Before talking about Facebook as a social media tool, let’s discuss social media itself.
Social Media has been a tool that has connected various people from all walks of life across various continents together. It brings family, friends, businesses and the likes together; thereby giving them a platform to connect with each other.
But…
You can get lost in social media if you don’t have a goal in mind. Social Media is not a marketing tool in any way. It is a platform set for communication and for you to excel as a Social Media Marketer, you need to have a communication mindset.
Why?
- It helps you humanize your brand
- It brings about brand validation
- It will increase brand loyalty
- It helps establish your brand as an authority
- It creates brand awareness (blow your own trumpet)
Now that Social Media has been sorted let’s talk about FACEBOOK
Facebook is the biggest social media platform on the internet with over 2 billion monthly users. However, its essence is getting lost as people rarely use the platform to communicate but advertise their brand. This is why Facebook changed their algorithm making it a place for communication and for bringing family together by displaying more contents from family and friend. Thereby reducing contents displayed from companies and pages.
How then do you use Facebook as a Social Media Marketing Tool?
The new Facebook algorithms now ranks post based on comments, replies to comment, engagement on shares and like/ reactions. In other to achieve a good ranking factor, you must:
Incorporate Video content:
Videos, especially live videos often leads to more views and discussions on Facebook. It also increases engagement and time spent on the content.
Focus on contents that attracts like-minded people:
Make sure you content can attract people that are interested in what you are saying. Also post contents that people can generally relate to.
Drive and start Engagement (e.g. Polls):
This is another method to get people’s attention on Facebook. Do not bait people with contents like comment below or repost if you like ice cream as It will classified as spam and not added to the content to be viewed. You can instead ask for their opinion or what they would recommend.
Employee Advocacy:
This is another way to get your post viewed on Facebook. Your team members can be encouraged to share your project on their timeline this provides a way for your contents to get more views and interaction
Fewer links, more photos and tags:
Avoid sharing links from your sites or other platforms to share on Facebook. It will be given a negative ranking and will prevent people from viewing the message you want to pass across.
Unique Posts:
As you all know, content is king. Hence, you have to ensure your posts are of quality content, well researched and resonate well and sparks your audience’s emotions. Ensure your contents does not focus more on sales. This will gain customers’ trust
Time your content to perfection:
For every social media platform there is always a time that gets the most engagement and interactions from contents online. On twitter it is at 3pm from Monday to Friday, Instagram is between 12 – 1pm from Monday to Friday and Facebook is between 12 – 3pm on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays. You can also test and track results for yourself using engagement data from Facebook Page Insight.
Run Ads:
This is a good way to interact with your audience and get your contents displayed on their timeline now that Facebook is deprioritizing content from brands and publishers.
