How's Your FaceBook Working for you!??!

11/08/2012 07:06:00 AM Master Marketing , Money leveraging 0 Comments

Many businesses rely on Facebook as the cornerstone to their social media-marketing plan. But there are still many business owners who aren’t getting the hoped-for results from the social network.

There are several reasons why this is happening. When you know what obstacles you are facing, it will be easy to come up with solutions and start seeing better results with your Facebook page.

• You don’t know EdgeRank.

EdgeRank is Facebook’s own algorithm that was developed to determine what content is displayed, when and where, on your followers’ new feeds. The score is comprised of several factors based on how much interaction your posts generate with your fans. That is, how often they ‘like’ and leave comments on your posts, photos and videos.

The deciding elements are time decay, weight, and affinity.

• Time Decay: How long your content has been posted. The longer it has been posted, the less value it has. For this reason, you want to make sure you get a lot of interaction quickly to keep it in the news feed.

• Weight: Each action (like, comment, share) has its own “weight” with some having more than others (like < comment).

• Affinity: Depends on the interaction with your brand. If a user engages with your posts regularly by leaving comments and ‘likes,’ then your content will appear in their news feed regularly.

This is why it is important to stay on top of your Facebook Insights. When you look and see what types of posts have been the most popular (photos versus text), you will be able to curate your content to match what works best. You can also look at what time of day your content gets the most response and set your social media posting accordingly.

• Most of your fans look but don’t touch.

What this means is, for the most part, your fans are not interacting with you on Facebook. They will scan over your post and keep scrolling without so much as a ‘like,’ let alone a comment.

It could be their attention was immediately drawn somewhere else. If that is the case, you need to do something to shake things up a bit. If your text posts aren’t getting much of a response, try using an attention-grabbing image in your post or a short video.

People online do not have a long attention span, so it is important to get them to notice you quickly. Try writing some headlines that sound enticing. Ask a specific question and encourage their answers. Hold contests and offer prizes.

Find out what makes them engage with you and stick with it.

• You’re not using Facebook Ads, Offers and Promoted Posts.

Facebook now offers promoted posts that guarantee your post will reach a large number of your followers. You can also pay for a Facebook ad that will be on the sidebar of Facebook News Feeds to help reach more people.

Facebook Offers are a great way to get more people to try your products and services. You can post an offer giving away an item to the first 100 people to claim the offer in store or online.

With an offer, anyone who claims it will have it appear in their news feed, sharing it with all of his or her own Facebook circle. That means more people taking notice of you and your brand.

• You don’t have a clear strategy.

With social media, you cannot just post and wait for things to happen. It’s important to continue to engage your fans. Discover what they like to talk about, what they think is important and use it to write posts strategically. If you know you get more reactions with photos, make sure you are including them often.

To be successful in social media, you need to have a plan. Do your research into what topics are trending. Keep an eye on your Insights to make sure you are getting the interaction you want. Make changes as necessary to your content in order to keep your fans engaged.

What have you done to get more results from Facebook? How are you getting creative to boost your fan base?