10 Facebook Marketing Tips That Will Help Your Business

This week we enjoyed a Bitesize Learning Session on Facebook Marketing from Chamber member James Dempster of Cobb Digital. Laura Evans reports on the top 10 takeaways from the session.

Laura is employed as the Business Support Navigator for the wider Brighton area, helping SME’s find support to grow their business or solve specific problems. It’s a free service and you can call 01273 719097 or email laura.evans@c2cbusiness.org.uk to find out more.
 
It was a great turnout for the Facebook Marketing Bitesize Learning session, which saw a range of local companies gathering to take advantage of James Dempster’s expertise. Some were totally new to the subject, whilst others had tried it out but not achieved the kind of success they had hoped for. James gave us a session jam packed with useful info and fun group work exercises. Here are the top takeaways for you to peruse and apply to your own marketing strategy.
 
1, Know what you are aiming to achieve with your Facebook marketing.
"If you go in looking for direct sales from Facebook and Twitter you will fail," says James. Think of it as a tool for raising brand awareness that will affect the sales funnel. Facebook is a point of contact along the customer journey that hopefully leads to a sale in future.
 
2, Use your video capability.
Facebook couldn’t buy Vine so instead they offer Premium Video Ads that auto play as silent 15 second segments until the viewer engages with them and come with a heap of useful metrics. If you have a smart phone this is a good opportunity for you to make some simple video content.
 
3, Connect to your website to reach lookalike audiences.
You can now plug your Facebook ad campaign into your website to reach a similar audience to your current online visitors.
 
4, Use Facebook to reach a business-to-business audience.
People tend to think of Facebook as more of a business-to-consumer medium but James disagrees. He tells us that the fastest growing demographic using the platform is in the over 40s category, making this is an opportunity for you to reach decision makers.
 
5, Understand Edgerank.
Edgerank is an algorithm that works out how near to the top of people’s updates your content will sit, which on a practical level will mean the difference between your update being seen by lots of people or falling into oblivion. In a nutshell, it’s this:
 
Edgerank = Affinity (Popularity of post so far e.g. likes) x Weight (popularity of past posts) x Time Decay (recency)
 
6, This infographic:

It’s about the way you create content and it’s awesome.
Econsultancy - The Periodic Table of Content Marketing
 
7, The right kind of content creates better engagement.
Surveys are great for creating engagement says James. Images too, as including them means you are 53% more likely to get a Like and 104% more likely to get a comment.
 
8, Use Facebook to provide great customer service.
So someone complains on your Facebook page. Don’t delete it, this is an opportunity to show other customers that you deal with issues so reply and make it clear that you are finding a solution. James reckons you should get back to enquiries within 24 hours. Put your opening hours or response times on your profile to manage expectations. James tells us to check details, such as opening hours, are correct right now as these can be forgotten about and not updated.  
 
9, Don’t post too much or too little.
Post every day but not too much. James recommends 2-3 updates per day but base this on your own research. If you aren’t getting any engagement by the third post then maybe that is too much. Rather than using lots of social media platforms, do less and do it well. James advises, "if it's just you running your business pick one or two and get good at that first." He also says that every third update or so should contain a call to action.
 
10, Give the people what they came for.
People are liking your page for a reason so give them a little of what they want. This means posting special offers, discount codes or deals just for those who are engaging with your page. Not too much though, James tells us the magic number is about 1/10 of your updates. Your content should also be original and James is not a fan of posting exactly the same on your Twitter profile for example.

If you want to contribute to the Chamber blog, contact us on hannah@brightonchamber.co.uk