A guide to effective work for a company on Facebook: choosing a platform (personal page, group or company page), content strategy, news feed generation algorithm, paid promotion and performance tracking.
Facebook and its Instagram, Whatsapp, Messenger are probably the only Internet holding that still has room to grow in terms of the Russian audience. According to Mediascope, in August 2017, Facebook services were used on mobile phones on the RuNet more than Yandex services:
Facebook has its own laws for creating a user’s personal news feed, which makes business promotion more difficult than on the usual VKontakte or Instagram. But once you understand them, start following the trends, and running effective SMM for your business will become easier and much more enjoyable.
How a business can be promoted on Facebook
As in VKontakte, you can create for a company:
- group,
- public page,
- or sell using personal account.
Only if in VK posts from groups and public pages are shown in one news feed, then on Facebook the content of a group can only be seen by logging into it or seeing a notification about a new post. Only public pages have meaningful statistics on Facebook, groups have slightly less statistics, and personal accounts do not have them at all, while on VK even regular user, if he has more than 100 subscribers.
Bot or personal brand: how to use a personal account for promotion
You can use your personal page for marketing purposes, but you need to remember:
Promotion using a personal account - good tool, if you have your own business, you have the time and desire to invest effort in developing your pages, and, of course, if you have a wide target audience. If promotion is carried out by a hired employee in his account or bot, there is a big risk that when he leaves, he will not give up his page, which means you will be left with nothing. Moreover, it is inappropriate to promote specific products and services in personal account- for this purpose it is better to create a group or public page.
Facebook group (thematic community)
For a group to become “live”, you need to spend a lot of time and effort (encouraging user activity, provoking discussions on the topic, making sure there is no spam or flooding), but it’s worth it - a loyal community can exist on its own for a long time, and the brand can successfully use this platform to promote your products or services. When developing a group, follow simple rules:
- Don't name the group after the company - it's off-putting. The name should reflect the essence of the community. Successful examples: Mozzarella Lovers Club (for a cheese manufacturer), Motorists of Moscow (for a network of car service stations), All about Finland (for a guide to Finland).
- Don't add your friends to the group without permission - it will cause negativity. Particularly irritable friends will add you in response to the “Group for those who are annoyed when they are added to groups” (such groups on Facebook are also There is).
- Make good content yourself and involve members in the life of the community (motivate them to participate in discussions and post). High-quality UGC (user generated content), presence in a group of experts and the opportunity to communicate with like-minded people - these are three components of success for a community.
- Encourage the activity of participants - choose community moderators among them, give prizes to the best, organize events (online and offline) only for participants. This will create the desired “closed club” atmosphere.
- Do not overuse advertising posts. Experiment with ad formats to avoid boring participants.
Even if you have a group, you can’t do without a public page. From Facebook groups, unlike company pages, limited opportunities:
- the group cannot be promoted with paid advertising;
- You cannot write on behalf of the company in the group;
- You cannot send a message to a group;
- You cannot add product cards to a group;
- posts from the group do not appear in the news feed.
Do not start a group if you are not sure that you are ready to support it at the very beginning without any obvious effect - for faster promotion, albeit with a short-term effect, it is better to use the company page.
Company page: design and content
A company page can profitably complement a group, or it can even replace it if you don’t have the resources to develop the community - after all, this is not a quick or easy process. A public page is the most understandable tool for promoting a brand on Facebook, the result of which is the right approach visible immediately.
Public pages have several sections (tabs) - photos/videos, events, a store with goods, reviews, special offers... Facebook has developed standard design options for public pages for different types business - combinations of tabs and buttons for companies, restaurants, sites, non-profit organizations and politicians. For example, a store template highlights important points for the page visitor - reviews, a display case with goods, special offers.
Designer clothing store page Maskovna store well designed: there is everything a customer needs (reviews, photos, showcase), and even more - events and a newsletter subscription. The video cover perfectly complements the page content. Products from the store are attached to the posts:
The product card, like in an online store, contains all the information, and the order button leads the user to the site. This format is suitable for small stores with an assortment of about 100 items.
Be sure to use all the design options for the brand page - this will make the page more interesting, and the user will probably linger on it. Add a call to action button to your page.
The conference page invites you to register for the event.
Facebook offers several call to action button options:
“Book”, “Make an order”, “Call”, “Get a price”, “Watch a video”, “Go to the store”, etc.
Don't forget about a unique page address where your page will be easy to find. Ideally, the addresses in all social networks will be the same, because:
You can change the unique page address only once.
Facebook Public Page Settings That Are Not Easily Findable
There are dozens of guides on how to run a brand page on Facebook, but let’s focus on the most important rules:
- You don't need to publish three posts a day when you have time and then disappear for a week. It's best to schedule these three posts a week in advance.
- Each post should work to promote the company and contain a call to action - comment, like, follow a link, buy, write a message - the more subscribers interact with your page, the more chances you have to get into their feed with your next posts.
The Invisible wine service conducts simple activities for subscribers. The costs of such mini-competitions are minimal. - Use videos or gifs to illustrate your posts - no one likes to read a lot. Upload videos directly to Facebook ( under no circumstances on Youtube or Vimeo) and attach a file with subtitles - they will be shown if the user watches the video without sound. A file with subtitles can be attached both when uploading a video and at any time after publication.
- Promptly respond to the page’s personal messages, this will motivate a person to write to you (and generally respond - a company must respond to 90% of messages in order to be recognized as “very actively responding” and given a green “online” badge). For example, Tinkoff Bank responds to messages very quickly, even if you miss the chat.
