Facebook marketing whether it is a for a blogger, business, author or a musician must achieve the goals you have set out in your marketing strategy and plan.
The marketing strategy that you have created will keep you focused and on track otherwise you can be heading off and engaged with all sorts of marketing tactics and activities that don’t achieve much but just keep you busy, distracted and scattered.
The Facebook page and the marketing activities you carry out on Facebook’s eco-system should be viewed as an extension of your blog. So tactics you maybe already doing on your blog can be enhanced and synergised by replicating some of those blogging platform activities on Facebook that are relevant ad appropriate to the Facebook culture.
There are many goals you could set for yourself for your Facebook marketing. Goals could include improving customer service, reducing traditional marketing costs, improving customer acquisition and optimizing your brand.
To keep it simple here are 3 core goals and 25 marketing tactics that you can action on your Facebook page that wil keep your blog growing and your business booming .
3 Key Goals for Facebook Marketing
- Increasing Facebook Likes – think of this as an additional asset that is similar to building your email subscriber database for your blog or business.
- Improve Engagement – This is where your subscribers, fans, followers can be nourished as part of your community from initial low level interest to a highly engaged raving fan.
- Increase Sales – At the end of the day ‘likes’ are nice and engagement is good but you do need calls to action to ensure that something happens. This pays the bills and takes you on holidays.
This section includes the multiple and various tactics for achieving 3 key goals of increasing Facebook likes (10 tips), improving engagement (10 tips) and increasing sales (5 tips). What needs to be kept in mind is that the first two goals are stepping stones in the process of achieving the ultimate goal which selling that ebook, consultancy or what ever service or product that you as a blogger provide
10 Tips to Increase Facebook ‘Likes’ and Subscribers
Facebook ‘likes’ are only a recent phenomenon in the history of marketing and acquiring Facebook ‘likes’ is a new and exciting additional tactic to distribute your content, news and ideas that build your client list in addition to your email marketing. Facebook likes do not replace your email marketing plans but add and enhance your marketing mix.
Mari Smith’s Facebook page provides a more than obvious example for capturing those important Facebook Likes.
So how do I start gaining those Facebook ‘likes”?
10 Tips to Increase your Facebook ‘Likes’
- Email existing prospects to let them know you have a Facebook page and ask for them to drop in and like your page and provide a link to reduce the friction of making that effort. In other words don’t make them ‘think”. Make it easy.
- Invite friends to seed you page if you don’t have any likes yet.
- Embed a “Facebook social plugin” on your blog in the right side banner preferably up near the top that provides the functionality for readers to ‘like’ your page even when they are not on Facebook
- Create a landing page as your welcome page encouraging ‘likes’ that is highly visible and obvious
- Create a Facebook reveal page to provide that provides access to exclusive content but only when you ‘like’ the page. This exclusivity can make them feel like they are part of the ‘club’ at a very simple level.
- Offer them a free gift or PDF in the email to” like” your page
- Link to your Facebook page in your email newsletter banner. This could be at the top of the page the right hand side banner as well as at the bottom of the newsletter. Digtal design dictates that providing several options is much more effective than just one.
- Join Facebook groups in your categories of interest – and post a blog post that will drive traffic to your Fan page and connect with you on Facebook
- Capture emails for your email marketing database on your Facebook page. You need to keep in mind that email maybe old fashioned but it works and it works big time and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. So make it easy for people to subscribe by email to receiving news, updates and your blog posts when they are on Facebook via email.
- Provide a link in Facebook to prospects to subscribe to your Blog via RSS
There is one thing to keep in mind with Facebook ‘likes’ and that is that Facebook does not update everyone’s news feeds that ‘like’ your page. Facebook uses a algorithm called “EdgeRank” that determines which fans will receive your page update. It is determined according to how closely engaged you are with the fan. Read more here “EdgeRank: The Secret Sauce that Makes Facebook’s News Feed Tick.
The power of Facebook marketing is that it amplifies your content to not only your fans but the friends of your fans and this where the power and marketing leverage of social media starts to kick in that email cannot do at the same scale. Facebook provides a multiplier effect that is sharing at an “industrial scale”. Read more about that here: “Do People Share more on Facebook or Twitter?”
10 Tips to Increase Engagement on your Facebook Page
There are many ways to improve engagement. Content is one of the most effective methods to start engaging your new ‘fans’ who have liked your page. Engagement can start with the low risk and entry level ‘like’ action on Facebook which is the dating equivalent of “let’s catch up for a coffee” tactic. There are other higher levels of engagement with the end goal to take visitors to your blog from followers to “raving fans” and become an emotional member of your “tribe”.
I post my daily blog posts to my Jeffbullas.com facebook page this allows me to engage with my target audience that are hanging out on “Facebook”. I don’t wait for them to come to me, I go where they are. Valuable content that adds value to your viewers and readers creates deep engagement
What are some other ways to increase engagement?
10 Tips to Increase Engagement
- Run polls using the standard Facebook ‘Question’ feature (above the ‘Write something’ box) to engage your audience with something that makes them actually do something.
- Implement ‘third party” survey tools. One great service is Survey Monkey that provides much more functionality than the basic entry level Facebook “Questions” feature
- Include Twitter in your menu. This is available as a standard setting on your Facebook fan page and provides another channel for engagement.
- As Facebook is a real time media you can publish the latest events, news on topics of interest that are happening in your industry or niche. In essence it is a real time sharing tool that will notify people that have liked your page about the latest ‘hottest’ news
- Update your Facebook ‘Page’ with your blog posts straight after publishing
- Respond to all comments on your Facebook page in a timely fashion
- Run a competition on Facebook
- Post your YouTube videos to your Facebook page. This provides another distribution point for your YouTube videos.
- Embed your Slideshare presentations on your Facebook page (Slideshare is a social media website that takes your Powerpoint presentations and converts them into a slideshow on the web). Just paste the link and your Slideshare presentation will embed within Facebook
- Photos at events can be uploaded to Facebook which humanize and personalize your brand. People just ‘love’ photos on Facebook and this will drive a deeper engagement with your prospects and customers. So mix up your media and this can be a challenge for a ‘text’ blogger. So think like a publisher and publish your content in as many places with as much rich multimedia as time and resources allow.
5 Tips to Make Sales on Facebook
At the end of the day the final objective is to increase sales. You have provided the incentives and tactics to let them like your page and become a fan. You have then engaged them with low level engagement from reading your blog post updates on your Facebook page or responding to a survey or a poll. It is now time to provide some calls to action and links and even an online store that can be created within Facebook to start making some sales from your Facebook Marketing.
Guy Kawasaki makes it easy for you to order and buy his book “Enchantment” on Facebook.
5 Tips to Make Sales
- Use a reveal tab that is set up as your landing page that provides access to a voucher that can be printed off or even emailed to the prospect that they need to bring into your store or claim online to get a discount on a product or service
- Consider an F-Commerce function – convert and sell within the Facebook ‘Page” without the customer ever having to leave Facebook. This will increase conversions. Every click or extra page in the process reduces your conversion rates by 15%.
- Provide a link on your Facebook page to your online store
- Link to the Apple store that may contains your PDF or if your a musician or band your music
- Link to the Amazon store where customers can buy your book or your Kindle ebook online.
So which one of these 25 Facebook marketing tips could you action today?
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