How to Create an Amazing Facebook Page for One Billion People

Here’s a few social media tips on how to build a great Facebook page for your business. With the less cluttered News Feed Facebook is rolling out in March 2013 there’s even more chance to build richer content and experience for your business.

Some recent Facebook statistics 

2 billion likes and comments on a daily basis

500 million users log in daily  and there are more than one billion people using Facebook actively each month.

250 million photos are uploaded daily

425 million people using Facebook on their mobile devices

Coca Cola is the biggest brand on Facebook with over 50m likes

Over 223 million people in Europe are on Facebook.

Engagement on Facebook is 18% higher on Thursdays & Fridays.

Fans are 50% more likely to purchase from brands they “Like” on Facebook.

Facebook has overtaken Yahoo as the Internet’s most popular site for viewing video and FMCG companies say Facebook ads on a par with TV.

We can help you build and run an amazing Facebook page to engage with your customers and grow your business with social media. Reach out to us  here at social@shinesquad.com  or check out our social media page on our website www.shinesquad.com with our management and design services and prices.

First off – what do you want to achieve with Facebook? Facebook is a marketing ecosystem. Set up a plan based on your specific goals. More fans? Leads and converting them into new customers? Have the right creative, branded content and test so that you find out what works. Oh a get a pet! It’s true that people engage with cute puppies…

But you can do so much more on Facebook…and now with Facebook’s taking on Pinterest: You can now “Want”, “Collect” and “Buy” products you see in your newsfeed.

An Empty Canvas

Every great profile begins with an empty page. Start off by  making your Profile Picture your company’s logo and your Cover Photo something more creative that best represents your business – people, food and landscapes are popular.

Milestones

Add milestones to define key moments – storytelling is engaging in social media. Some think of their page as that of the brand if it was a person.

Pin Stories

Pin important stories to the top of your page. They’ll be pinned for seven days and you can repin the same post again.

Post Daily 

Regular updates engage fans. These are pushed to your newsfeed and 40% of time spent on Facebook is on the newsfeed. Eyeball track surveys show that being at the top or close to the top on the left hand side are imperative to capture attention. How to get to the top is about timing and how much your customers actually engage with you. Your one fan might see your post and share it and that opens open the Facebook universe so that your story is seen on 40 million pages. Paid for advertising is going to be enormous for that type of reach.  Most fans don’t ever come back to your page so your access to them is through fresh content that they interact with. So make it count.

An image post on Facebook is 80% more likely to be shared than any other kind of update. Weekends are best for Facebook sharing. If you are targeting abroad make sure you post when they’re awake. Post events that people have to register for,  a new product or service.  Run contests, polls, funny stories, talk about  industry news and just make conversation.  Respond to questions and ask for feedback. Thank your fans. Don’t ignore or delete negative comments but address them.

Try and keep storytelling in mind – a beginning, middle and an end. The emotional value of stories is stronger that orphaned content. If your story does not reveal something personal and unknown about the person or brand, it’s going to be boring. If your story does not tap into a specific emotion – whether it be fear, desire, anger, or happiness – it will not move people to action.

Don’t think that all your fans will see your stories, though, Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm means that organic posts on your page will only reach 16% of your fans’ news feeds. So make sure you build affinity with your fans by commenting on their posts, too. Videos, photos and links are the most likely to appear in news feeds along with anything that encourages debate or comment.

These are 7 Types of Content for Facebook to drive engagement from social@ogilvy.

A Facebook status has room for over 16,000 characters. But the text in your updates should be no longer than those on Twitter, which has room for just 140 at a time.

How much is too much? 

Use the insight tool on your admin page to check engagement – what happens when you post?  If your fans like it do it more, if they don’t, well you’ve gained insight. Minimum update twice a week.

What happened to Landing Pages? 

Landing pages still exist – but now only if you use paid media such as Facebook ads to drive traffic to your landing page tab. Facebook wanted all pages to be similar and updated on a regular basis – so they introduced timeline as a level-playing field. If you have a specific offer make sure your landing page matches it –  your ad and landing page should be clearly aligned.

Admin Panel

Manage your page through the admin panel – check user engagement, respond to messages. You spot problems quicker and you’ll realise who your superfans are and how they can help build your brand and keep others informed when you are not there. You can run the pages through an app on iPhone to check and update.

Rearrange your Views  and Apps 

Along the top of your page are the apps  such as number of likes, photos and a welcome tab. Apps are shortcuts to content. You can add your own free apps such as video, polls, events and maps or develop your own apps for competitions and marketing surveys for data capture. There’s even an app for the Top Fans on your page.

Highlight Updates

You can make some of your posts the full width of the page – useful if you have a great photo or a big news story you want to draw attention to. Use the star icon when you hover on the top right of the post.

Vanity URL

Create the facebook.com/username with your own brand – here’s ours www.facebook.com/shinesquadcreative.

Facebook Advertising

What age is your target audience? Gender? Race? Language spoken? Education level? Occupation? Geographic location? Local businesses can especially benefit from hyper local targeting. Interests – if you have pet products then target people who like pets. Do some split testing on your ad –  version A and B, and change one variable at a time to see which version performs better.

Test one variable at a time to identify what version performs better.

If you choose “like my page,” Facebook will charge you a ‘CPM‘ – cost per
thousand views. If you chose “click on my ad or sponsored story,” you will be charged
on a ‘CPC‘ – cost per click.  According to eMarketer the average page ‘like’ clickthrough rate is .07% at a cost of $.45, meaning for every 1000 people who see your ad, seven will click on it, and it will cost you $.45 for each of those seven people.

Here’s some more tips ‘8 Facebook features every social media manager should know’ from www.prdaily.com 

Like Us on Facebook if you’ve found this post useful! We’ve got plenty of updates there too – Shinesquad offers monthly social media packages to manage your social media profiles. Contact us at social@ shinesquad.com

Here’s an infographic from We Are Social with these Tips:

Do not post too often

Keep it short and simple
Pictures: Yes! Long Texts: No!
Links and Videos only if necessary
Best times to post: before noon and during after-work hours
Best day for Viral: Sundays
Photo Galleries offer great potential for brands
Surveys on Facebook score especially high

We Are Social - Facebook Posts - Infographic

From the clever people at We Are Social

Facebook introduces ‘buy tickets’ button for events – linking to an off site location for users to complete a transaction. Events pages were previously able to include a link, but the new button adds emphasis. You can do this seamlessly with Eventbrite simply by clicking ‘Publish to Facebook’.

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