FRUITION S BEST PRACTICES SERIES facebook Your guide to using the Facebook social network for business.
WHAT IS FACEBOOK? USER User s Friends & Family User s Liked Brands & Businesses Facebook is an online community where users connect with their friends and family, as well as with brands and businesses. While it originally started out as a purely personal social platform, there are now many ways for brands and businesses to engage with potential customers through Business Pages and Facebook Advertising. Having a Facebook Business Page for your brand or company is nearly essential in today s marketing world. Chances are your competitor already has one up and running. There are many benefits to creating a Business Page on Facebook, both intangible and concrete. An official Business Page will allow you to build brand awareness, foster goodwill among your audience, connect with current and potential customers on a personal level, and create brand ambassadors. Facebook can also help you generate or increase leads, encourage potential customers to take action with your brand, and impact your search rankings. If Facebook is a good fit for your company, there are a number of best practices you can follow to ensure that you get the most out of the most widely used social media platform in the world. Before starting on your Facebook journey, it s important to set goals and expectations for your social media presence. Are you after more traffic to your website, or better brand awareness online? Fruition s social media experts can help you develop a targeted plan for your Facebook account so you start out on the right foot. What is Facebook? - Facebook Best Practices Guide
Demographics (Current as of March 2012): 845 million active users, 57% female, 43% male. 40% of users are age 25-44. Fifty-seven percent of users have completed at least some college. The household income of 40% of Facebook users is $50,000 to $99,999 per year. 57% FEMALE 43% MALE CREATING A BUSINESS PAGE There are two ways to create a Business Page for your company: through a personal Facebook account or by registering only the Facebook page you are creating. Personal Account To create a personal account, you will need to provide certain personal details such as name, email address, gender, birth date, etc. Facebook walks you through this simple process. When you have a personal Facebook account, you can use that account to set up your Business Page. Visit http://www.facebook.com/ pages/create.php while you are logged in to your personal account and select the type of page you would like to create. You will then be prompted to provide information about your business. When you have finished your page creation process, you will be presented with your new page and the admin panel. Start to build your page by clicking Edit Page and then Manage Permissions. Make sure the box marked Unpublish Page is checked and save your settings. You will want to keep the page private until you have completed setup. You can then return to this menu and make your page publically visible. Creating A Business Page - Facebook Best Practices Guide
When creating a business page, make sure all of your information and branding matches your existing branding. Ie., spelling variations of your business name and up-to-date versions of your logos. If you need help updating your social media branding images, Fruition s design team can create custom images for social media. Registered Page To create a Business Page without using a personal account, simply visit http:// www.facebook.com/pages/ create.php and select the type of page you would like to create. You will then be prompted to provide information about your business. Try to provide as detailed information as possible the more helpful you can be, the better success you will have with your audience. You can also change your user permissions on this page and delete the page if necessary. Best practice for user permissions is to allow others to post to your timeline, and allow the audience to see posts that others have made. This shows that your page is active and open to communication. Click Update Info to add more detailed information about your business. Click Featured to choose whether to display the pages your page has liked, and to choose whether to publically display your personal profile as the owner of the page. Click Admin Roles to add others as admins or content managers to your page. Creating A Business Page - Facebook Best Practices Guide
Images You will also want to add images to your profile. Facebook s Timeline format allows you to post two images that visitors to your page will immediately see. You can edit your photos at any time by hovering your mouse over the photos and clicking Change Cover or Edit Profile Picture on your Business page. YOUR LOGO 180 x 180 pixels IMAGE SUPPORTING YOUR BRAND 851 x 315 pixels Many people love uploading funny, creative, and unique cover photos and some even go viral! Tell your business story right with a great share-worthy cover photo. Fruition can help you design one. Cover photo This image should be 851x315 pixels, and should be high-resolution. You may not display promotional advertising copy within the image, and it should illustrate your brand, products or services in a visually compelling way. Profile photo This image should be 180x180 pixels, and should be high-resolution. This is an excellent place to use your logo or a modified version of your logo. Milestones You may want to consider illustrating the history of your company by adding Milestones to your page. Just click Offer, Event + above the status box on your page, and select Milestone. You can add important dates in your business history, as well as photos, links and videos to help tell the story. You re all set! Now make sure your page is publically visible, and continue to update your page s information so it is always up-to-date. Creating A Business Page Continued - Facebook Best Practices Guide
BUILDING CONTENT Before you begin to heavily promote your page, you will want to spend some time adding content. For the next few days, concentrate on using content that is readily available to you to create a page that looks active and inviting. Add videos from your video library. Add photos from your portfolio/library and organize them into albums. Post interesting content from your blog or website. Post relevant news and updates about your business. And finally, post a welcome message for new fans and pin it to the top of the page by clicking the Edit or Remove button in the upper right corner of the posted status and selecting Pin to Top. New visitors will see this message right away when they visit your new page for the first time. Lots of fan pages have photos and logo images - give your brand a voice and some personality. Make a short (under one minute) video clip introducing people to your business and what you re all about. You don t even need professional video equipment! For ideas and help with producing brand videos, call the Fruition social media team today!
