Doing business the social way – Facebook

Facebook is hugely important when it comes to growing your business online. With such a large user base, boasting 1.79 billion monthly active users, it’s a (mostly) free marketing tool that people and businesses tap into on a daily, if not hourly, basis to network, promote and gain followers. But doing your marketing and doing it well on Facebook takes a little more than updating your status.

The one big challenge you’ll have is shouting louder than all the other noise in the newsfeeds of your followers. If you’re not quite up-to-date with Facebook for business best practice, here are a few ‘definitely do’s’ to show you how easy it can be, whatever your business size or budget.

Do use a profile picture that’s easy to recognise
We’ve all Facebook stalked in our time so we all know how much easier it is to find what (or who) you’re looking for when the profile picture is clear and easy to recognise. The same goes for your business page. This image will be used as a thumbnail for all of your posts so choose it wisely and make sure you can see exactly what it is/what it says from a distance. A logo is the perfect choice as a profile picture as it’ll become familiar. You can show off your products or more specific promotions and savings in the cover story, which is a wider background image.

Do fill in the ‘about’ section on your company’s profile
Your ‘about’ section will be shown in a preview format beneath your profile picture, giving people a quick-look overview of your business and what it’s all about. People tend to scan your page focusing on your profile picture, the header image and your ‘about’ preview section. They will judge you on that first appearance, so the clearer and more concise you can be here, the better.

Do post regularly, but not too often
There’s nothing worse than following a page or business that posts endlessly throughout the day, flooding your newsfeed with promotions and pointless information. Generally companies with fewer than 10,000 Facebook followers notice 60% fewer interactions per post when they post 60 times or more each month. So it’s best not to overwhelm your customers and potential customers, instead post a well-crafted post once a day and you’ll see a better return in reactions.

1/5 of your posts should be related to what you are trying to sell. Get too salesy and you’ll look super spammy. Provide external links to media your customers will want to hear from, or post videos which are engaging and not overtly promotional to freshen up your posts.

Do plan when you post
Research has shown that posts published between 1-4pm have the best clickthrough and share rates. Schedule your social networking for this time, or pop a note in your diary to remind you to post within this window of optimum coverage opportunity. Know your audience well enough so you can spot random spikes, for example the morning commute, a lunch time scroll, school’s out and sitting down on the sofa for the evening. A lot of companies don’t allow Facebook on work computers, so make sure you save some posts for the evening when people are on home devices.

Do get back to questions and complaints quickly
It’s been recorded that 42% of consumers who make a complaint via a social media channel expect a response within one hour. Whether you’ve received a great review, a simple comment or even some negative feedback, write a carefully considered response to keep your followers sweet and to show that you’re looking out for them. There’s no point having a social platform if you’re not engaging and social back!

Do edit your posts before posting
When sharing a link on Facebook, a preview of the website page is also generated. These thumbnail images may not be the best visual representations of the website page, so always add your own image. Pick an engaging photo at a size of 403×403 pixels and you will have more chance of getting likes, shares and comments.

Paid posts

To maximise your potential audience, you can pay to have posts promoted, depending on the amount of text in your image, if you have one. If you have a specific promotion, this may be worth doing, and you can select the amount you’d like to spend (from £3) and for how long you’d like to run the promoted post, as well as audiences such as your followers and their friends, or widen your demographic further.

That’s the rundown of just some of the things you can do to optimise your business’s Facebook account. Sharing new products, services and general news on Facebook is a great way to drive traffic to your website, so get to it and make sure you’re following all of the above. Let us know if you’d like some more info on anything and look out for the next in our series on social media for business – Twitter!