I’ve always recommended social media to all of my clients because it’s a great way to build traffic. Social media provides a portal to find relevant people converting them into loyal readers. However, I find many bloggers don’t know how to build momentum through social media and they begin to lose traction. The funny thing is, I’ve seen many successful Facebook pages start to become stagnant, no longer providing value to the bottom line. You have to understand, building traction through social media isn’t as simple as creating an account then building a page because you have to put forth effort. Over the years, I’ve been testing social media strategies on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, finding ways to keep building engagement. Here are a few things I learned about Facebook and how to keep your page alive. These are very simple strategies, but you have to keep implementing them or your page will become stagnant.
Let’s get started…
Make Your Page Attractive
You have to remember all your competitors will have a Facebook page so you have to make sure it stands out. You’ll do this during the setup process and these days, it’s not hard to customize your page. I use to do everything myself, but you can buy a Fiverr.com gig and they’ll set something up for you. I’m not saying you have to make it look incredible, but you should tweak it over time. You should, however, have the fundamentals in place like cover photo, profile image, bio, and all other basic information.
Here are a few Fiverr.com gigs to help you get started…
These have been sorted and are the top 3 highest rated gigs.
Always Share Quality Content
There are two ways people find out about your content. First, through visiting your blog and secondly, when someone “shares” your content through your blog or Facebook page. For you to increase “shares”, I recommend posting high quality content on both your blog and Facebook page. You have competition everywhere so it’s important you stand out by providing your readers with epic content. Don’t share just regular content because you’ll be just like the rest so focus on creating, publishing, and sharing ONLY the best content.
Focuses on creating content people are looking for by doing your research. Next, make sure you share content with an attractive image and that helps illustrate your content. Your objective should be for followers to visit your page and “re-share” content to their followers.
Share during Peak Hours
Depending on your niche, your followers are going to be active on Facebook during different times and it’s important to know this to increase engagement. Once you determine your ideal time frame, you can then use Facebook scheduler to automatically post on the time you’ve setup. This is a great way to increase exposure because when you post during peak times, you’ve increased the likelihood of more people viewing your shared content. This means more people will share it with their followers, generating more traffic through click through’s. The hardest part of this strategy is to find out the optimal sharing time for your content. Here’s what I do to help me out…
- Look over previous data.
- Use Bitly.com to track clicks and at what time.
- Look for a pattern. This will also tell you what type of content gets shared the most.
- Research online, looking for case studies and apply them to your Facebook marketing.
Utilize Facebook Analytics
A great way to find data in real time and it’s perfect for those who have enormous engagement. Many of you are established bloggers and you have thousands of visitors per month so it’s important to keep optimizing when you can. Use Facebook Insights to get a better idea of engagement and make tweaks where you think it will make a difference. You can use your desktop PC or mobile application to keep track wherever you are, but you need to know how to use the information you’ve gathered.
I recommended paying attention to these key factors:
- What types of posts are getting the highest engagement through “Likes”?
- Times they are online perfect to find optimal sharing time.
- What content they have liked the most (look at content format).
Use this data to make adjustments going forward to optimize your fan page to keep it from going stagnant.