Most people know how to use Facebook to simply chat with their friends and socialize, however, if used properly Facebook can also be a very effective tool to market any business. 
It may seem easy, but you definitely need to do it the right way to succeed or you will waste your time and your money.
Facebook for business is not just about posting content; it is also about really understanding your audience, knowing what they want, engaging them, and then looking for a way to make all this work for you to help you achieve your goals.
Millions of people are online and using Facebook every day, making it one of the easiest ways to market your brand all over the world and there’s no denying it is a monster that is here to stay. Some people fight it but the smart ones embrace it and find new and innovative ways to use it to grow their business
The following are my top 10 Facebook marketing techniques that will help you build your online presence. Read them, understand them and then make them your own to really connect with your customers and take your business to the next level.
1. Build Relationships
The good thing about Facebook is that it allows you to easily communicate with, and get instant feedback from, your audience. It allows for strong dialogue with fans and potential customers and makes it possible for your business to build relationships with them in an authentic way.
Relationships are everything and you should always respond to your audience quickly, especially when dealing with complaints. This helps you to be transparent and authentic, which is the type of business that people want to deal with. They are tired of “Scammers” and “Here today – gone tomorrow” fakes, they want to know that you are genuine and here to stay.
Your number one goal should always be to build relationships with people, not just push your product or service. Your audience is easily able to see whether you are actually interested in creating a relationship or if you just want to blindly market your product to them.
2. Pay Attention To Analytics
One of the biggest mistakes a business can make is to ignore its insights. Facebook Analytics is a great, free tool that can help you to learn who your followers really are, their age, gender, their likes, their dislikes, where they live, even what time they are online. You can use this information to properly target your customers, even down to scheduling your posts when most of your followers are online to make them more visible and effective.
With the incredibly high amount of content being posted online every day, it is very important that you do everything that you can to ensure your audience will actually see your posts and that the content is relevant to them, otherwise, you are just wasting your time.
3. Enhance Your Posts
Facebook has changed dramatically over the years and the glory days of easily getting high visibility are over. Most of your followers will not even see your posts in their news feed.
Facebook is continuously trying to improve and deliver what they believe will give their viewers the best user experience. The reality of this is that your content can and will be overlooked or ignored unless you push your message to your audience through enhanced (paid) posts.
The good news is that enhancing your content on Facebook is still quite affordable and you can really boost your posts’ visibility and reap maximum benefits if you allocate a part of your marketing budget to regular advertising.
4. Avoid Buying Likes
Another big mistake that many businesses do is to buy Facebook likes. Contrary to what many business owners think, people don’t generally care about how many likes you have, they care about whether you are authentic and engage with your audience. Your goal should be to develop an engaged, committed following made up of real people who genuinely like what you do and what you have to offer.
Buying likes will also work against your business and your future campaigns when enhancing your content with paid advertising, as you will be paying to show your content to people who either don’t exist (fake profiles) or don’t care.
Also, avoid creating fake Facebook profiles – it’s not genuine and it’s definitely not cool.
5. Don’t Take A One Size Fits All Approach
When you take a piece of content meant for other mediums and post it straight onto your Facebook page you could be doing yourself big disfavor. The way your audience will view, interact and understand other forms of advertisements is very different from the way they will interact with a Facebook post.
Always make sure that the pieces you post or share are created specifically for Facebook and your target audience.
6. Target The Right Audience
A sure-fire way to avoid disaster is to ensure that your posts are always targeted to the right audience. Learn everything you can about your customers – their interests, the pages they visit often, the types of content they like and where they spend most of their time online.
Then create content that will appeal directly to your customers, don’t fall into the trap of just posting random content. Get to know your customers and then give them exactly what they want, when they want it.
7. Make Good Use Of Videos
Videos can often provide a faster, more interesting and more memorable way of delivering a message than most written content. Despite this many brands are not using videos effectively, so take advantage of them and make yourself stand out.
A reliable stream of short, interesting, well-produced, targeted videos can give your business great mileage on Facebook.
Interesting videos are not only highly viewable but are also easily shared amongst the different social media platforms, giving you great exposure to new customers.
8. Pay Attention To Complaints
Many brands immediately take down complaints to try to protect their reputation but what many people don’t realize is that complaints can actually help your business. Everyone makes mistakes and they’re going to happen, it’s a fact of life. So what really matters is that your business is seen to be actively listening and actively addressing any concerns straight away.
Well-handled complaints prove to your existing audience and potential clients that you are transparent and are willing to take action to fix an issue, not just sweep it under the carpet.
Handle the complaint in such a way that it changes the complainant’s and your other followers’ perspective about your brand. You want potential clients to see that they can trust your business and that they will always have their grievances addressed in the best way possible.
Publicly acknowledge the complaint and apologize and then ask the customer to contact you directly to enable you to deal with the issue further.
9. Post Consistently
Post frequent, up-to-date, interesting and relevant content. Your audience will quickly and easily get bored and forget you if you don’t.
Keep active and post regular content that encourages user feedback and comments to push your brand. The key is getting your viewers to keep liking and sharing your content because they feel it is interesting and share-worthy.
Keep up-to-date with current trends and issues and always use credible information and trustworthy sources, don’t get caught up in rumor and gossip that could backfire on your business.
10. Use Variety
Avoid sharing and recycling the same content over and over again. Your audience will quickly get bored and stop following you if you only offer boring posts day in, day out.
Use videos, pictures, blog posts, links, testimonials, quizzes, etc. Make sure that your content is up-to-date, relevant and interesting.
Using irrelevant or bad information is one of the biggest mistakes you can make when trying to build your online reputation
The Final Word:
Always remember to treat your customers and potential customers like you would want to be treated, and always stay true to yourself and to your brand!
If you would like to know more about creating and building a successful business online please register for the free Automated Sales and Success webinar, hosted by John Thornhill.
Plus, as an exclusive, added bonus, if you register for the webinar through the above link you will also automatically receive a free copy of this 10 Facebook Marketing Tips article in beautiful PDF format (with graphics) that you can use as a giveaway to your own subscribers to help you build your own list, or just use it as a reference for yourself – the choice is yours.
Rob Ainge
This is a guest post from Rob Ainge, if you would like to be considered for a guest post please contact me.
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