5 business-savvy ways to get the best from Facebook
1. Create shareable content that is likely to get people excited. If you’re incessantly posting tiny snippets or huge bulky bits of texts that are equally unappealing and unaccompanied by images of something exciting, your followers are eventually likely to switch off every time they see you fly past on their news feed – you’ll be nothing but a freckle on the face of the net. Create eye-catching content in both a visual sense and a written sense. One of the less obvious challenges of posting on social media is making the TEXT appear interesting. In an age where we have attention spans that can’t be held down for longer than 5 seconds, it’s important to lay out your message correctly. Use caps, but not for every post or you might come across as having anger issues….. Separate your points like bullet points to make them easier to consume but equally don’t post incessant small snippets that all look the same on the page or people will just see it and think they’ve already read it because it was the same post from 2 days ago – when in fact, it’s a new post!
2. Schedule your posts – The novelty of Hootsuite still hasn’t worn off. Being able to schedule content is a huge luxury for businesses who have other fish to fry than setting alarms so that they can go and upload social media. However, don’t do this without having first done your research. Identify when your followers notice you, when they engage with your posts and be sure to schedule your posts for these peak times.
3. Build a community. SOCIAL media is so-named for a reason. People want to feel part of something and share it with others, which is why it’s important to cultivate an online ‘atmosphere’ where people feel they can comment, reply to others’ comments, speak their mind and post on your wall.
4. Get the tone right. Make sure the type of content you’re posting is relevant to whatever it is you’re promoting or selling. It’s no use adopting a sarcastic or comedic tone if you’re a freelance builder, or posting only dry dates, times and opening hours if you’re a dynamic city bar. Make sure to know your audience.
5. Make the content balance right. It’s difficult to know how often to post and how much to post about yourself or affiliated companies. Make sure you’re not only posting about your own business, but also about relevant events and news from people in your field. This kind of content keeps your followers interested and OK, they might go and follow them as well as you, but they’ll still stay loyal to you for introducing them to something new and for the initial interest in your enterprise of course (so long as you don’t bore them on Facebook!).
