Social media platforms are the rage today, to the extent that it has overtaken interpersonal communication. Together, they account for over 3.5 billion users, or about half the world’s total population. And, among all the various social media platforms, Facebook is the clear leader with over 2.3 billion users, way above other popular ones such as Twitter and Instagram.
Facebook was also the first to use its reach and popularity to launch ads and with its active users numbering over a billion daily. Yes, it does offer a huge potential audience. Marketers had already realized this year ago. Now, with over 3 million businesses putting ads on Facebook, there is stiff competition out there to market your product. So how does a newbie go about selling products on this platform? There are a few essential dos’ and don’ts.
1. Open A Business Page
First, you need to have a business page rather than a personal account, choosing a category. One can choose from over six categories – local business or place; company organization or institution; brand or product; artist, band or public figure; entertainment; and cause or community. For most businesses, it would be either a local business category or brand. All have different features.
2. Choose A URL
Next, choose a suitable URL, which meets the criteria for a good SEO and is easy to search on Google. Then, put up some good, high-quality photographs on the profile. It should be a high-resolution photo shrunk to about 180 px (pixels) by 180 px. It can be the logo of your company or business. It should be in tune with your business and also aim at attracting people to your page. Also, choose a nice cover photo that suits your profile. Make sure it’s the correct size. If it’s a video, ensure it is less than a minute in length, and please keep the auto-sound off.
3. Use The CTA Button
Follow this up with a ‘call to action’ (CTA) button. This comes with the cover photo. It can be ‘sign up’, ‘free trial’, ‘buy now’, ‘contact us’, ‘find out more’, ‘discover why (your product’s name) is best for you’, or whatever suits your business. Check Facebook Audience Insights which gives you insights about your audience, such as age, gender, occupation, education level, hobbies, and interests. These can guide you into tweaking your content to suit your audience.
4. Create A Content Page with Profile
After these basics, to begin with, the most important step is to create content for your business page. Say, for instance, if you provide academic services, such as assignment help in Australia, then the entire content should be relevant and useful to your audience and the more specific it is, the better. The content should describe your company’s profile, when it was founded, contact information, and links to your website. It should also provide information on all the assignment writing services that you offer to students.
6. Engage Your Audience
Then, try and engage your audience. You can carry out polls, ask questions, make offers, seek opinions or feedback on your product/business and/or similar products/businesses. Avoid clutter. Put photos or simple graphics to avoid jamming too much text in one place. Putting up videos is a good way of attracting attention. Of course, the videos should be interesting, if not entertaining or funny.
7. Avoid Sound Auto to Remain On
Avoid sound auto-play in videos – it can be irritating to some. Having captions or subtitles is a good way out. The videos shouldn’t be too long – keep them well under a minute, ideally just about 15 seconds or so. You may add a link saying ‘watch more’ for a longer video clip.
Check Facebook Page Insight to analyze your content. It shows how your page has performed – its reach, number of likes, comments, and shares.
9. Promote Your Page with Facebook Ads
You can promote your page with Facebook ads. They are cheaper than Google AdWords. Keep track of the calendar and plan your posts accordingly – tuning them to suit the events and festivals. Share your page and posts. Create a Facebook group or community with a catchy – not tacky – name and invite people to it. You may also ‘like’ other related pages.
10. Try Facebook Live to Engage the Audience
Try Facebook Live. It serves as a means to engage your audience. The trick is to keep it simple and interesting, and avoiding too much jargon and technicality. Just talk. Build Facebook events to engage your audience – make them interesting to attract people to attend. Add the link to your Facebook page to your email signature – this helps attract people to your page. Publish what users – your audience – say. Users’ recommendation is more credible to people than what you say about yourself.
11. Use Facebook for Customer Service
This will help to be prompt to respond to queries or complaints. Customers expect speed in having their issues addressed. It is a good way to interact with your clients and win them over. Use CoSchedule to organize and optimize your social media marketing. It is also useful to analyze performance in terms of reach and engagement.
12. Use Celebrities to Augment Reach
Getting influencers – people with a large following on social media, celebrities – is a good idea to significantly augment your reach and increase the number of your followers. The amount you invest gives returns that are way higher than the sum put in. Tag your friends, other people in your posts. It not only catches their attention, but it also draws their contacts/friends to your post. But don’t overdo it.
Final Word
In the end, one needs to point out that recently Facebook has tried to reduce the interference of ads with lay users’ social media experience, changing its algorithms to reduce the impact of ads. It also raised ad costs. This may affect paid ads, although it is unlikely that Facebook will do away with advertisers altogether.
The tips given above by digital marketing assignment experts have taken into account that aspect and should help a beginner still get the best out of marketing on Facebook. They also give them the advantage of going in already prepared for the changed algorithm while others had to learn to cope with it.
