By September 2016, about 1.18 billion people were active on Facebook, daily. Hence, Facebook is one of the best social media platforms for marketers. The headache for most marketers is growing a brand’s market on Facebook with each new like or share earned, and strike a balance between selling and engaging the audience.
That’s where the 80/20 rule applies. This Pareto-type of principle maintains that 80% of a brand’s Facebook posts should be engaging content while 20% should be sales. If you make a minimum of five posts in a day, only one post should be a sales pitch. That way, you will only have about five salesy content in a five-day week, and tons of opportunities to interact with your audience.
Remember, social media is about social interactions across the cultural, geographical, and economic divide. From these social interactions, new relationships arise, information is shared, people express their opinions, etc. Your website may have the live chat option among other ways for your audience to reach you, but it will never match the wealth of engagement opportunities social media offers. Great social media marketing skills will also supplement your advertising budget. It will work alongside your PPC services and campaigns.
How to Use the 20% Portion of your Posts
Create posts that sell your products/services. Think about your audience’s needs always. For example, if you are promoting an online travel agent, you can ‘sell’ travel offers during the Christmas season. Appealing sales posts explain how a product/service satisfies the present need. It should contain a call to action depending on your goals. For instance, your salesy posts may draw attention to a new product, increase sales through discounts or inform your audience about forthcoming offers.
Know the time of day/month when such posts will have the greatest impact. Schedule your posts late in the day, and towards the end of the week for the highest reach. Create a sales post with details about the product and add an appealing image.
How to Get 80% Engaging/Shareable Content
Facebook users like a page because they want to know what it is about because it showed up on their News Feed. Another lot of Facebook page likes comes from honest users who are looking for a company that can meet their needs for a certain product or service. Others do so simply because their friends have liked the page. Whichever motivation drew your audience to you, make them stay. Interact with them daily.
Here are five elements that distinguish engaging content, and tips to help you create content your audience will love.
- Engaging content arouses emotions
Your post can be funny, inspiring, embarrassing, disturbing, sad, or shocking. There are so many emotions to play around with. However, think about the feedback/reaction you expect from your audience.
- Engaging content is shareable
Remember, as far as Facebook is concerned, no man is an island. A Facebook user’s friends receive highlights by the minute through the News Feed, and the sharing buttons below each post make interaction easier. Create posts the audience will love to share. Popular shareable items on Facebook are quotes, funny memes, and short funny videos.
Use infographics to list facts in a visually appealing manner. Turn these infographics into images you can use on Facebook, accompanied by short text headlines.
Know what is happening around you, or in your industry, and give your opinion. In addition, understand trends and know when to include trending topics in your posts. To make your opinions authentic, find influencers in your industry, and share their posts often.
Quizzes are also shareable. Schedule a few quizzes in a month. In addition to increasing your reach, quizzes also increase engagement as your audience shows off their skills to peers.
- Engaging content draws attention
Consider your headlines wisely because they summarize a post. Posts with unique headlines and a call to action always go viral. Use lists when condensing a lot of information into a single post to make the post easy to digest and share.
- Engaging content has appealing images/video
Find an image that draws attention to your post, and conveys your message perfectly. Invest in visual assets like professionally produced images, videos and infographics. More people are likely to remember your post because of the visual impact it had rather than by its textual content.
- Engaging content is suitable for the audience
Use Facebook insights and other research tools to analyze the demographics of your audience. Interactions per post gauge the effectiveness of each type of content. It also tells you the audience each post reaches, and what you can do to boost your reach. For instance, how did your image post fare against your video-rich post? However, such insights are only available for Facebook pages that have been active for a while.
Facebook is a social platform. Make your posts just that – social.
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