In a globally wired world and evolving business landscape, social media platforms are playing a major role in the growth of startups. Social media platform not only helps startups in reaching out the maximum audience, but it also helps in achieving their goals.
With an incredible reach of over one billion daily active users, having a Facebook presence can help startups in engaging fans and grow the company.
Facebook is a league of its own in the world of social media. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his Harvard roommates Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskowitz, Andrew McCollum and Chris Hughes as networking website only for Harvard students, the site has become a phenomenon in its 12 years of existence.
Facebook provides a free marketing tool for businesses that helps in listing products and service. It also gives entrepreneurs an opportunity to share links and post images and videos to connect with customers. It gives small-business owners a platform to build company’s image on social media and develop brand identity.
With such a big audience, it could be tricky to know where to start and how to maximise the potential of the Facebook page. For the beginners, it could be quite crucial to know such things.
Just in case you are a beginner and have no idea about how to go about it. Just go through the factors below to have a better understanding of how Facebook works.
Spread the word
Just having a Facebook page is not enough, you also need some attract users to your page in order to connect with your audience.
There could be a lot of options to start with. You can send email invitations to your current subscribers or user, you can also send invites to your friends. Let them know about your Facebook page and encourage them to join or like the page.
You can only encourage people to like or join your page you can’t force them to do so. Also, once they have liked your page, then there’s no guarantee that they will stay back. To make them stay, you need to have engaging content on your page.
Make it sure to have some viral stuff on your page that attracts users, even before sending out the email invites.
Facebook also has some existing tools that could help you build an online following. You can execute campaigns to reach your target audience.
Content is the king
Content is the king. Yes, one should never ignore a quality content as it the primary thing that will attract users.
Bringing users to your page is one thing and making them stick to your page another. The best way to keep your user engaged and grow your startup organically and that too free on Facebook – is by producing outstanding content.
Featuring user-centric content that entertains or educates the user. Getting it right will make people share the content online, via Facebook, WatsApp, and other mediums even through word-of-mouth.
Such activities can help achieving certain levels without paying a single penny for advertising campaigns.
Facebook’s other tools like polls, surveys and contests are the other ways to engage users on your page. They will not only help you in attracting people to your page but will also keep them engaged in commenting and undergoing surveys. Their replies will add more value to your research by providing you insights about your user’s preferences. The data can further be used for advertisements, content and other stuff. These valuable user insights will help you in positioning your content according to the taste of your audience hence taking your business forward.
Getting to know your users
Understanding the psyche of your target audience will help you in winning the game of social media. While dealing with Facebook and other social media pages, you must try and understand the preferences of your subscribers. It will help you in not only attracting the like-minded followers, but it will help in retaining them as well.
You can decode the preferences of your audience by analyzing the data gathered with Facebook Analytics for Apps. These tools track the most important information for you.
Besides engagement which of course is one of the most important metrics to concentrate on. Checking out the number of likes, comments, views, and shares also help in understanding the likes and dislikes of your subscribers.
Bit of advertising
With changing algorithms of social media, one can only see those feeds that are based on a person’s interest. So, with these endless newsfeeds, it was inevitable that we were going to see ads there.
Using organic options will provide your posts a decent reach, but ads and campaigns will boost them up. Writing an outstanding ad and advertising it on Facebook will increase your page likes and drive the website clicks.
While designing the campaign, you can target people based on their age group, education, profession, interests, location and so on. These campaigns that reach millions of active users won’t make a whole in your pocket as you can decide your budget for a campaign and use only that much of money.
The nominal charges help you in testing different versions of the ad. It helps in comparing the reach of the ad campaign in different groups.
Candid moments
Getting candid with your users also helps at times, but the crucial point is ‘how’. Let your users know about your team, their moments or joy, and victory, their accomplishments or talents.
If you think there’s a moment worth celebrating on Facebook like a promotion in the team or any anniversary or an office party, let your users know about it in an interesting way.
All you have to make sure that you don’t go overboard sharing even tiny details about your company. Stick to a tone that represents your company, in fact, goes with the theme of your setup.
Going live
Live is a new feature in Facebook that lets one share the video in real time. It will take hardly any time to be on your Facebook page. The key here is to stick to important events only. You can give your users a virtual tour of your office through the live video.
In cases of events, you can instantly share the buzz about the event and live telecast it on Facebook. To cash in on your live videos, you can let your subscribers know in advance by creating pre-event posts. It will create a hype before the event and maximise the footfall on the day of your event.
For retailers, Live is a very good feature as it helps in showing off the products.
Freebies
Besides engaging your subscribers using strong content, polls, surveys, live videos and more. Now you can also hold contests on your Facebook page.
This entirely depends on your budget, always remember having even small freebies or personally designed merchandise or even small letters can also do wonders. Go extra miles to take out time and write something special on a fan’s Facebook profile. It will create a brand recall for your company.
It is kind of marketing tactic that will help in increasing your brand awareness and also the number of followers on your Facebook page. Everybody likes even the smallest of gifts.
For creating contests you can use a third-party app and direct users to the app from your Facebook page. There are many such apps that can host your contests.
Targeted ads
Having a clear and to-the-point approach is more effective than regular way of approach users. That is said to be because these ads reduce the ‘wasted advertising’- promoting a service or product to the users who are unlikely to buy that stuff.
Featuring targeted solutions to the right people increases the chance of more exposure. It can also increase the click-through rate, along with lowering the advertising costs and delivering the higher ROI.
Banking on LinkedIn
LinkedIn has emerged as one of the top social networking websites in today’s times. Being an entrepreneur, you must be having a lot of connections. These connections not only know you but they also trust you. So, while designing the layout, you must create personalized ads.
Sending out personalised ads with personalized message along with including name, your picture, and other stuff. It will help in building a relationship with your subscribers.
Facebook may have turned into the central hub of various interests and it may not be the best medium for all your social media initiatives, but its sheer size pulls everyone and forces to participate It is regardless of the type of business you are running. Being active on social media especially Facebook can do wonders for your business.
Now that you know certain tricks of using Facebook to your company’s benefit. What are you waiting for? Get going!
Author Bio:
Anand Rajendran is the CEO of Uptra, a company that provides taxation services to various companies. As a professional consultant, he always focuses on guiding organizations to grow their business with the latest strategies. Uptra consultancy services enable organizations to file their tax returns with qualified accountants.
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