AUDIENCE-BUILDING There are a few easy ways to draw new visitors to your page and encourage them to like it. Utilize your personal network. Business Friends Don t be shy about asking your friends and family to like your new Business Page. It helps get the ball rolling when there are at least a few initial likes. Professional Organizations Employees YOUR BRAND Customers Family Request that employees and colleagues like and interact with the new page through their personal profiles. Consider sending communications to any professional organizations you are a member of informing them of the new page and requesting that they like it. Send an email announcement to your current customer email list announcing the launch of the new page, or include an announcement in your e-newsletter. Invite current customers to visit and like the page. Add an icon to your website that links to your new Facebook Business Page. Add an icon to your email signature that links to your new Facebook Business Page. Consider using purchased content (Sponsored Stories, Promoted Posts or Facebook Ads) to drive people to your page and encourage them to like it (We will discuss purchased content later in this guide). Consider running a contest or promotion to drive people to your page and encourage people to like it (We will discuss contest and promotions in more detail later in this guide). When you have more than 25 likes on your new page, you can claim a unique Facebook URL for your page that is easy to share and is branded to your company. Visit http://www.facebook. com/help/?page=174999945886703 to learn more about registering your username for your Business Page. Are you suffering from writer s block? Writing good quality Facebook posts every day is harder than it looks! Fruition s master copywriters can help you write good quality, shareable content and help you develop an ongoing content writing strategy for the future. Audience Building - Facebook Best Practices Guide
PROMOTING ENGAGEMENT Promote Likes Now that you have built an audience on your Business Page, it s time to focus on engaging them. In order to effectively reach your audience, you must encourage them to like, comment, share and interact with your posts. This will ensure that your content is seen in the future, and will help your website s search engine ranking. It also fosters goodwill among your audience and will position you as a caring, knowledgeable and active social media personality. Facebook also uses fan engagement to determine how often your posts appear in your fans newsfeeds, or their Facebook home pages. The more engagement you receive on your posts, the more likely others are to see your content, so it is worth spending time to create highly engaging content. * Focus on information your audience will find relevant or helpful. Pushing marketing messages is fine some of the time, but your audience will quickly tune out if you do not provide other useful information as well. * Share industry news, current events and local trends, and show how they are connected to your business. * * Ask questions and request customer feedback and reviews. Consider the demographic of the audience you are reaching out to, and create content that will resonate with that demographic. * Offer Facebook-only deals, promotions and information to make your audience feel valued. * Develop your business personality and voice, and make it clear that there is an actual person behind the Facebook presence. * Respond promptly and genuinely to customer questions, complaints and feedback. * Determine the best time of day to post your content. If your content does not receive likes, comments or shares within a half an hour, consider deleting it and reposting the content at another time of day when there may be better traffic. Did you know you can integrate several types of share buttons, comment feeds, content feeds, and more into your business website or blog? Our website designers at Fruition are experts in integrating social media into your website seamlessly. Tip: To like and comment on other Facebook business pages, you can choose to use Facebook as your business page. To do this, choose use Facebook as (business page) from the Edit Page dropdown menu in your admin panel. This will allow you to interact on Facebook as your business page and tag other businesses in your posts. Promoting Engagement - Facebook Best Practices Guide
