When a company decides that they will have a presence on social media, Facebook will be at the forefront of that strategy. With over 2 and a half billion monthly users across the globe and a valuation over $70 billion in revenue, this juggernaut created by Mark Zuckerberg is the perfect vehicle for businesses to leverage their message to the masses.
Before a brand gets started with their adventure on Facebook though, they should fill in all of their information. Much like operators in the search engine optimization (SEO) field where keywords and descriptions are essential, filling in the profile and detailing the opening hours, address and phone number are a requisite to informing the visitor.
Social media users don’t want to be left scrambling to see if the store is open or whether or not the phone line is operational. This is an environment where instant access is demanded and accepted, so filling in these details is strongly advised by the site for businesses wanting to meet their obligations to their customers.
Companies are advised to start their journey on Facebook with a clear set of objectives in mind. They have to ask themselves a very basic question: what do they want out of this project? Is it to drive up engagement with the consumer base? Is it to win over a certain demographic? Is it to save costs on communication or expand servicing hours beyond the conventional 9am-5pm weekly window? The top practitioners who use this platform don’t just throw themselves at the site, but have a very definitive set of targets to aim for.
Assessing the audience and their behavior is essential for a commercial operator on Facebook. This is information that would normally cost companies thousands of dollars to obtain. It covers all of the basic components for a customer profile, incorporating their postcode, their age, their gender, their shared interests and how they behave and interact on the site. Running through these checks is free and should be leveraged as a tool to inform future campaigns.
Multimedia is a major driver for commercial engagement on Facebook. Small to medium enterprises (SMEs) have the capacity to close the gap to their larger counterparts on this platform because it is friendly to image galleries, videos and other means of visual and audio content.
Outlets have the opportunity to throw up information and content in real time, giving their followers a chance to see new products, new store details and any deals or offers they can jump on at the time. Fortunately this is an interactive space where videos, GIFs and pictures can be openly displayed at a moment’s notice.
Brands that manage to find a sweet spot with their content production are the ones that get the most joy out of Facebook as an entity. Posting too much too often will cause participants to drop off and hit that unfollow button because it spams their feed. Others that do not offer enough content won’t provide the value or information that shoppers crave. This is where the site recommends finding a sweet spot.
The good news for businesses big and small is that their experience will count for everything when using Facebook as a social media platform. As soon as they have undertaken this exercise and made a success of it, future campaigns can be repeated without suffering from that confusion and complication.
Some outlets will decide to outsource this task first to a specialist social media manager, giving them a foothold before taking over the reigns at a later date. Others will jump right into the space and engage with their clients one-on-one, informing how they do business in the digital space moving forward.
