Facebook Tips for Startups
Whether you’re just starting out or been in business for awhile, you’ve likely heard about Facebook’s changes in how business posts are processed.Over the past year, organic reach (the number of users who see your post without paying for an ad) has declined dramatically. [5% of your fan base, and expectations for the number to settle at 1%.]So how does our small business reach up to 200% of our fan base without ads? My secrets (which aren’t so secret) are below. Note that Facebook regularly changes their algorithm, with the goal to keep their personal users happy, aka advertising base. So you might need to adjust as the algorithm adjusts, but much of this is common sense.
8 Facebook Tips for Startups
1. Balance your posts so that you aren’t simply selling but offering interesting content.Consider content marketing, aka a blog that discusses topics of interest to your fan base. Share others’ content, balanced with your own. Any marketing of a product should be a minority of the time, in the range of 10% of your posts.We have a regular parenting blog because our customers are parents of young children. We also share funny posts from bloggers like the Honest Toddler, and craft ideas from our favorite pages.2. Share your posts on your personal page, which generally gets a full inclusion in your friends’ feed.I figure my friends enjoy our blog articles, and Facebook nests the double feed for any friends who are also fans. I use the public setting for those shares (vs. friends only for personal photos) and have enabled followers to see my public posts.3. Photos generally get a higher reach than links.If you have an article to share, post it as a photo, with the link in the description. (Note, that this might change over time but is generally acknowledged today.)4. Offline, ask your friends and family to like and share your business posts.Our mom and my best friends often do this for me. Don’t ask on Facebook as they now have an algorithm to punish pages that ask for likes, yet they do weight higher posts that have been liked and shared.When a FB user has the setting of “top news”, the likes and shares are even more important, and if you noticed, the setting on your laptop will often revert to “top news”.5. Ask for guest blogging columns, and offer to do the same for others.Trading content is a great way to increase everyone’s exposure. Your fellow blogger sees a new audience by writing for you, and will often share the post on his personal page. You will do the same when you guest blog. Added bonus, I love the differing points of view from our guest bloggers.6. Increase engagement when possible by asking for your fans’ opinions.In my experience, this is more useful when your fan base is larger, say in the thousands.7. Diversify with other social media sites.Try, for instance, Twitter and Instagram, which still share automatically to all followers. But remember that all social media is essentially borrowed space, and can change at any time, so prioritize establishing an email database.8. The best FB ads are boosting your favorite posts.Advertising your page to get more likes risks “like” farms. Remember that your goal isn’t the highest number of total fans but the highest number of engaged fans, who are happy with your posts and likely to be interested in your future business.Resources:
- My sister and Gooseling co-owner, Lisa Danielpour, is a social media guru and consults in her free time. She has a social media plan posted on her blog, http://lisadanielpour.com, and a great Facebook article at http://lisadanielpour.com/2014/02/facebook-content-gets-found/.
- Charlene Kingston of Social Media DIY Workshop has excellent advice, including this recent handout from her webinar, .
- Entrepreneur Magazine is a wonderful source of articles, to which Lisa and I have contributed. http://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/facebook
- Social Media Examiner covers the range of social media at http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com.
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