There are over 3.5 billion active users on social media. Around 5% of all traffic comes from social media. All told, there is huge potential to grow your business on social media.
Facebook is a great example. More and more content is being published on Facebook each day. In fact, every minute, there are over 293,000 statuses and 510,000 comments being posted on Facebook. The average Facebook post reaches over 5% of your following. Each day, Facebook helps hundreds of thousands of businesses worldwide achieve their goals. Here are 10 ways you can grow your own business on Facebook.
Ways to Grow Your Business on Facebook
Some ways you can use Facebook to grow a successful business include:
- Create a Personalized Facebook Web Address
After you’ve set up your comprehensive Facebook business page, you can request your own personalized web address for it, such as www.facebook.com/yourbusinessname. Then, you can promote your new Facebook page web address across all of your other social media profiles (i.e. Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) and on printed marketing materials like business cards.
- Create Videos
Around 15% of all content on Facebook is video. In 2021, there was a 55% increase in live video usage. With approximately eight billion daily video views on Facebook, you can see how powerful video is. You don’t have to be a big brand with a high production budget to take advantage of videos on Facebook, either. Creating videos from your iPhone can do the trick!
To really take advantage of video on Facebook, you can “go live.” For the last few years, Facebook has been pushing its live feature. Viewers watch live videos three times more frequently than videos that aren’t live anymore, according to Facebook.
Also, viewers tend to comment more on Facebook lives (10 times more) than on regular videos. To help you reach more of your followers, you can also advertise when you’ll be going live.
- Add a Small Paid Facebook Ad Budget
To ensure reach, you can add a paid budget and advertise with Facebook ads. Even if you’re on a small budget, this will help ensure reach. Try to experiment with different types of:
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- Messaging
- Content
- Times of day
- Imagery
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You should also use the built-in A/B testing system that Facebook provides to help you stretch your ad dollars as far as you can.
Today, without the proper engagement, posts without a paid budget can be a waste of time. You’re better off posting once in a while on a small budget where you’ll get your content in front of more prospects and customers than if you are posting a regular Facebook post and obtaining very minimal reach.
You can also custom-tailor the audience you’re looking to reach with Facebook ads by age, location and more. Craft up your ad so it looks like a regular Facebook post with an image or video which seems to work best.
- Promote More than Just your Products and Services
Facebook isn’t based on intent, but rather on interest. You shouldn’t make every single post you put out on your Facebook page promotional. Instead, ensure that 80% are social and the other 20% are promotional. Otherwise, you’ll end up losing many of your followers.
What you want to do is use Facebook to build relationships and a community. Start conversations with your followers and add value. Make your posts different. Examples of content you can post include:
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- Authority building posts
- Brand story posts
- Personal posts
- Lead nurture posts
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- Start a Facebook Group
You should consider starting up a private Facebook group if your business is involved in networking (i.e. offers a referral program, provides membership sites, allows resellers, etc.). In your group, you can provide things like:
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- Extra deals
- Lessons
- Insider tips
- Contests
- And more
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It’s the ideal place for you to build a relationship with your clients or customers and collect important data for future product development plans.
- Utilize All of Facebook’s Features
Facebook provides business owners and entrepreneurs with various features to help grow their business. Having a Facebook business page isn’t enough. You’ll want to use all of the different tools Facebook makes available to you to reach your targeted audience and drive sales.
For instance, four invaluable Facebook features you’ll want to take advantage of are:
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- Shops: On your page, you can set up a customizable, easy-to-use online shop. Anyone visiting your page will have access to this shop where you can sell your products.
- Fundraisers: You can show your followers you care by setting up a fundraiser on Facebook. Go with something that will portray your brand values.
- Appointments Tool: Book more appointments for your business automatically by setting up a “Book Now” button on your Facebook page. It can sync with your calendar, allowing you to send your customers reminders, confirmations and follow-ups. You can also use this button as a CTA.
- Hire through Facebook: Add a job right from your page that will be posted to the “Job Marketplace” on Facebook automatically.
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All of Facebook’s features will help you grow your Facebook following and reach, thereby helping to grow your business.
- Don’t Cheat the Facebook Ecosystem
Steer clear of things like using clickbait headlines, buying 10,000 likes for $10 or spamming your followers with 10 poor-quality status updates in an hour. These are all ways some marketers try and cheat the Facebook ecosystem, but turn out to be a waste of money and time.
Facebook cracks down on cheaters and spammers seriously. Stay in their good graces by sticking with their guidelines and best practices. Besides, manipulative tactics like these and others don’t add any real value to your business and will actually hurt you.
- Build a Fanbase you Can Actually Sustain
Just because you build up a large following doesn’t mean they will all see your posts. In fact, no matter how targeted your fanbase is, the larger it is, the lower your reach will be. So, you’ll end up having to put in way more extra work creating highly relevant content that’s useful to a few different segments of your targeted audience. It’s better to have a small, super-engaged audience than if it is a large unresponsive audience.
- Use Insights to See What’s Working
Facebook’s Insights provides you with a ton of valuable information. Here you’ll be able to identify who is browsing your page, how they’re doing it and when. You’ll be able to see which types of your content they’re engaging in the most. This will enable you to see which content is working the best. You can also use Insights to gather information about your Facebook ads, since they help you match up your Ad copy with relevant target audiences based on what interests them the most.
- Be Consistent
While you don’t have to stay logged on your Facebook page at all times or engage for hours, it’s important you let your followers know you’re there. And, you do this by setting up a schedule where you can be consistent with your commenting, interacting and posting.
If you need help with your social media campaigns, contact us here at Faster Solutions. Your business requires proven, effective social media strategies for social media success. With 25 years of digital marketing experience, we know precisely how to plan, set up and implement an effective social media campaign to grow a wildly successful business.
