Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’
Keeping Your Customers Engaged on Facebook
You just started your business’ Facebook page and start to wonder: How do I keep these fans engaged and interested in my page? This can be a problem for many small businesses, mainly because 95 percent of users never switch their newsfeed from “Top News” to “Most Recent”, according to the official Facebook blog.
Facebook uses an algorithm, similar to search engines, called EdgeRank. EdgeRank is designed to display only relevant stories under the “Top News” portion of a user’s page. Gaining the top position in your followers “Top News” section should be a priority for all business; however, this is not as easy as it sounds and involves providing relevant, engaging, and popular content.
All Business and No Play Makes for a Boring Page
Don’t get accustomed to automatically feeding your blog posts or tweets to your Facebook page, a good content schedule should include different information across all channels that remains consistent with your brand image. Simply blasting a blog post to all your channels may be a good way to get an important piece of information across, but it doesn’t promote engagement.
A good practice to show your human side is to comment on user’s posts and even thank them for their contribution to your page. Remember, you don’t always have to post about company products or services, you can always ask your customers questions or wish them a happy holidays to spur engagement.
You Don’t Always Have to Lead
Let your fans make the decisions. Budweiser did a great job of this by allowing fans to vote on what commercial they thought should air in the 2010 Super Bowl. Polling your customers is a great way to gain awareness for your page, but beside the vote, there is not much engagement, since Facebook questions do not have a very user-friendly commenting option.
Facebook fans have a tendency to be great followers of other fans. On the Veterans United Network fan page, a single person stated their military rank and where they served, and before the end of the day, hundreds of fans were doing the same thing.
Don’t Forget Media
Videos and photos have done great on Facebook ever since they were first allowed. Think of it this way, most consumers would rather see what your status is than read it. Adding a photo to your status is a great way to boost your chances of a customer clicking through to your site and getting involved with the conversation. Keep in mind, you can always save yourself some time and get quality photos from photo providers such as iStockphoto or Flickr.
Know Your Audience
Know your target audience. If you are targeting college students, it may be best to post your updates late morning to afternoon; however, if you are targeting to a blue-collar workers, you may be better off posting after five. Posting during high traffic times increases your chances of one of your customers seeing the post and actively engaging or sharing your post. Keep in mind, another factor involved in EdgeRank is the age of the post. Older posts will be kicked out faster, even if they carry a heavy amount of engagement, they will still be lowered within a couple days.
Customers love to play an integral part in the brands they support, and Facebook offers a great platform to post relevant content to spur community participation and the more your followers participate, the better your chances are at being at the top of their newsfeed.
Matthew Polsky is the Social Media Manager for VA Mortgage Center, the nation’s leading dedicated provider of VA home loans.
Who Said That?
Here are the new and noteworthy blog posts from this week!
- 3 Creative Ways to Spread Content to People On the Go (HubSpot). If you’re using web content as part of your marketing strategy, it’s important to use a delivery mechanism that makes it easy for people to respond to you. Read this quick post for examples.
- Businesses on Facebook Need to Include Their Location (WebProNews). Do you have a Facebook business page? If so, make sure you’ve added your location so as not to lose followers. This article explains how it works.
- 5 Filters Everybody Should Use In Their AdWords Account (Search Engine Watch). If you’re spending money on Google AdWords, read this article to see how you might be able to increase your ROI.
- Google+ Business Accounts: What Can You Expect? (Social Media Today). A good preview of what’s to come for businesses on Google+.
- Building of SEO Strategy for Small Business Sites (Search Engine Journal). Are you planning to hire an SEO firm? Read this article for an explanation of SEO concepts and to get an idea of how it works.
Who Said That?
Here are the new and noteworthy blog posts from this week!
- Facebook Tests More News Feed Filtering (All Facebook). Facebook has added some new features, allowing you to use different criteria to selectively display updates from your friends.
- 15 Case Studies to Get Your Client On Board With Social Media (Mashable). Trying to get your head around how to use social media in your business? Check out these examples of things that big brands did.
- Email Marketing: A Toxic Misunderstanding that Could Kill Your Response Rates (Marketing Sherpa). Do you use e-mail marketing for your business? If so, do you take full advantage of segmentation? Read here about the benefits of segmenting your lists.
- Google Losing War With Scraper Sites, Asks For Help (Search Engine Watch). If you’ve run across low-quality “scraper sites” on the internet, you can report the sites to Google. Help Google improve search engine results.
- 5 Reputation Management Lessons from Prince, Dell and Beyond (Convince & Convert). Real-world examples of how & how not to recover from a PR slip-up in your company.
