Have you harnessed the power of Facebook?
Contrary to what you might have heard, Facebook is growing. It currently has around 890 million active daily users, and equates to a third of Google’s might in terms of traffic referral. Facebook refers more traffic than YouTube, Bing and Yahoo, combined.
That’s a huge influence. Facebook traffic is important to your business, no matter which way you cut it.
Granted, the scope of organic Facebook reach may be limited, and Facebook was once a difficult tool to find a use for in B2B content marketing, but it still holds a lot of power if traffic is optimised effectively. Facebook traffic, if harnessed to its full potential, is always powerful for B2C marketing, and is starting to become a driver in B2B marketing, too.
If you can get your Facebook fans to your website, you’ll see the benefits of engaging a targeted, niche audience with your social media marketing in pounds and pence terms.
1. Content
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, content tailored to your audience is very powerful for optimising your Facebook traffic. Create fresh, quality content that’s goals reflect the Facebook usage habits of your target audience. You can find out what these are with Facebook analytics and by studying the best work on Facebook in your business niche.
2. Headlines
Headlines are a major player in Facebook traffic optimisation right now. It’s only a few words, but it is your chance to make or break a post’s shareability (is that a word?). The headline is how you achieve that initial click, so it’s vital that you get it right. A clickable headline could be the difference between a post travelling miles across the web, and it’s utter stagnation. Make it count.
3. Links
It pays to think about how you upload your links to optimise your Facebook posts. Depending on how Facebook’s algorithm is working at the time, a link inserted into a post will sometimes show up as smaller than you planned. There are a couple of ways around this. One is to upload a photo and then add a link, which makes for a much more stimulating and shareable post. Another, is to remove the preview all together, relying on the editorial brilliance of the post itself. Visuals always out-perform non-visual content, so I would always go for the former where possible.
4. Interaction
The success of a Facebook post is dictated by how people interact with it – whether they ‘Like’, ‘Share’ or click on the post – but Facebook also uses the dwell metric, that is how long people are interacting with the post, to rate its success. Concentrate on writing posts that will prompt the maximum engagement, and offer calls to active interaction.
5. Facebook Ads
Facebook ads and post boosting are still an experimental art, and it can take time to establish what works for your target audience. Boosting posts that are performing well or promise a strong ROI is a low-cost and effective way to optimize your posts and expand their reach. We have found that the most value lies in boosting your own content, as any traffic that it generates translates to visits to your website. If it’s working, amplify it!
6. Keep Up
Part of the reason that some marketers and businesses downplay the effectiveness of Facebook in marketing is because they have failed to adapt to the subtleties of a changing Facebook audience. Facebook has a constantly changing algorithm, and while we can’t agree that it is on the decline, we will accept that the way people use it is evolving. The timing of posts, for example, is no longer as important as it once was, and personal pages now perform a lot better than business pages.
7. Use Human Psychology
When it comes to marketing, the bulk of Facebook’s power reserves lie in the tribalistic tendencies of its users. If you can put your finger on what gets the users in your niche excited, passionate or even angry, you hold an enormous amount of power in your hand. Human psychology is the content marketer’s most powerful tool. If you can wield it effectively, boy, are you onto a winner!
As long as we adapt, Facebook will always be a powerful marketing tool. As with all aspects of your content marketing tailor, target, watch and listen, to make sure that your efforts have the best chance of reaching the RIGHT audience.
Is there anything that we haven’t covered that you have found particularly effective on Facebook? Tell us in the comments space below!
Do you want to start harnessing the power and reach of Facebook for your business? We have a number of different ways we can help. You can find out more here – or if you’d prefer – just send us a message and we’ll call you to discuss it further.
