August 23, 2016

How to Maximize the Value of your Facebook Page

Facebook is often one of the first social platforms a business sets up – and with good reason. Facebook has over 1.59 billion monthly active users as of January 2016, marking a 14 percent increase year on year. Each day, over a billion people log into this channel to review their news feed and messages.

Brands are fully aware of the potential of this platform. In the US specifically, 80 percent of companies have a Facebook page.

What is worth considering is how your Facebook page can be optimized, and whether your business is utilizing all the tricks available. Below are some ideas to make your content work harder for you.

Add value: The trick to creating great content is producing images, text or videos that your audience values – rather than what you want to ‘sell’. If you sell ice cream for example, have fun with it and create ice cream based recipes, run contests for the quirkiest ice cream flavour or incorporate posts on keeping cool during the summer months. Whatever you post, add value every time to your audience.

Community-focused: People ‘like’ Facebook pages to feel part of a community – whether that’s supporting a specific cause, interest or business. While you may have other business related objectives for setting up your page (such as increasing web traffic or sales), keep the idea of ‘fostering a community’ in mind. You can enhance the sense of inclusion by facilitating group discussions and responding to comments in an authentic and helpful way.

Consistency: Posting content sporadically or leaving a Facebook account dormant is a big ‘no no’. People will ‘unlike’ your page when they see it’s not adding value. Create a content calendar and post ideally once a day, minimum, to justify being a worthwhile page to follow.

Facebook Insights: Facebook has a great tool called ‘Insights’ that provides an overview of how much engagement your posts are generating. As well as tracking the number of followers to your page, take time to look at the insights – paying particular attention to the levels of engagement generated by each of your posts. Facebook Insights also tracks clicks, reactions, comments and shares. Use this to learn what your audience likes and responds well to – and provide more of it.

Pin that ‘wow’ content: If you have important content that you want to promote over a longer period of time (say a week, rather than a day) or a post that’s receiving an impressive amount of traction, you can ‘pin’ it to the top of the page. This means even when you post your daily content, your ‘pinned’ post will remain in prime position. It’s a neat trick to make important content go further – without creating a new post.

Most of these are content-focused suggestions. What other ways do you recommend for optimizing your business Facebook page?

Tags: content creation, facebook, social media

September 5, 2014

Chasing Bigger Results? Think Broader When Defining Your Audience

Building a company image or brand profile is no easy task: competition is tough and consumers are sales-savvy and cynical. While it’s natural for companies to want to promote their product or service, some methods are more effective than others.

As an independent public relations agency, we act as the extended arm for many in-house marketing teams. Though we have a common goal of increasing exposure and building a positive public image for the company, we often go about it a slightly different way.

Typically, we hunt out and share a company story or concept that appeals to a broad audience that could include journalists, potential customers, industry experts, researchers and even competitors.

This often means taking an idea, a thought or an industry trend that, while relevant, is one step removed from the company’s product or service, and holds greater meaning to more people. Such content may come in the form of a media articles, research trends or blogs, and will:

Have broader relevance
Allow more people to relate to the topics discussed
Back up all claims
Avoid promoting a single product or service
Potentially draw upon credible research
Leverage a trending school of thought

Most importantly, this content will appeal to journalists who’re seeking objective, informative and digestible stories to keep their readers coming back for more.

Sounds simple enough, right?

Perhaps in theory. However, we’re frequently faced with the challenge of striking a balance between creating informative stories that attract diverse readership, and elevating a company’s product or service to target potential customers. What pleases a journalist commonly will not appeal to a brand ambassador.

So how do we manage this predicament?

According to Marketo’s recent market research and Content Marketing vs. Traditional Advertising info-graphic, sharing media articles is one of the mosteffective content marketing strategies—in fact, it is ranked a close second behind social media out of all available marketing tactics.

download (3) Based on these findings, and in our experience, there has never been a better time for companies to expand their reach via original, objective and compelling content that resonates with journalists and is likely to be published.

Once published, not only will the coverage become an invaluable asset for the marketing toolkit, and boost the company’s SEO via high-quality inbound links, it will demonstrate to both potential and current customers that the company has a vested interest in thought-leadership and contributing to its industry—not merely boosting the bottom line.

In our opinion, any well-rounded marketing and communications plan should include quality journalism and media coverage that appeals beyond the company’s immediate audience—thinking broader produces bigger results.

Tags: advertising, content creation, content marketing, journalists, marketing, SEO