Facebook continues to be a useful tool in any small business’s marketing toolbox, so I thought it would be useful to share 7 top tips to make your Facebook business page work even harder…
1. Feature a cover photo that has the wow factor
Make sure you create a cover photo that packs a punch. But you must make sure it complies with several very strict Facebook rules. So avoid at all cost featuring any sort of price promotion. Forget about including any contact information like your telephone or web address! Don’t add any explicit encouragement to ‘like’ or ‘share’ your page. And resist the temptation to add a call to action. In fact, when it comes to utilising this particular part of your page, tear up your marketing bible and just stick to a great image that strengthens your brand or showcases what you do but doesn’t contravene the rules.
2. Use images
Always, always, always add images, they are five times more powerful than a text status update. Facebook is primarily a visual-based, sharing-orientated platform and the top activity is sharing videos and photographs, so play to this strength on your business page. A long and wordy update will have people’s eyes glazing over, but an image will attract attention and make your Timeline look far more appealing. Similarly, don’t just post a link to a blog post – if your aim is to draw attention to a new post then by all means add that link. But add an image too.
3. Use video
If images are five times better than text, then video is ten times better. Think about your own personal use of Facebook, don’t you always play the videos that your friends upload? And if you upload a video don’t you find that you get more ‘likes’ and comments? There are some great low cost options for creating videos for your Facebook page, screen capture tools like Jing or with your Smartphone you can create an instant message for your Facebook audience.
4. Add your website address
You can’t add it to your cover photo (you were paying attention to tip number 1, weren’t you?!), but you can add it to the About section so it appears under your profile picture. it’s an obvious thing to do but many Facebook page owners don’t do this. An easy and quick marketing win.
5.Pin posts to the top of your page
If you want to make sure that a particular post gets plenty of exposure and that it can’t escape attention, then make sure you pin it to the top of your page. Once you’ve added your post, hover over the top right corner to reveal the star and pencil icons. Click the pencil and select ‘pin to top’. Your post will now move to below the sharing tool and you’ll see an orange flag. Bingo!
6. Highlight your post
Following on from tip number 5, if you select the star icon you can make your post, picture or video expand across the whole timeline to maximise its visibility. This can be great to break up the rather boring two-column structure of the Facebook Timeline layout and flag your most valuable content.
7. Schedule your post
Did you know that you can prepare a post and then schedule it to go live at a pre-determined time and date? This can be really useful if you endeavour to focus the amount of time you spend on social media activities. It means that in that 30 minutes or hour that you set aside every week you can plan and prepare Facebook posts – any time up to six months in advance and in 15-minute intervals. A really brilliant marketing time saver! All you have to do is choose the type of post you want to add (i.e. text, photo/video, event/milestone), and then click the clock icon that appears in the bottom left of the sharing tool. Now choose the year, month, day, hour and minute when you want your post to appear. Click on ‘schedule’ and it’s done!
Are you taking full advantage of Facebook’s business page marketing tricks? If you have any more to share it’d be great to hear them!