Is your Facebook marketing doing what you want it to do?
Do you know what the return on your social media efforts is?
If you’re not entirely sure, maybe you should rethink your strategy. You do have a strategy… right?
Without a strategy there is no direction, and without direction you may as well be running in circles.
To get measurable results, you will need a clearly defined social media strategy. This should tie into your complete marketing plan.
Before You Begin
If you want to make the most of your social media efforts, you will need a few things:
A clear purpose and plan for your business. This might sound obvious, but do you know where your money comes from and how much you spend on marketing? You should know where you want the business to be and how you plan to get there.
A website that represents your business the way you want people to perceive it. Visitors should be able to land on your site and straight away know what you do. It should look professional, clean and simple.
An email marketing service. This is one that a lot of businesses forget. You may think that no one bothers to read their emails now, but studies have proven otherwise. Email is actually the best way to keep a strong relationship with your customers. There are plenty of services to choose from, MailChimp and AWeber being the top two.
An official Facebook page that you can be proud of. You will want your page to represent your business in a way that the Facebook users can interpret.
After you have these four elements in place, you can start to devise a strategy. Remember, this will need to fit in with the rest of your marketing plan.
The main parts of the strategy will be objectives, research, plan, and analysis.
Objectives
The first thing you will need is objectives. There has to be something to aim for – what you want to get out of your social media.
The end goal will likely be similar for most, but think about the smaller goals you can aim for first.
Some of the following social media goals may be suitable for you:
Build brand awareness. To measure this, you will need to look at how many likes your page has, as well as the reach and engagement of each post. It will be even better if you can attach a specific figure to aim for with each metric.
Build a loyal community that interacts with your posts. People are a lot more likely to buy from those they know and trust. Posting content your audience can relate to, and replying to customers can go a long way. To measure engagement levels, you can look at your PTAT (people talking about this) rate.
Share your knowledge and establish yourself as an authority figure. On Facebook, you can show past work, behind the scenes footage, and tell people about your brand.
Lead generation. Facebook and social media are less commercial than other platforms. But they are still great tools for finding people to sell to. By giving people a way to opt in to your email service, you can entice them with related freebies.
Direct sales. Social media is of course not made for selling products. However, it is still more than possible to sell on Facebook. We recommend only posting direct sales messages in one every 5 posts at most. People just don’t want to be sold to, especially on social media. When you do try to sell on Facebook, just make sure you track the links. Using Google Analytics, you can see exactly how many people click on every link you post.
A key ingredient to reaching your goals is to quantify them. Set specific numbers and dates to what and when you want to achieve. You will, of course want to track these metrics accurately, so plan how you are going to do this first.
Research
Here’s what you’ll want to research before getting stuck in:
Pinpoint your audience. You should know where they hang out, what they do, and which websites they visit. There is so much information you can get from Facebook, you can start by looking through the likes of a similar page.
Competitor analysis. Search with both Facebook and Google to find the pages of other businesses in your market. See what works for them and which parts you can replicate in your own way. Don’t copy post by post, but using similar ideas and concepts will likely work with your audience too.
Set Schedules
Now that you know what you want for your page, you need to work out how you plan to get it. The best way to do this is to set out how much time you will spend on each activity, and when you will post what.
Content Frequencies
Decide on the main post types you want to have on your page. Try out a few options to start with so that you can get a feel for your audience and see what they like. You can then choose how often you want to post what. Aim for a few times a week, or even a few times a day if you can.
Time Spent on Activites
To stay focused on the right path, it helps to choose how long you want to do different things. Use an Excel sheet to set out the main activities to get your Facebook page together. This willl involve things like gathering content, scheduling posts, and general maintenance. Without a recurring schedule, you may forget to stay on top of regular duties.
Analyse Your Efforts
Once you have a page set up and a solid amount of content, you can start to take a look at your insights. Facebook will show you engagement, reach, and many more metrics so that you can see how popular each post is. You can then figure out trends and work out which post types resonate the most with fans of your page. Post more of what works, and rethink what doesn’t.
Every now and then, take a look at your recent posts and then work out if you need to tweak your strategy. Your Facebook page should be ever-evolving, just like your customer base.
The post The 4-Step Process of Creating a Successful Facebook Strategy appeared first on Spray Marketing.