7 New Hacks for Your Facebook Marketing Strategy

Rookie business owners think a Facebook marketing strategy builds itself. Buy a few ads, target them where you may, and watch the money roll in, right?

We have an awesome team to help you with your Facebook ad strategy, but making Facebook work for you involves more than just buying ads.

Engagement, measurement, and effective management are essential for business owners looking to make a splash online.

Schedule Strategically

Most people think of scheduling posts as a common sense element of a Facebook marketing strategy. But it cannot stand on its own without real engagement with the scheduling process.

There’s a reason we recommend creating a calendar for your social media strategy. It keeps things consistent and lets you avoid a tumultuous social media strategy where nothing gets done.

Some things to consider when scheduling posts for your Facebook page include:

Are there any promotions going on at the time this post is scheduled?
How is the time-of-year affecting the mood and state of mind of my customers?
Are our competitors offering promotions at this time, and if so how do we avoid losing customers to them without simply playing “follow the leader?”

After considering these matters, you can reasonably schedule out your posts while claiming knowledge of the process.

Use Contests and Promotions

Contests and promotions are at the core of an effective social media strategy. These can either be done on your website and connected to Facebook or done exclusively on Facebook.

For example, we think the Lay’s Do Us a Flavor contest is pretty brilliant, and it’s not hard to see why.

That contest, though it seemed as simple as people creating a potato chip flavor and resulted in a number of unfortunate memes we all saw, also resulted in a feeling of engagement for Lay’s consumers.

For the first time, customers of one of the largest potato chip companies felt like they were in the driver’s seat.

Contests make your consumers feel they have power and are valued. And in an era where it’s easy for brands and companies big and small to become faceless, this is vital.

Make Engagement Central to Your Facebook Marketing Strategy

Most social media strategies are centered around the concept of engagement. Putting engagement at the core of your Facebook marketing strategy is a great way to keep your customers interested and even bring in some new ones.

Off of Facebook and onto Twitter, the brand most notable for its strong engagement of social media visitors is Wendy’s on Twitter.

Along with doing typical “corporate engagement” things, like checking in on customers with bad experiences and posting ads, they’ve also become a bit notorious for their online jokes.

Buttons Are Your Friends

Share buttons are your friends online, and if you don’t have these on your website you effectively lack a Facebook marketing strategy.

Social Media Week offers great advice to those looking to use social media buttons.

They encourage business owners to focus on placement of these buttons and only put buttons users are going to use. This means if you run a sheet metal business, for instance, you might not want a Pinterest button. And if you’re running a restaurant, a LinkedIn button makes no sense.

Finally, make sure you look at the numbers regarding the social media buttons on your site. A good Facebook marketing strategy, as with any good digital marketing strategy, is self-examining and self-critical.

So if people aren’t using a certain button? You can probably get rid of it. And if most of your users are sharing on Facebook or Twitter, focus on these buttons exclusively.

Tag People and Businesses

Influencer marketing refers to a business tagging and sharing content from “influencers,” such as entertainers, CEOs, and community leaders, as a part of their social media marketing strategy.

The biggest benefit of influencer marketing as a part of your Facebook marketing strategy is its ability to give your business legitimacy and have your readers come to your site for interesting content.

As with other strategies, use this one where it makes sense. Something feels “off” about an ice cream parlor sharing a post from Tim Cook, for instance. And as much as writing about Facebook marketing means we love Mark Zuckerberg, your local plumber probably shouldn’t be sharing Zuckerberg’s personal content.

Share and tag influencers in your industry. Think about who your customers want to hear from, and let them hear from them.

Take Advantage of Facebook Plug-ins

Plug-ins involve a lot more than just posting a share button to your website.

Using a Facebook plug-in means giving your customers more latitude regarding how they interact with your brand on Facebook. This is absolutely vital to creating a relevant Facebook marketing strategy.

One of the best Facebook plug-ins your business could take advantage of is the “save button.” This button lets users take products and events they’re interested in and save it to a private list on Facebook.

They can share items on that list with friends and receive notifications regarding them. For you, this means your brand is front-and-center in the mind (and more importantly these days, news feed,) of your customers.

Comedy Can Do A Lot

Finally, as serious as your business may be, don’t be afraid of a little tasteful humor supplementing your Facebook marketing strategy.

There is a world of benefits to sharing memes on Facebook, but you need to do it right.

If done properly, memes can make your brand seem relatable and even funny. If done poorly, memes can be in poor taste and offensive.

For instance, most people don’t want to see Condescending Wonka memes coming from a funeral parlor.

So know memes before you share them to make sure they’re effective.

Further Assistance

We’re in the business of digital marketing and would love to help you build up your social media strategy!