PAID CONTENT Facebook offers three ways to promote your content through paid platforms. You can find more information on Facebook s paid content options here: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=195623423828629&ref=hcnav Facebook Ads Running a Facebook ad campaign is a good way to bring visibility to your page. Facebook ads can be targeted to specific demographic- and location-based criteria, and you can decide how much you want to pay daily or for the life of the campaign. If your Business page needs a bit of a boost to get your likes up, this can be a good strategy. Targeting friends of people who have already liked your page is usually a good return on investment. You can choose to pay per click or per impression. Sponsored Stories Creating a Sponsored Story is a good way to get a specific piece of Facebook content seen by many people, and can drive likes and engagement on your page. Sponsored Stories display in the same space as Facebook Ads, and can be targeted to specific demographics and locations. You can choose to target people who have not already liked your page, people who have liked your page, or friends of people who have liked your page, similar to Facebook Ads. You can choose to pay per click or per impression. Promoted Posts The Promoted Post service is available to pages with between 400 and 100,000 likes, and is a good way to ensure your fans see a specific post. Facebook uses a specific algorithm to determine which of your posts display in your fans newsfeeds, or their Facebook home page. Using the Promoted Post feature will ensure that your post displays in the newsfeeds (not the ad space) of all the people who have liked your page. You can set your budget to any amount. Generally, the higher dollar amount you select, the more people will see your post in their newsfeeds. You can display a Promoted Post for up to three days. Promoted Posts can be targeted to people in specific locations, which is useful if you are running a locationspecific deal or promotion. More information is available at http://www.facebook.com/help/promote/ So many Facebook ads flop because the ad content and images aren t eye-catching. Fruition s team of designers and writers can create ads for you that are sure to leave an impression. Paid Content - Facebook Best Practices Guide
Facebook Offers Facebook Offers are an excellent way to convert your audience into paying customers, and grow your audience base. Offers are available to pages with more than 400 likes and work similarly to an online coupon. People who claim your offer can use it either in your store or on your website (with an optional discount code) in order to receive discounted products or services. You may run your business page s first offer for free, but after the free trial you must pay to promote the post and get it seen by your targeted audience, similarly to a Facebook ad. Costs vary depending on the number of people you hope to reach, and on the number of likes your page has. When an audience member claims a Facebook offer, their action is shared with their friends, increasing the social sharing impact and awareness of your brand. To learn more about Facebook Offers, visit: http://www.facebook.com/help/offers CONTESTS & PROMOTIONS Contests and promotions are an excellent way to drive new likes and engagement on your page. Contests can include sweepstakes, photo contests, scavenger hunts, or basically anything you can dream up. Promotions can include coupons, Facebookonly deals or other specials. There are many restrictions on how you can utilize contests and promotions on Facebook. The entire list can be found at http://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines. php#promotionsguidelines You must use third-party apps to run all contests and promotions. This means you must utilize development platforms such as ShortStack or WooBox, or create your own third-party application. You may not use Facebook s functionalities to administer your contest. For instance, you may not ask your fans to take any action, such as commenting on a photo or liking a post, to enter the contest or utilize the promotion. However, you are allowed to ask people to like your page to enter the contest, or utilize a promotion. You may not announce contest winners via Facebook. You must acknowledge that your contest is not in any way sponsored, endorsed or administered by Facebook. If you decide to run a contest or promotion, you ll want to get the word out everywhere even on your website, blog, newsletter, and other social media accounts. Make sure all your bases are covered Fruition can guide you through all the best practices for contests and promotions.
