With over one billion members, Facebook is hard to ignore. There are many features that make it useful for businesses and provide new opportunities. Having a Facebook page makes it easy for potential customers to find your business and interact with you. Businesses can answer questions and receive feedback from people who are interested in what you do. You can use it to establish yourself as an expert in your field and gain credibility. Furthermore, Facebook Insights enables you to see how people are reacting to your posts and therefore better understand your customers.
On average there are 1,500 potential stories someone could see on their newsfeed when they log in to Facebook. The algorithm Facebook uses to decide which of these the user sees is suitably complex and responds to various things they do in order to decide what’s best to show. This includes who or which pages they interact with most often, the popularity of a post amongst their friends and whether or not they have hidden similar posts in the past.
For businesses on Facebook this has meant that the number of people that see your posts has been restricted. In order to make money, Facebook emphasises its sponsored posts and you can pay to promote your page or individual posts to reach more people. Therefore, without using these ads, we need to work harder to stand out and appear in people’s newsfeeds.
Facebook also changes its algorithm every so often to show people more of the types of posts it determines they want to see. Negative feedback in the form of people reporting your posts as spam or hiding them from their newsfeed count against you and will make your posts visible to less people.
So how do you ensure your posts get seen? Here are some of our top tips:
Do’s
- Offer your Facebook fans something new to give them a good reason to like your page – whether that be an invite to an event, special promotions or discounts.
- Post consistently and regularly to help build up a relationship with fans.
- Ask questions, be conversational and gather feedback.
- Stay relevant and interesting by posting about topical issues, current events and news.
- Research your target audience and what sort of posts they like and react to.
- Post short, snappy updates and vary up your posts by using photos, videos, polls and links as well as just plain text.
- Ask discussion questions to get people talking about your posts – this is especially important when you’re posting your own content as you want people to discuss what you’re doing and it’s a useful way to receive feedback.
- Be aware of what times of the day your fans are most likely to be on Facebook and engage with your posts. This will vary depending on the type of business, but generally speaking the later in the day, the better.
- Check to see what your competitors are doing and how successful it is.
Dont’s
- Don’t simply ask people for likes and shares, make them want to engage and share by posting relevant, interesting things.
- Don’t overwhelm people with your updates. Find the right balance between how little and often you post so that you stay connected with your audience but don’t spam their newsfeeds.
- Don’t ignore customers that reach out to you on Facebook. Respond as quickly as you are able to when people ask questions on your page or send you a private message.
- Don’t post similar updates over and over again.