Are you getting the most out of your business Facebook page?
While most businesses understand they can draw traffic and referrals from Facebook, there are actually dozens of different ways that you can benefit from your page, provided you know how.
Below you can learn about seven of the most effective ways to get your Facebook page working for your business, often in as little as 30 minutes.
If your page is categorized as a local business, it’s a little known fact that Facebook allows your page to collect both reviews and testimonials.
Although their terms of services do not allow you to explicitly incentivize your customers to do this, you are permitted to let your fans know they can leave you reviews on your page.
After you’ve received a few good reviews, you can add some of the more noteworthy ones directly to your site to serve as testimonials.
To do this, click on the timestamp section of the post, select the drop-down box, and then choose “Embed Post.” This will allow you to embed that positive review directly on your site, which helps demonstrate its authenticity.
More than a hub for posting content, Facebook is a platform for connecting with fans and creating conversations.
Your fan base is composed of at least four different groups: current, potential, former customers, and fans of your content.
Understanding this, you should create content that can help you engage with all of these groups. To do this, you can follow the age-old rule for engagement known as the 80-20 rule.
This rule means that 80% of your content should be designed to appeal to your audience, and the remaining 20% should be shameless self-promotion.
In short, the vast majority of your posts should be designed to help get your fans to interact with your page.
This can be done by actively encouraging them to participate and share at every possible opportunity.
When a majority of your posted content follows these guidelines, you’ll almost inevitably form an audience that will be more receptive to the self-promotional content that follows.
If you can make use of insight from potential, current, or former customers, consider surveying them with your Facebook page.
A survey will encourage your fans to engage with you, and may also provide you with invaluable feedback regarding the kinds of services they’re seeking.
You can poll your audience for free with the use of Facebook polling apps, and choose an app depending on how you want the data complied.
You can also use this as an opportunity to collect fan information, including email addresses, or other types of information you can’t collect through a public Facebook page.
Drawing posts from your Facebook page can be a very effective alternative to using a comment section on your blog.
Just post a link to your Facebook at the end of any blog post, and then ask your fans to head there to discuss things further.
This enables you to disable comments on your blog, avoid the problem of dealing with automated spam, and promote engagement at the same time.
Additionally, anyone who sees the discussion on your page is apt to click on to read the post that everyone is talking about!
If you find yourself posting comments on a blog within your business niche, post as your own Facebook business page rather than your personal profile.
When you use your Facebook page to comment, you set up an open invitation for people to connect with your page.
Apart from a small increase in traffic from relevant and highly targeted users, this also can create backlinks to your page, and any user that is an administrator or moderator for your page can post this way.
You can post as your business by clicking on the drop-down menu next to the “comment” button, and selecting the page that you want to post as.
If you end up getting negative results in a prominent position in a search engine page, you can push them to the bottom with only a little Facebook maneuvering.
This is because Facebook is a very potent domain that enables you to easily rank well in a search results page.
While your Facebook page probably won’t rank as high as your website overnight, an active page can help you get in the top ten results in a SERP in only a few weeks, which can help you push negative results lower down the page.
As you’ve seen, many of these tips can be implemented by doing very little additional work.
Taking actions as simple as posting comments under your business name, or even embedding testimonials, can prove invaluable to your business. There’s no reason for you not to get started right away!
[VIDEO BELOW]
This case study shows how adding social proof in the form of user generated content from Instagram increased checkouts on an ecommerce product page.
eCommerce site, Vanity Planet had a product page with a good checkout rate, approximately 6%.
They installed a plugin produced by YOTPO (I mispronounce the name of the video – apologies to the fine folks at YOTPO), called Social Curation.
I use a YOTPO plugin for reviews on an ecommerce shopify site I run and I love it. I think they have great software.
Using the plugin, they put the user-generated Instagram photos at the bottom of the product page with the end result being an increase in the checkout rate of 24%. (See video below for visuals.)
Obviously Vanity Planent encouraged these Instagram users to take photos on Instagram and then add the hashtag #VPBeauty.
Once the community had tagged their images, Vanity Planet used the Social Curation plug-in to add those photos to the bottom of the product page.
This a great example of how to use a user-generated content to provide social proof at the time of checkout.
It gives people who would normally say, “well I don’t know Vanity Planet, so I’m not going to buy online” to see all of the other users who bought the exact product from the very same store.
They receive proof that there are numerous people who have successfully bought this item and we’re so happy about it, they posted it on Instagram.
I love this case study and hope this sparked some ideas for your business.
The following is a guest post full of great tips by Hank Coleman, publisher of the popular personal finance blog, Money Q&A.
Many brand new bloggers often look like amateurs on social media because they make simple mistakes. Don’t fall into that trap. Want to look like a professional blogger or brand? You can’t make the simple mistakes then.
There are a few of what I would call “no brainers” tips and techniques for social media that all aspiring pro bloggers and web professionals should follow. Not a pro blogger? You should fake it until you make it! Strive to be like the big guys.
After meeting up with other bloggers, following them on social media, and looking through profiles, I guess there are a few social media basics that may not be so basic after all.
