Facebook — sorry, Meta — has been in the news a lot recently. The coverage…hasn’t been good.
It’s true that Facebook has a lot to answer for. And it’s true that many former users are voting with their feet and ditching the platform, moving to alternatives without so much baggage.
And yet. And yet. The company formerly known as Facebook, which we’ll refer to here as “Facebook” for familiarity’s sake, remains the most popular social media property in the Western Hemisphere. It’s the place where millions of people base their digital lives.
In many parts of the world, Facebook is the most important ecommerce platform around, a place where — as Facebook’s outages earlier this year demonstrate — countless small merchants advertise and process transactions.
Your business probably can’t afford to ignore Facebook completely, at least not yet. Which means your business needs to have a Facebook marketing strategy, a framework for branding your company and products on this ever-popular platform.
Despite everything that has happened, these seven Facebook branding strategies still work. Why not give them a try this year?
- Add Social Sharing Buttons to Your Website
This is a general social media marketing tip. However, since statistical reality suggests more of your prospects and customers will share content on Facebook than any other social media property, it has the most potential impact there.
Make sure your website’s social sharing buttons are displayed where they’re easy to see and utilize. Add a short and clear prompt (a call to action) that encourages visitors to use the buttons to share content; otherwise, some might not realize they’re not just static images.
- Syndicate High-Value Content on Facebook
Even if your page doesn’t have a lot of followers, your Facebook content could show up in a lot of feeds. If you have content that you’d like Web users to see, you need to share it on Facebook.
It sounds like a lot of work to create original content for Facebook, and it is. While you can’t avoid some of that, you can take a shortcut: editing and republishing content on Facebook that has already appeared elsewhere.
This is known as syndication, and you can see examples of it everywhere once you know what to look for. For example, this Facebook page for Yieldstreet, an investment platform, features audio snippets and imagery from Yieldstreet’s popular podcast.
- Use Facebook to Run Contests (Or Just Give Away Prizes)
Because Facebook is so popular, it’s a good place to begin running contests and giveaways. You’ll generate more engagement here than on more niche social media sites like Pinterest.
Your prizes don’t need to be overly generous. They just need to be enticing enough to encourage contestants to get off the sidelines and enter. Remember, the more people who enter, the more people you can add to your marketing list afterward.
- Run Weekly Polls From Your Facebook Page
Facebook polling is another easy way to drive customer engagement at relatively low cost. Run a weekly poll on a topic that you know is relevant to your audience and brand. Base it around a simple question that you genuinely want to know the answer to. While your results won’t be scientific, they may help you see your audience in a new light or give you an idea for a solution that you hadn’t previously considered.
- Post Educational Infographics to Your Facebook Page
Text-only Facebook pages don’t cut it anymore. To stand out from the crowd, you need to create and share multimedia content that informs and delights your audience.
Infographics straddle the line between text and multimedia. Use Canva or one of its competitors to create attractive, informative infographics with no coding or graphic design expertise required. Post at least one per week, perhaps incorporating the results of your periodic Facebook polls.
- Start a Facebook Group and Make It Best-in-Class
If you’re having trouble finding a Facebook community that really fits your audience or brand, maybe it doesn’t exist yet. Even if it does, maybe you can do better.
That’s what Facebook groups are for. But if you’re going through the trouble of creating a new online home for your prospects, you do need to make it best-in-class. That means devoting hours each week to attracting new prospects and keeping them entertained.
Your Customers Live on Facebook
A lot has changed in the Facebook ecosystem. Soon enough, we won’t refer to it as the Facebook ecosystem at all. We’ll call it the Metasystem, or something.
But that’s a conversation for another day. Today and tomorrow, your customers continue to live, work, and play (digitally) on Facebook. And so you need to keep reaching out to them there, no matter how dated the platform feels.
These seven strategies will help with that outreach. Keep at them.
