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This month, our theme is Facebook marketing. Last month we discussed an overall social media strategy so now, over the next few months we will delve into some specific platforms. So as not to insult your social media intelligence, I’m going to highlight a few interesting things to consider regarding Facebook and not go into too much detail on the basics.
Facebook is undoubtedly still the most popular social media platform. It is, however, losing its popularity due to political and data concerns. Last year, Facebook’s time spent on the platform went down 9%. Younger people look to Facebook as a “boomer platform” and the millennial age group is more likely to use Instagram. However, all age groups are still found on Facebook. My number one tip to using Facebook is to not put all of your marketing eggs in this one basket. There are various horror stories out there about people getting blocked or deleted from Facebook for no real reason due to their AI reviews. The scheduling program that I use was under review a couple of months ago. Facebook deleted every post we had scheduled using this program over the last four months. Ultimately everything was restored when the review was complete. But, what if they had left it that way? This is not a rare occurrence so you need to be aware that this is something that could happen to you or your marketing people.
My number one tip to using Facebook is to not put all of your marketing eggs in this one basket.
In the world of social media marketing, Facebook is definitely a necessary evil for most businesses. So, let’s talk about some ways to use it.
The first thing you will want to do when using Facebook is to have a complete profile that gives a good description of what you do. Make sure that your profile picture is of you and not just a logo. People want to do business with other people. The point of social media is to portray your personality as a business.
The second thing you want to do is make sure that you are not operating a business from a personal Facebook page. This will certainly get you shut down at some point if they decide that you are doing this. You can definitely share some business posts from your business page to your personal page but you do not want to only use your personal page for business. It goes against their Terms of Service.
Paid options
Don’t write these off as being too expensive. I have done $1 a day page “like” ads that have dripped in hundreds of people over the course of the year. I have also done Facebook ad testing starting at $5 per day as you are finding the correct target markets. Even a boost to one of your posts can be helpful. While Facebook is “Free” to use, it has increasingly become a pay-to-play platform. Meaning, for people to see what you are producing, you will need to put some money into the budget now and then. Remember, any given post has an average reach of 1%. (IE if you have 100 followers then only 1 of them see each post.) By adding money to your social marketing budget, you can get a higher reach for your posts and certainly a higher reach for any promotions you are doing. Before you throw in the towel altogether on Facebook after seeing those numbers, just remember, it’s still the largest platform and most people are using it. That 1% is an average and some of your posts could get seen by many people. Here’s a video from Facebook themselves on how the algorithm works so you can decide what types of posts to do.
Stories and Reels
Something to keep in mind and to look at for your strategy is going to be Facebook Stories and Facebook Reels. These are basically their “competition” to TikTok and they are becoming increasingly popular. Stories and Reels are at the top of the feed whether you are on mobile or desktop. Facebook is now estimating that people on their platforms are spending about half their time on the Reels/Stories vs. the feed AND if people are following you, they will see those. So you are going to get a much better reach on your Stories and Reels than you do on your feed but only for people who like to watch them. There are those “boomers” (like me) that mostly still stick to the feed but this is definitely something that you should look into and try with your strategy. Canva is a great tool for those as you can take anything you design in there and size it to Stories and Reels with a couple of clicks with their paid membership.
Creator Studio vs. Business Suite
Now that you’ve got your profile looking good and you have looked at the algorithm information, it’s time to create some posts and put them out there. Will you be posting on the fly or do you like to plan ahead? If you are posting as you go along, you can just go directly into the platform and create your post. If you are like me and like to plan ahead, you will want to use a scheduling feature. As an agency, we use PostOPlan. It seems to have the most features and the least cost for having a large number of profiles to work with. But, we cannot schedule Stories or Reels here so we schedule Stories in Facebook Creator Studio or Business Suite. FB Business is a little more straightforward and Creator Suite (as the name suggests) has a few more options such as testing and live video. Either works for scheduling posts and Stories but at the time of publishing, I don’t see a way to schedule ahead for Reels.
Ultimately, whether you like it or not, Facebook and the Meta products don’t appear to be going away anytime soon. Keeping them in the marketing mix is important to your social media strategy but just remember, don’t make Facebook your only marketing strategy.
Rebecca Paciorek is an Online Business Manager specializing in assisting in the growth of your business through traditional and digital means.
*I often recommend products and services that I use or that have been recommended to me by people we trust. In many cases these recommendations are accompanied by an affiliate link, which provides me with a referral commission should you click through and make a purchase.
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