So You Have a Facebook Page. Now What?

Love it or hate it, Facebook is probably going to be around for a while. Behemoths that large don’t typically disappear overnight. That said, you really don’t have much choice as to whether or not your business or organization has a presence on Facebook. It would have been like choosing not to have a Yellow Pages listing in the 80s and 90s. You become somewhat invisible to your audience. As Cardinal Digital Marketing says, “Facebook has become a de facto source for up-to-date information on local businesses. Want to know if a store is open? Visit its Facebook page. Want to know the menu of a restaurant? Chances are they have it up on Facebook. Want to make a reservation? Heck, Facebook does that too.” Of course, Google My Business does the same thing and, arguably, may be more popular for local businesses for sure, but that’s another conversation. For now, let’s talk about the very basics of using Facebook to market your business.

The Details About Your Business

If Facebook is, in fact, at least one of the primary sources “for up-to-date information on local businesses,” then it just makes sense that the single most important part of your Facebook marketing strategy is to make sure you have all the details filled out completely. Here’s a couple of examples, one of a public figure and one of a single-location business.

First is your name. It isn’t uncommon to be confused by the fact that your name on Facebook and your actual Facebook address (@username) can be two different things. The easiest way for people to find you is to simply search for your exact @username. But, if you have a business logo as your profile pic, then even if someone searches by your name and finds 12 pages with the same name, they may be able to tell which one belongs to you by the logo. The optimal strategy, of course, is to have everything identical, but that isn’t always possible, so you have to do your best to minimize any confusion for your audience.

You’ll need a custom graphic header image (Sprout Social does a great job of keeping those dimensions, etc., up-to-date for your reference) that coordinates with you profile pic and brand aesthetic. You can even use header images that are themselves an “ad” for your latest campaign, promotion, or event.

Additionally, if appropriate add an address, phone number, website, hours of operation, price range, contact info, short “About” description, a longer “Additional Information” statement, and links to any other social properties such as your Instagram and Twitter accounts.

What to Post and When

Now that you’ve got the critical details covered, it’s time to start thinking about your content strategy.

On Facebook, you can create several different types of posts: Plain text (“status”), a photo, a video, a Facebook Live video (not pre-recorded), a (usually outbound) content link, a Facebook Story, a Watch Party, or a Shared Post from another Page. You can even post events, job listings, and special offers. Each of these options have their benefits and drawbacks. Your brand’s content marketing strategy and goals should drive the types of posts you’ll be making and when.

A Word About Creating a Content Marketing Strategy

The amazing folks at the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) said it best: “At its core, your content marketing strategy is your ‘why’. Why you are creating content, who you are helping, and how you will help them in a way no one else can.” Joe Pulizzi, author and founder of CMI, says that great content marketers do two things differently from the rest:

1. They document their content marketing strategy in some way
2. They review and consistently refer to the plan on a regular basis

For Pulizzi, this means doing six things right and in order (and documenting them all):

1. Uncover your “sweet spot,” the intersection of your knowledge/skill and your passion.
2. Determine the “content tilt,” the area of distinction/differentiation that sets you apart from others in your space.
3. Build a base of loyal fans—typically built through one primary channel—who highly value your content and message. {Note: This part takes time, typically 12-18 months.]
4. Harvest your audience by turning fans/followers into subscribers.
5. Diversify your offerings by expanding into other channels.
6. Monetize. Use the connections you’ve made and the data you’ve gathered to find out what your subscribers really want, then build it and sell it to them.

We would all do well to pay attention to these insights and advice before moving forward.

At the Very Least, Do This

Even if you’d rather do things the hard way and ignore Pulizzi’s advice, you should at least think through your “Sweet Spot” and your “Content Tilt.” This will help you know what to post.

When I worked as the eLearning Architect for one of America’s largest private long-term care companies, I used what Cathy Moore calls “Action Mapping” to help my subject matter experts (SMEs) wrap their brains around how we were going to proceed in developing training content. SMEs (and you are one when it comes to your business or organization) have a universally recognized problem: The Curse of Knowledge. You know so much that you have forgotten what it’s like to be your customer, who doesn’t know even remotely as much. (If they did, they wouldn’t be coming to you, would they?) So, with Action Mapping you, the SME, must answer the following questions in order:

1. “What is my business goal?”
2. “What actions do I need my audience to take in order for me to achieve my goal?”
3. “What information does my audience need in order to be equipped to take those actions?”

I would then work with the SME to design a training option that utilized ONLY the essential information needed to achieve their stated business goal and leave out the rest of the superfluous info (unless it was required by law … which is a sad reality of so much training).

Your content marketing strategy should be similar. What is your sweet spot and content tilt and how do those connect to your biz goals? What sort of actions will you use as indicators that your audience is tracking with you? It could be something as simple as “make a purchase/donation” or as complex as changing a habit or lifestyle. Either way, you should probably know that going forward. Because by knowing that, you can then create and curate content that specifically enables them to take those actions!