But, these simple mistakes are costing you not only in credibility but also traffic and revenue. You have worked hard to develop a plan with your social media marking. Make sure you capitalize on that plan. Stop leaving money and potential followers on the table.
Here are a few easy mistakes on social media that you can quickly fix to increase your blog’s traffic and revenue and look like a pro.
If you are trying to drive traffic and awareness to your blog or business through Instagram, why are you making it harder for your readers to see your work? No one should have his or her Instagram account set to private. If you want to protect your privacy, you should have a second Instagram account that is strictly personal and private.
In fact, you should only focus on business, marketing, and your niche on your professional Instagram account. Save all of your family pictures, dog photos, and vacation shots for your personal Instagram account. Don’t mix the two.
Also, when people with private profiles tag posts, they won’t appear publicly on hashtag pages. If you want new followers to find you, you have tag your photos and get on the hashtag pages.
Branding is important. It’s also important that you are consistent across all of your social media accounts. Do you have a logo for your business or blog? Is it on all of your social media accounts? It should be.
Far too many bloggers, both professional and hobbyist looking to earn a side income, still have the plain Twitter egg showing instead of a logo. Or, they don’t have a bio or a cover picture on Twitter or Facebook.
You can easily create these simple fixes that add to your professional look on social media platforms. It doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg. You can find many great sources for logos and cover pictures on the internet for under $100. Or, you can create your own through pre-made templates on sites like Canva.
I don’t care about what you had for breakfast this morning….unless you’re food blogger of course. And, if you’re in my niche, personal finance, I really don’t care about your personal life, family pictures, food preferences, vacation pictures, and the like. I care about learning about investing, retirement, and money matters.
I’ve mentioned it before, but it bears repeating. You should have two accounts on your social media, Twitter and Instagram, one for personal and one for your website. You also need to have a page dedicated to your business or blog on Facebook. Don’t use your personal page. The same goes for Pinterest too!
You shouldn’t post personal pictures and articles on your business account. The same can be said for liking pictures and following accounts as well. The social media platforms’ algorithms are watching what you like, retweet, follow, and share.
Do you want to see more irrelevant posts and pictures in your feed? Then, continue liking and retweeting off topic pictures and articles. Big brother and the algorithms are watching.
The best thing that you can do from your blog account on social media is to stay on topic and on message. What’s your website about? Make sure that you are posting, liking, and commenting on other accounts, articles, and pictures in your niche.
The number one reason for people to unfollow someone is that they post too much. Find the sweet spot for your audience and stick to it. Do you only need to post once a day to Instagram? Twice a day? Maybe! Find what works for you and what your audience wants.
But, if you want to loose followers fast, post back to back to back pictures. More is not always better on social media. I have seen new personal finance bloggers recently posting multiple pictures of their vacation in the Mojave Desert right in a row. What does that have to do with investing and finance? Stay on topic with your niche and only post once a day – or twice at most until you have a huge following.
You also have to be mindful of automatic posting, retweeting, and the like based on your RSS feed. When bloggers post a new article on their site, it goes out on their RSS feed automatically.
I once had multiple automation tools tweeting based on my RSS feed. I started to get friends complaining that my email newsletter service, Facebook, and a Twitter automation plugins tweeted the same article headline and link three times in a row in rapid succession. The same can also be said for multiple pictures of the same image posting in your Pinterest feed.
Keep the automated posting to a minimum and monitor your social media feeds to ensure that you’re not posting back-to-back tweets, pictures, or comments in rapid succession.
Most professional and hobbyist bloggers are on social media in order to drive traffic back to their website or blogs. One of the fastest ways to thwart that effort is to have a broken link that doesn’t point back to your website.
When you’ve only got one link in your bio on Instagram to make an impression on your followers, you must ensure that it points back to your site and doesn’t give them a 404 Error. Double and triple check your links to make sure that they are working correctly and landing back on the page of your site that you intended.
Social media is fun. But, it’s also big business. Most bloggers, professional or not, depend on social media to drive traffic to their sites, which ultimately translates into income.
But, far too often new bloggers are making simple mistakes on social media. That doesn’t have to be you though. With a little work and attention to detail, you can stand out amongst your peers and look like a professional blogger on social media.
Did I miss any other simple errors that you’ve seen on social media or that you’ve made early on in your blogging career? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section.
Hank Coleman is the publisher of the popular personal finance blog, Money Q&A, where he writes about retirement, investing, and other personal finance topics. Be sure to follow him on Twitter and Instagram as well.
If you create content for social media, then you know it’s a challenge to finding good, affordable stock photos. And as with most things in life and business, you get what you pay for.
The trade off between free and paid is about high quality vs. low quality AND it’s also about the time spent searching – you spend a lot of time looking through dogs to find a winner.
In this post I’ll show you my three favorite sources that have very high quality photos and excellent search functionality.
I’ve used a variety of stock photo sources over the years.
I started with iStockPhoto (2006-2010), before they got too expensive.
I used FeaturePics after that as a cheap alternative, but the quality was fair.
I now use DepositPhotos.com and DeathtotheStockPhoto.com for paid photos.
In the past there were few places to find good quality photos with Creative Commons licencing.
