3 Steps to Creating a Killer Facebook Strategy

Facebook is one of the most powerful social media platforms, and when managed correctly, has the potential to bring in serious returns for digital marketers. However, getting the kind of results that Facebook is capable of requires a well-formulated strategy teamed with faultless execution.

Facebook Marketing – Getting the basics right

Facebook is a fantastic platform that allows marketers to stay connected with their audience throughout the day, and across multiple devices. This is essential for building deep, lasting relationships, building brand advocates, sharing offers and promotions in a timely fashion, and driving loyal fans to your website or online shop.

The key to mastering Facebook Marketing for your Small Business lies in understanding Facebook’s ecosystem and learning how to use it to your advantage. Believe it or not, there is a process, which when followed correctly, will lead to many great rewards.

If you have a business to promote or products to sell, you’ll need to build your Facebook marketing strategy around these four key principles:

1. Build
2. Attract
3. Engage
4. Amplify

Here’s what we mean…

Step One: Build The Basics
The first step is to have an initial plan for what you want to achieve from your Facebook marketing efforts. You should define clear goals with measurable success metrics. Write them down and store them in a place where you can refer to them on a daily/weekly basis! Believe it or not, putting pen to paper and physically writing down the results to aim for increases the chance of your goals coming to fruition by over 60%!

Some examples of relevant Facebook marketing goals would include:

• Generating awareness for your brand, products and services
• Increasing the number of Facebook followers
• Driving increased traffic volumes from Facebook to your website
• Accessing new audience segments
• Achieving a given conversion rate, such as increased sales
• Building deeper relationships and customer loyalty
• Creating brand advocates who’ll amplify word of mouth recommendations
• Fostering product development and innovation

You should also take time at this stage to appreciate the environment your Facebook strategy operates in. Who are the most relevant demographics, and how can you reach out to them specifically? What other marketing methods are you using, and how can Facebook be integrated into this mix for best results?

It’s important to note that all of your digital marketing efforts, including everything you do on Facebook, should be baked into everything you do as a business. Social media marketing is an integral part of your business strategy and should never be considered as a mere after thought – this means allocating the budget and resources to deal with it properly.

Step Two: Reaching People

Your Facebook posts have to get seen in order to get results, and this should be the focus of the next stage of strategy-making. This can be broken down into two smaller steps, the first of which is increasing your reach by growing your number of followers.

Some of the most basic yet most effective ways to do this are to create quality content that people will want to engage with, to encourage shares and comments so that posts might get seen by friends of followers, and to make sure social buttons are included on your site.

The second of these smaller steps is to ensure that your posts are actually getting seen by your followers. To do this, post frequently – as long as you are not compromising on quality to do so.

Not every post will reach every follower’s feed, so it may be worth posting important things more than once, though leave at least a few hours between each exposure.

Bear in mind that when it comes to making sure that your posts are seen, timing is everything. You should also ensure you post at the optimal time, when your audience is at its most active.

Various studies can help you take a guess at these times, but they vary between industries and individual companies so experiment and analyse previous posts to find the ideal times for you by keeping an eye on the activity around your posts (i.e. the number of likes, shares, comments).

Step Three: Putting it Into Practice

The whole point of a strategy is to put it into practice, and to do this effectively that strategy needs to include an idea of how it can best be applied in the real world. The key to this is scheduling.

Work out what you want to share and how often you want to share it, and then create a content calendar detailing exactly when this will take place. This will give you clear deadlines for content creation and ensure nothing gets missed as a result of other pressures on your time.

It is also wise to use a social media publishing tool rather than publishing all content through Facebook directly. This allows you to schedule numerous posts ahead of time, integrate your activity with other social media platforms, and access analytical tools to monitor performance. This gives you much more time and (head)space to focus on other priorities, safe in the knowledge that your social media activity is being taken care of.

Make Your Facebook Strategy Standout From the Rest

Here are a couple of tips for getting your Facebook Marketing Strategy to stand out from everyone else’s:

• Be Authentic: Facebook fans appreciate authenticity – so, use your Facebook Page to display your brand’s personality. You can do this by developing a brand voice and using it to share straightforward, honest and clear information about your company.
• Be Engaging: Your Facebook Page is not just for running promotions! Use it as a means of developing two-way communications with your audience and fans. Work hard at creating a truly interactive channel by encouraging dialogue through comments, likes and sharing. Let your fans see & feel exactly how important their opinions are to you.
• Be Nurturing: Just as you take the time and effort to build strong relationships with your clients and contacts in the offline world, you’ll need to do exactly the same online. Building loyal brand followers takes time, patience and effort – this is a long-term investment so don’t be fooled into thinking overnight success stories are easy to achieve.
• Keep Learning: This is the part most often neglected by even the most experienced marketers. Use your Facebook Insights to learn about the people you’re connecting with and find out which types of posts generate the most interest and engagement. Discover which days of the week and times of the day work best for you. Are your ads attracting the right demographics? You can find out through your Facebook Insights and tailor your strategy according to your sales and marketing needs.

Mastering the basics of Facebook marketing opens up a whole new world of customer engagement, website traffic, and increased revenue for you. These steps should help you create a winning Facebook strategy designed to maximise value through engagement, conversions and, ultimately, revenue.

A winning Facebook strategy is not an easy thing to create nor implement, but at Digital Gold HQ we are seasoned experts in creating social media campaigns that work. Contact us today if you want to start seeing better results from your Facebook account.