Some best practices for running contests & promotions on Facebook: Create specific goals for your contest or promotion. You can create contests to drive audience-building efforts, lead generation, website traffic, newsletter signup and more. Make sure your efforts will support your goals and keep track of your progress. Give away a high-value prize. If you are asking people to take an action, enter the contest and participate, make sure you are offering something worthwhile and high-quality. The prize should ideally be associated with your business, or the theme of the contest, or you can offer free product or services. Consider giving away a coupon to all entrants to drive entry traffic. Consider creating Facebook-only offers and promotions This will encourage your current customers to interact on your page. Like-gate your contests and promotions. Most app development programs will allow you to create contests and promotions that are only available to people who have liked your page. This will help drive audience-building efforts. Include a call-to-action in your contest, such as Click Here to Enter, Like Our Page to Enter, or View the Gallery. This will allow you to track the actions users take on your contest page. Create official contest rules that are specific to your location. Many states have unique rules that govern contests and sweepstakes, so you will want to make sure you comply with them. There are many free online services that will help you develop official rules for your contest. If you really want to get people excited about your contest, make a short, energetic video about it - including the rules, prizes, and why you re running the contest. Fruition can help you plan out and implement your promotional video to get the most impact.
ANALYTICS Facebook offers many tools that you can use to gauge how effective your strategies are. The good news is you don t have to be too technically sophisticated to figure them out, but you do need to be vigilant about monitoring them, and flexible enough to change things as you go along. You can access Facebook s analytics via your admin panel. Click See All in the Insights Section of the admin panel to access all available analytics. You may only access full analytics for your page when you have more than 30 likes. For detailed information on how to use the analytics tool, and what sort of information you can find there, download the Facebook Page Insights Guide PDF at: http://ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/ FacebookAds/Page_Insights_en_US.pdf If you don t have time to monitor your Facebook analytics, let Fruition do it! We can gather your analytics data and translate that into plain English, giving you suggestions about what s working, what s not, and what you should do best to maximize your effort. Analytics - Facebook Best Practices Guide
You can use your page insights to fine-tune your content & messaging: Gain knowledge about your audience. Facebook insights can tell you who is liking your page, where they are located and their basic demographics. Use this knowledge to reach out to those who are engaging with your page by using messaging that appeals to them. Or if you are not hitting your target market, consider how you can reach out to a different demographic and encourage them to like and interact with your page. Analytics Continued - Facebook Best Practices Guide
Monitor the success of your content. Facebook insights will show you the performance of each post you have made on your page, and how people have interacted with it. You can use this information to make decisions about what time of day to post content, what messaging is most successful with your audience, and how people tend to interact with your content (like, comment or share). If you notice a trend among your successful posts, try to duplicate the style or content of those posts to encourage more audience interaction. Analytics Continued - Facebook Best Practices Guide
You can also monitor how your posts correlate with your overall reach (how many people see your posts). Use your insights to tailor your content and see reach increase over time. This is a great way to justify investing time in social media the more people see your messaging, the more people are being reminded of your brand every day. Analytics Continued - Facebook Best Practices Guide
Insights will also allow you to see how people find your page, and which sites are acting as your external referrers. This will help you track traffic and see how successful your audience-building techniques have been on various platforms. You can also monitor where your new likes are coming from (your page, Facebook ads, newsfeed, etc.), allowing you to tailor your audience building strategies. You can also track what sections of your page your audience is viewing. This is a good way to monitor how many people are viewing custom tabs, contests or third- party apps on your page. If you plan on involving your staff in your social media, it s best to develop a Terms of Use Guide, or a Social Media Branding Guide to make sure everyone is on the same page and no one posts something you don t like. Fruition can help you determine what you and your staff should do to make your online PR and branding clear and concise. Analytics Continued - Facebook Best Practices Guide
RESOURCES Unofficial Facebook Blog news and marketing information: AllFacebook.com Mashable s Facebook Guidebook: http://mashable.com/guidebook/facebook/ For help on your Facebook marketing contact FRUITION at 303.395.1880 or at http://facebook.com/fruition Do you still have questions, or are you feeling overwhelmed? Don t let that get in your way! Call Fruition today and we can help you set up, manage, and design your Facebook account so you know it s done right. Resources - Facebook Best Practices Guide