That’s the big picture. On a more granular level, you take that content idea and break it down into ever-smaller pieces, like creating an outline for a paper or book. Begin with the main points you feel are necessary for your audience to perform the desired action, then begin subdividing those into more specific sub-points until each is small enough to be a single point. Next, create a content calendar in which each of those single points has multiple dates attached. Why multiple? That’s probably best explained by Google’s “Zero Moment of Truth” research, which says that a prospective client needs 7 hours of interaction across 11 touch points in 4 locations before becoming a hot lead. In other words, one and done won’t be remembered. In his classic The Wizard of Ads, Roy H. Williams said, “The mind of your prospective customer is like a seasoned piece of hardwood. Your message is like a nail. The rhythmic strokes of the hammer represent the number of times your message—your unique selling position (USP)—is heard by the prospect. Your goal is to drive the nail through the board and then clench it on the other side. Messages that are clenched are remembered for a lifetime.”

So, now you have your documented content marketing strategy and calendar … and you are now miles ahead of most people (60-80%) in your space who are just winging it and hoping for the best.

Look at each of the points you want to get across and then ask yourself, “What’s the best way to do this? Will a status update work? Do I need a photo or graphics? Would it be stickier if it were part of a Facebook Live?” Some marketing folks will point to data that says certain content types “typically” perform better than others, and that’s generically true. But the only way to know what will perform well with your audience is to experiment. Try all of the options available and then look at the analytics to see how that message worked with that content type. If it worked great, do it again. If not, try another type of content.

Oh, and when you make large pieces of content that cover multiple points, break them down into smaller chunks and reuse them in different formats.

Continue your experimentation with days and times in order to find out what works best for you. It’s OK to start with general info about Facebook usage overall, but ultimately you have to move past that kind of data and look at exactly which days and times your audience responds to best and to which types of content in those slots. And you can only learn that through experimentation and analysis.

Some Really Basic Info About Analytics (Facebook Numbers)

If you are trying to do marketing without analytics, you aren’t marketing: you’re wishing.

Example: I recently heard someone say, “We have three million viewers on our Facebook Page!” That ‘sounds’ incredible. And if you are jumping into Facebook marketing, it can certainly make you ooze with awe and envy. But what they were referencing was a vanity metric.

The facts aren’t as exciting:

• They have 3 million Likes on their Page
• The average view count on their last 24 videos is 13.3K, with a low of 4.1K and a high of 39.5k.

Now, don’t get me wrong: 13,300 viewers is nothing to sneeze at, but it isn’t 3 million. That’s less than .005% of your ‘potential’ audience.

If you are trying to do marketing without analytics, you aren’t marketing: you’re wishing. Click To Tweet

But it gets even more telling when you dig deeper.

After analyzing data on videos posted by my clients, I saw a fascinating trend that repeated itself several times with Live videos.

• Approximately 60% of the viewers never watch beyond 10 seconds.
• Of those, another 55-60% bailed out within 30 seconds.
• By the 1-minute mark, only about 10% remained, but they were likely to continue watching no matter how long the Live went.

Applying those same percentages as an example, that would mean that for a Live viewership of 13,300:

• 7,980 probably watched about 10 seconds, then bailed
• Another 2,900 probably watched for a full 30 seconds, then bailed

The bottom line: It’s a pretty decent guess that of the 13,300 viewers, approximately 1,300 watched their entire broadcast (though I don’t have access to the exact numbers). From a Page with 3 million ‘Likes’. That’s a much different picture.

As a very specific example that I do have access to, I looked at the most popular video posted in a 4 month span by my largest client. This video out-performed every other video by leaps and bounds. It was a Live broadcast that had a Reach (meaning it showed up in the newsfeed of) 180K people. Around half (97,000 people) viewed at least 3 seconds (which is about how long you see it as you are scrolling and sort-of pause/slow down over a post). Of those, 32.4K stuck around for at least 15 seconds (that’s a 33% drop-off), 18.7K watched for 1 minute (that’s a 58% drop-off from the 32.4K). Around 14,000 (14% of the 97,000; .07% of the total Reach of 180K) watched the entire Live broadcast. That’s not far off from the 10% I noted above.

Likes and Reach are vanity metrics when it comes to marketing. Don’t be swayed by their jaw-dropping looks. Dig into the numbers and measure what’s real, what matters.

(NOTE: Once you are looking at your “Page Insights” on Facebook, click on Posts in the left hand navigation column and then click on any post in your list to see the main analytics for that post. Or go to your Facebook Creator Studio—https://business.facebook.com/creatorstudio—to see really detailed information about each of your videos. Need even more help? Contact me and I’ll try to point you in the right direction!)

Keep in mind that the above is “anecdotal” in that I haven’t analyzed nearly enough examples to have a statistically valid theory. Your results may vary greatly. But I can say this with confidence: I’ve seen enough to know that vanity metrics are grossly misleading. Your numbers on your next Live video may blow these out of the water, but the chances aren’t high, especially as your total number of Facebook Likes get larger.

One final note on the numbers: Facebook is slowly shifting its emphasis from Likes to Follows. Technically, a Follow means you’ve chosen to see content from a Page, but Likes used to mean the same thing. My [admittedly pessimistic] guess is that it won’t really change much in terms of the across-the-board insanely low organic Reach that all Facebook Pages face.

There you have it, the very basics of Facebook marketing.

Thanks for reading! I sincerely hope this has been a helpful little ‘primer’ on Facebook marketing. If you have other basics you’d like me to cover, leave me a comment and I’ll consider your ideas for future blog posts!