Facebook Best Practices
A Guide to Facebook Best Practices
So, you have a Facebook Fan Page or you are thinking about creating one, but you are wondering what are the Facebook best practices when it’s comes to building your business on Facebook. While there aren’t any hard core rules there are some general best practices that any business should be aware of. Bottom line is you will have to test and analyze your own results to determine what works best for your business.
The most successful brands on Facebook DO NOT preach or sell their products to their fans, they engage their fans in conversation. Think about how annoying it is when you walk by a store and you are immediately pitched on the latest and greatest product. The same happens on Facebook and you shouldn’t being pitching your product to every person that walks past your store.
Individuals are looking for someone who is genuine and interested in understanding their needs. They want people who are helpful in finding a solution to their needs, just like in the real world.
So what are some of the Facebook Best Practices to posting on your Fan Page? Below are some of the general rules I like to follow:
- Post everyday – Meaning post a status update every single day. With Facebook’s EdgeRank and people making more friends, liking more pages everyday, your post might get missed. If you only post once a week or maybe even twice a week the chances of your update getting seen by your fans is practically slim to none. A good rule of thumb is to post 3-5 times a day to your Facebook Fan Page. Pay attention to your statistics so you can decide what time of day gets you the best results when you post.
- Engagement – Remember to focus your efforts on engagement with your fans. Your goal is to connect with your fans and get a response from your fans. Some great engagement examples are posting helpful tips, asking questions (use the question status update function), links to articles, contests, videos, and pictures. Take your posts a step further and give them a call to action to encourage feedback, their opinion, ask your audience to “like” the post or “share” the post. Remember you want your audience to be engaged in conversation with your page. By doing so you develop a deeper relationship with your fans and in the long run they will come to know you and trust who you are. Ultimately by having this comfortable trusting relationship with your audience you will be able to sell more of your products on the back end. Taking your posting further by not just posting 3-5 times a days, but always remember to follow up on responses from your audience on your posts.
- Don’t sell – As mentioned in the beginning of this article no one likes to be pitched or sold. This is not saying never sale. I recommend offering something for sale once out of every 20-25 posts, just make sure you are giving value behind that sales offer. Which means take time to tell your audience about the product you are offering, how you are actually using the product, and why you think they should check it out also. If you have built up a trusted relationship with your audience, they will likely want to check out what it is you are finding of value that they should also check out.
- Have fun – Facebook is a social networking community and people are there to have fun, not just conduct business. Remember to stay true to your brand and not air out your dirty laundry, but feel free to let your hair down and have some fun too.
These Facebook best practices are just a good starting point. Facebook for Business is a great Facebook site for further help in the area of building your business online with Facebook. Don’t be afraid to test out your own practices to see what works for your business and what does not. Again it’s really all about engagement, having fun, and providing amazing value to your audience.
