Like most businesses, you’re likely already working on your digital marketing strategy for 2020.
It’s possible that from time to time, in passing, you’ve heard various marketers and business owner talk about the lack of effectiveness when it comes to leveraging Facebook for business. Succeeding on Facebook is not about what other’s experience with the platform; it’s about how you are willing to leverage the platform and adapt to the needs of your audience.
We want to challenge this popular misconception and help you succeed on Facebook in 2020.
Here are 4 key elements for succeeding on Facebook. Having an engaging and optimized cover photo, an overall optimized profile, leveraging video marketing, and using Facebook as one of your primary customer service tools.
Professional Facebook Cover Photo
When it comes to the Facebook cover photo, this is often overlooked as having little to no importance. We often see stock photos being placed as cover photos, or enlarged, non-formatted company logos. We sometimes even see outdated promotion banners used as the cover photo.
We also see banners not optimized for mobile experience, and this can often lead to a missed opportunity from a potential buyer.
The key to having an optimized cover photo is that this is your chance to make a lasting first impression and to tell your audience exactly who you are and how you can serve them.
First impressions are lasting, and when it comes to your social media banners and cover photos, this is no different.
In a recent article, we covered some best practices when it comes to creating a Facebook cover photo. To sum it up:
- Don’t be deceptive or misleading in any way; representation accuracy is important, and you need to avoid any copyright issues.
- Never ask anyone to upload your cover photo to their personal timeline, it’s against Facebook’s terms of use to do so for advertising and giveaway purposes.
- Your profile banner should be relevant to your brand.
- The 20% text rule can be thrown out the window. Your goals should always be to be visual, but if you have a little bit less or more than 20% text, as long as your banner is optimized, you should be fine.
- Show what’s behind your brand.
- Be mindful of the mobile experience. Leverage Stencil’s feature “Safe Area” to create optimized banners that will provide a positive experience both on mobile and desktop.
Be use all of these tips to let your brand shine and help your potential customers in their buyers’ journey.
Overall Optimized Profile
Succeeding on Facebook also has a lot to do with your profile optimization. When it comes to social media, the “I’ll do it later” habit often become never. When creating your Facebook Business page, every aspect of the page that is relevant to you or your brand should be completed.
To ensure that you do not miss any steps, follow this order when creating a new Facebook Business page.
- Add a profile photo relevant to your brand.
- An optimized cover photo (as discussed in our previous point.)
- Complete all of your business information and the “about” section.
- Be sure to complete your “story” section as well.
The more information you miss, the less your audience will know about you and how you can serve them.
One of the key aspects to remember is that businesses change, and your business goals and direction may change. Incorporate an action-step in your digital marketing strategy to review your social media profiles and “about” section every 3-6 months. This will ensure that the information is still relevant to your business, and you can make changes as necessary.
Leveraging Video Marketing
If you haven’t wrapped your ahead around video marketing yet, it’s time to take some small steps and incorporate this crucial marketing component into your Facebook strategy.
Video marketing is already dominating, and it’s time for you to get on board. When it comes to video marketing, we often conclude that it will be time-consuming, expensive to produce, and thus, it ends up in the follow-up pile instead of being done.
Here’s how you can get started with video marketing without feeling overwhelmed or overwhelming your team.
- Take the videos that you already have on YouTube and share snippets of them on Facebook.
- Gather some FAQ’s and do a Facebook live to answer your customer’s questions. Take that live video and repurpose it to YouTube and IGTV. One video can quickly become content for multiple platforms.
- Use your recent articles as outlines for your videos. This is easy easy to do. Scan an article, highlight 2-3 points in the article and then discuss these specific points in a 1-2 minute video. Repurposing articles into video topics is a great way to come up with new content and expand on a topic that you are already discussing with your audience.
- If you aren’t comfortable doing live videos, do pre-recorded videos to start.
- Use your Facebook cover image to announce your upcoming video releases or live videos. If you are planning on releasing a series of videos on a particular topic, modify your Facebook cover image to announce the release of your videos to drive more traffic and views. You can do the same for upcoming live videos that you are planning or for advertising a regular live video series.
Customer Service & User Experience
This may be the last topic that we discuss today, but it’s one of the most important.
Every social media platform, including Facebook, should be used for our customer service efforts and to create a positive experience for your audience. User experience plays a big role for any businesses already succeeding on Facebook.
Here are our best tips on how you can leverage Facebook to create a positive user experience.
You know that optimized Facebook cover photo that we just discussed? The one you can easily create with Stencil? Did you know that you can add a description for your Facebook cover image?
