guess it’s about the way you ask for things. Facebook’s guidance says that you can:

  • Ask for authentic input – asking for advice, recommendations, help or tips. And you can ask customer to share their tips for using your products or service or how they think they could be improved.
  • Ask questions as this promotes engagement and interaction. A study conducted by Hubspot found that posts that use the words ‘should, would, which, and who’ get the most comments and those that use the words ‘why and how’ get the fewest comments.
  • Post content that people want to talk about.
  • Provoke an emotional response – posts that surprise your audience or make then laugh, cry, or get angry.
  • Post a photo and ask for a caption.
  • Try and ‘fill in the blank’ post – this could be using predictive text or just from their own experience.  

There’s an awful lot to take in with this post and I appreciate it if you actually got to the end of it! As always, if you have any questions about this post or any of my other posts, or if you have any suggestions for future blog posts, please feel free to email me (cindymobey@outlook.com) or message me on messenger.

Facebook marketing tips for creative businesses

Facebook is a great marketing tool for small businesses. It is one of the most visited websites in the world and perfect for engaging with customers and attracting new ones. From ads to Facebook groups, Facebook has lots of tools that you can use.

Create a business page

A business page is a great way to communicate directly with your target audience. People follow your page because they want to…and want to see more about you and your business. Having a business page also means you get access to Facebook insights, which give useful information about your followers and how they interact with your page.

It’s important to add a profile and cover photo that reflects what your business does. Use high-quality images, as they will in some instances, be the first impression you make on your audience.

Customise your page as much as you can – include your business name, address, and contact information. You can add your website URL, business hours and details of your products. There is even the option of having a Facebook shop for your products.

Use keywords throughout that tell your followers, readers, and Facebook what your page and business is all about.

Tell your story – there’s a section where you can write more about your business, so tell your audience what makes your business unique, how your products provide solutions for them, how you got started. Keep it real and relatable.

Invite people to like your business page. Most of us do this when we first set up a business page, but it’s worth doing it again every few months. Each week I also go through the posts I’ve put up and look at who has liked each post. If someone has liked my post, but are not followers, I invite them.

Be consistent

As with any business strategy, it’s important to be consistent on your social media pages, and Facebook is no exception. Post regularly – as frequently as you can, but once a day at a minimum. If you post regularly every day, your followers will start to recognise that you’re posting every day and will engage more, as they get to know you.

Whilst it’s great to post regularly, if you post the same kind of post every day, your followers will get bored with your content. Use a mixture of posts and avoid using posts to sell your products every day. It’s good to follow the 80/20 rule. 80% engage, entertain, educate, and inspire and 20% to promote and you’re your products. You can share behind the scenes information and photos, tell a bit of your story; entertain with funny memes or ‘fill in the blanks;’ educate your audience about your products or a process you follow. For example, if you’re an artist, you could show a series of posts that show a painting from sketch stage to finished article. Or you could give hints and tips about an aspect of your creative business – a sewing tip or, if you make cakes – a ‘how-to’ video is popular. Click here to see other ideas for posts on Facebook.

Facebook’s algorithm encourages engagement, so try and post something that gets a conversation going. It’s good to remember that it is social media, and we need to be social. Don’t forget to reply to comments and to any private messages promptly.

Ask your audience

As well as asking questions or writing engaging posts that promote a conversation, you can also ask your audience to tag their friends. This can work well, particularly with inspirational quotes. When you post a meaningful post, ask your audience to tag someone who might need to hear the advice the post gives.

You could do a post that just says you are sending out a hug to anyone who needs it today – we all know that sometimes, we just do! Then say, ‘tag a friend who’d like a hug today.’

‘Small Business Saturday’ posts work well too. Ask your followers to share links to their favourite small businesses, or to tell you a bit about their small business and to put a link. Make sure that you visit every single business that comments and puts a link on this post. Click on their business link and like some of their posts and post a couple of comments too – this helps them out with the Algorithm, as well as helping your business.

Facebook Ads

Now, this is something I haven’t felt the need to use, but it does seem to work well for some businesses. If you’re having trouble reaching your target audience, you can do an ad fairly cheaply. You can then target a specific audience by location, age, gender, and interests. There’s also an analytics tool to help you understand which ads drive interest and sales.

Facebook insights

I briefly mentioned this earlier, but this is a useful tool. I check my insights once a week, usually on a Sunday afternoon when I’m scrolling through my feed. Your insights tell you how many people engage with each of your posts and how many people each post reaches. You can look at which kind of posts are the most popular, which helps you decide what to post in the following week.

If you think that posting on social media takes up too much of your time, you can use Facebook’s publishing tools to schedule your posts in advance. And you can batch-make posts. I batch-make my posts for the following week every Friday or Saturday. I don’t like to schedule my posts as I like to be able to be available to reply as quickly as possible. But I have scheduled posts when I’ve been away on holiday.

Start your own Facebook group/join one

Having your own Facebook group will help you build a community around your products or services and can help make your brand more visible. It’s a great way to connect with your customers.

It’s also invaluable to join a good networking group with your target audience or with peers. I belong to a few groups – some are specifically for marketing people where trends etc. are discussed and others are networking with other like-minded businesses. I enjoy both, but I do have my favourites! This is a great way to get your business more well-known, but again, you need to be able to give time every day to network and comment on group posts, as well as interact with other businesses. I’ve met loads of lovely people this way and have bought lots of things from some of the small businesses in those groups.

Facebook features

As well as just posting every day, try out some of the features that are regularly being rolled out.

Facebook Live

Go live to engage with your audience in real time. Your followers will get a notification that you’re ‘live’ and can tune in to watch you. Once you have finished your live, you’re given an option to save a recording of your live so followers who haven’t tuned in can watch it later. Your live video then becomes a post on your page.

Facebook Live can be up to four hours long! Now, I’m not saying do a four-hour video, but you should try and aim for at least 10 minutes. The longer you’re live, the more discoverable your stream will be.

Facebook Video

If you’re not brave enough to go live with video, you can record a video. This way you can edit out anything you don’t like or start again if you hate it! Video content really makes a difference to your figure and video tends to be much more popular that posts. The thing I’ve noticed with video is that when you post it, you get some likes and views, but then suddenly a few weeks later, your figures on that video jump up as it’s shown to people. I’m not sure why, but it’s obviously something to do with the Algorithm!

You can use video to teach your audience something – a step-by-step tutorial, or a how-to video. Again, aim for at least 10 minutes. If you’re teaching your audience something, they’ll stay for as long as your video is engaging!

Facebook Stories

When you post a story, it stays on your feed for 24 hours. Again, stories get more traction and seem to reach more people than posts, so it’s a good idea to include them in your marketing strategy.

PLEASE NOTE: Avoid using video as a sales pitch. People tune in to find out more about you and your business, not to be sold to. I’ve made this mistake – I’m sure lots of us have, but I’ve found the videos that are more popular are ones where I’m being social and ‘having a chat.’

Create a plan

As with anything, what you post on Facebook should be part of your marketing strategy or plan. I try and plan my content a month in advance, so I know what I’m going to do and when. I also make note of any special days for each quarter, so I can plan posts around that – for example, Valentine’s Day or Easter.

I hope that you have found this post useful – if you have any questions, please feel free to comment on this post or send me a message.