Creative Commons is basically a license that allows others to use a piece of copyrighted material subject to certain limitations. This could be a simple attribution or a restriction not to modify or use the work commercially. To learn more about Creative Commons licensing visit their website, which will explain all the different licensing levels.
As time went on the quantity of high quality photos available with Creative Commons licensing grew. I started using CC photos from either Pixabay or Flickr.
However, these are not my favorite in terms of quality and search functionality.
Here my three favorite sources for free, stock photos with Creative Commons Licenses.
Go straight to the source and use the Creative Commons Search engine (which is not really a search engine, but rather a meta search engine – a search engine that searches other search engines).
By using this you can choose which sources you’d like to search and the appropriate licensing. Then this search will go out to the different sources and do your search with the appropriate licensing.
This great for music and video, in addition to photos.
I believe 500px started out as a photo sharing community for photographers that was an alternative to Flickr.
However, they have since added a marketplace where you can purchase rights to photos, a variety of curated collections, and a huge collection of Creative Commons photos with different licensing levels.
Typically the photos here are professionally enhanced. This gives them a “professional” look… surprise, surprise! Sometimes this is what you’re looking for and sometimes it’s not.
If you’re looking for a more natural, retro look, check out Unsplash.
Unsplash.com is my favorite of the three!
These are the kind of photos I like to use for my own branding and social media. They are similar in style to the photos from DeathtotheStockPhoto.com.
They have curated collections that are awesome!
And all the photos are made available with the Creative Commons Zero license, which makes available for any use (including commercial) with no attribution. This makes them infinitely useful.
Gone are the days when you could bemoan the lack of good Creative Commons photos. Use wisely and generously attribute to show appreciation to the photographers.
Most of all keep making great content!
P.S. I’m just going to keep adding good sources to the end of this post!
Now I’m not referring to the same thing Ron Slater is referring to in the movie Dazed and Confused.
What I’m referring to is the indefinable quality of character called cool.
I’m going to make two bold statements and then show that they’re true:
1) To maximize the effect of social media marketing, you must be “cool”… at least to some part of your market.
2) Regardless of the niche any brand can genuinely earn the reputation of being “cool.”
Before I begin, we have to define what we’re talking about when we say, “cool.”
I remember when I was a teenager complaining to a particularly smart aunt of mine, that I wasn’t “cool.”
She responded, that the word cool was stupid and didn’t mean anything. To this day, in my heart of hearts, I think she was right.
But how could this be when I’ve decided to write an entire post about it and make the claim that being cool is fundamental to successful social media campaigns? (And if you’re friends with me on Social Media, why my most common comment is “Cool!”?)
When Slater asks Mitch, “Are you cool, man?” Specifically, he is trying to find out whether or not Mitch smokes pot, but he phrases it in a very commonly understood teenage question, “Are you cool?”
This question is really asking will you salute and adopt our customs, traditions, beliefs, and appearance in order to be initiated as a member of the group?
Cool, in this context – as a judgment of appropriate inclusion, is pretty stupid and adolescent because it allows the user to pass judgment without naming the criteria on which the judgment is based – very convenient.
Stupid or not, it is powerful for the person who uses it, because it carries the power include or exclude. Moreover it is always undefined (I know it when I see it).
Now this matter of inclusion and exclusion is also involved in the managing of social media communities, but I’ll talk about that in a future post.
The cool I am referring to is the characteristic we identify in fictional heroes.
James Bond, John Wayne, The Marlboro Man, Bruce Lee, Superman, Batman, Rocky, Conor McGregor, Muhammad Ali, Paul Walker, La Femme Nikita, Thelma & Louise, The Fonz, The Most Interesting Man in the World, etc.
These are all examples of characters who are/were considered cool by someone, or a caricature of cool, in the case of The Fonz or The Most Insteresting Man in the World.
The award winning ad man and author of The Advertising Effect, Adam Ferrier produced a graduate level thesis on the definition of cool and here are the common qualities he discovered:
So finally we have a set of criteria for cool! Thank you Mr. Ferrier!
Using these let’s revisit my assertions.
Let’s use proof by reductio ad absurdum, which is a form of proof in math and logic where you assume the exact opposite and look for an impossible consequence.
So let’s imagine the social media presence of a fictional entity, the ACME Corporation.
The social media presence of the ACME Corporation has none… zilch… nada… of the qualities of “cool” mentioned above.
This means they…
Now after reading this description (and I’m sure you recognize a few accounts like this… ha ha), does the ACME Corporation have any chance growing their business on social media?
Clearly no…
Consciously cultivate these 5 qualities in your social media presence:
Any brand, personal or corporate, can cultivate these qualities.
Here are some niches where I’ve engineered cool…
Trust me, most of these were challenging, but if I can do with these, it can be done anywhere!
Don’t let anyone tell you Paper Crafts can’t be cool… I have a proof for that!
Go out and be the James Bond of your corner of the interwebs.
There you have it…
Engineering Cool for Social Media Fun and Profit in 5 Easy Steps!
If you enjoyed this post or otherwise found it useful, I’d be much obliged if you’d share it with your audiences on social media. Look at all those cool buttons below… 🙂
