Think that posting Facebook-baiting (blatantly asking for clicks, likes etc.) post and other spammy strategies is the way to conduct your content on your Facebook page? Think again! Facebook announced that starting in January, they will be policing this blatant spamming and inflicting punishments on brands who post too much promotional content. Facebook is raising the bar by including posts that push users to enter contests under the umbrella of practices worth penalizing.
With this now hanging over your head, making Facebook work for your business has now become that bit harder. Facebook has gone a rampage of sorts by destroying organic post reach for brand pages, which has made getting your posts and content in front of Facebook users even harder. However, fear not as there is a solution: quality content marketing.
For businesses to achieve success on Facebook, they need to bring be constantly producing their best content that will naturally excite and engage users.
So how is your business going to do this? Keep on reading to find out how.
Creating Custom Images
There’s little doubt that images on Facebook, and social media in general, play an important role. Social media users love a good image particularly if it solves a problem for them. If anything images help break up slabs of text and enables your content to be much more readable than if it didn’t have one. Even if your content is brilliant written and is full of useful information, it’ll be useless if it isn’t packaged correctly. Remember, presentation does matter. Think of it as a present: would you feel excited about receiving a present in a plastic bag or beautifully wrapped in colourful wrapping paper with a nice bow on the top? Your content marketing efforts on Facebook can be greatly improved by creating custom images for social that will complement your content. Any experienced content marketing agency will be able to tell you this.
Sometimes Any Image Will Do
The previous paragraph placed an emphasis on creating custom made images for social media. However, sometimes you won’t be able to do that. But relax, that’s totally fine. If you can’t create one, you will need some sort of visual element to draw your users in, which is why your Facebook link preview image needs to look appealing and make the user want to click on the link.
If you’re using a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, you can choose which image from your linked content that you want included in your Facebook preview. You will achieve best results by using a square image, as they always look good in the link preview box.
Keeping Your Post Shorts
As the old saying goes “less is more” and the same mentality applies to your Facebook preview. You don’t have to provide an entire synopsis of what you are linking to. You want to give people a small bite of what to expect should they click through and read the entire posts. Keep your posts under 250 characters and watch your engagement numbers increase. It’s as easy as sticking to the basics of giving users a quick rundown of what the piece is about and why it’s valuable to them. That’s it!
Time to Start Paying For Promoted Posts
Given the current climate with Facebook posts, unfortunately it’s time to start upgrading and paying for Facebook advertising. You will need to do this as it is nigh on impossible to get any results without it.
Promoted posts are a great way to get things moving in a positive direction. All you have to do is choose a post you wish to promote, set your budget, target your audiences, and that’s it!
Taking Advantage of Trending Topics
In an effort to deliver content to users that is timely, Facebook is now focusing on boosting these trending topics to the top of News Feeds.
This means that you should be making every effort to share trending topics that are relevant to the space your business exists in.
If you’re seen to be doing this regularly, you will start positioning yourself to your audience as a source of useful information. With any luck it will get to the point where they can’t do without you. Once that happens, you’ve got them hooked.
Insider Syndrome
Posting content that is exclusive for Facebook users is a good way as you’ll likely see your content receiving more attention than it might otherwise have. It’s human nature to want to feel important, so by having Facebook users feel as though they are part of a ‘special’ group while getting access to better content, they’ll be more inclined to take advantage of your offer.
Ditch the Sales Pitch
As mentioned before, Facebook is coming down hard on blatant promotional posts. If you want to promote a service or new product, your best bet would be to do it through paid ads.
Smaller businesses can expect to do it a bit tougher adjusting to this than large companies, who almost certainly have the budget to be creating copious amounts of content.
At the end of the day, you should be trying each and every one of the above points and seeing which one works best for you. If you have hired a content marketing agency, they will be able to instruct you on which one would be best suited for your business. Once it works once, do it again and again and again.