- Make your posts mobile-friendly, especially if you use ad layouts with text. Post Becherovka plays well with the gif, turning it into fortune telling. But the GIF tag is on mobile devices covers part of the text.
- Go live - you can discuss an important topic with your subscribers, arrange a meeting with an expert who will answer questions, broadcast from an interesting event, hold a competition or prize draw, present a new product. Announce the live broadcast in advance so that viewers have time to tune in. For example, Lancome invited subscribers to an online broadcast of a party with stars in an email newsletter.
- Develop a publishing plan to make it easier for you to work with page content. Think over possible topics and formats of posts, collect information, photos/videos for posts in a document in Google docs or in notes on a smartphone. Write your posts in advance and schedule their publication a week in advance.
- Pin the most relevant or popular post to the top of the page to focus the visitor's attention on the information you need.
- Respond to comments, especially negative ones, promptly, politely and to the point. It sounds trivial, but many people fail to cope with this.
Of course, it's bad that Facebook does this. On the other hand, this should motivate brands to create quality content - one that subscribers will be interested in interacting with.
Facebook Advertising
- Before setting up and launching advertising, study Advertising Rules And Terms of Use Facebook. There is nothing supernatural about them, but this will help you avoid getting your account blocked: for example, on Facebook it is prohibited to use images in advertising that hint at the user’s excess weight. Such advertising may undergo automatic moderation, but moderators may detect a violation of the rules and ban the advertising account.
- Do not run ads from another country and Crimea (for obvious reasons).
- Do not add other people to your advertising account unless absolutely necessary - if their account is blocked for violating the rules, then you will also be at risk, even if you are not guilty of anything.
Facebook Messenger: Why It's Important
Communication between Internet users is rapidly flowing into instant messengers, and social networks are trying their best to keep up with this trend. Odnoklassniki has TamTam, VKontakte has VK messenger, and Facebook is developing Facebook Messenger. And there are also the familiar Whatsapp, Viber, Telegram.
For brands today, the messenger is both the first point of contact with the client and long-term communication. Writing to a company messenger is now as quick and easy as writing to a friend - why not use it? To promote in the messenger, you can use a chatbot or organize live user support with the help of managers.
Chatbots can take over most of the communication with a brand’s audience:
Of course, not all tasks can be handled by bots. Many service companies (Tele2, Onetwotrip, etc.) provide technical support in instant messengers, and this is much more convenient for everyone compared to support on websites and in mobile applications:
- clients receive answers where it is convenient for them, and in the next difficult situation they will not have the thought of writing to other places (the messenger is always on the smartphone, and you can quickly write to the company and just as quickly get an answer - why do we need other tools?);
- Managers using communication logs in the messenger can see the entire history of interaction with the client.
All the information that previously had to be accumulated from comments on posts on social networks, letters and personal messages in order to work with the client as efficiently as possible is collected in one messenger chat.
Messengers are certainly promising for sales, the main thing is to motivate a person to write to the company. Further sales are a matter of technique (that is, the skill of the client manager).
If you don’t feel comfortable looking at FB messenger all the time, you can use the Callibri multi-widget. Then you can keep only the Callibri tab open, and in it communicate with those who wrote not only in Facebook messenger, but also in VK, Odnoklassniki, Telegram or Viber.
The Callibri widget eliminates the problem when the user has forgotten about the open chat or does not want to be on the site to get an answer to his question
As soon as a person chooses where to get an answer, information about his page on a social network or nickname in the messenger ends up in the client’s card, where other information is also accumulated, automatically or manually by the manager (source of transition to the site, region, phone number, mail address). For the manager, correspondence with the client is collected in one window:
This can be used not only for consultations and the first sale, informing the client about the status of the order and discussing details with him, but also in the future for communication with the client - when you need to remind him of the need to make subscription fee, offer additional services, etc. From the dialogue, it’s very easy to create a task with a deadline for the client - call back, discuss a discount, renew the contract - whatever.
The widget combines all requests to the company in one window and allows you to conveniently work with requests - since everything is collected in one place, nothing will be lost, you can distribute dialogues among managers and control their work. Clients can communicate directly with the sales department, bypassing page admins, who, as a rule, do not provide advice on the product.
How to promote on Facebook if your budget is limited
SMM is now at the peak of popularity - hundreds of agencies and freelancers offer promotion services in social networks. Everyone has different approaches: some give guarantees of sales, others promise coverage target audience, but often SMM costs are not justified due to the fact that contractors are not sufficiently involved in the life of the company and even mislead customers, and customers expect quick results from social networks and are not ready to work with feedback(negative, questions from subscribers and clients). You can promote on Facebook with a minimal budget. How to achieve this:
- Maintain a page within the company. Only you or your employees can correctly talk about a product or service, answer questions, quickly photograph production, get expert commentary - in a word, create content.
- Don't chase quantity. For successful SMM it is not necessary to post three posts a day - even three posts a week is enough. Just don’t forget to work with comments and personal messages from subscribers.
- Invest in promoting posts. Launch targeted advertising - look for the right audience by geolocation, interests, age and many other socio-demographic interests. Captivating publications that are often clicked on can bring visitors to your site for 3-7 rubles/click.
- Track promotion effectiveness. Use it in the links you provide in posts and monitor the conversion in Yandex.Metrica and Google Analytics. By looking at the results of SMM on Facebook, you can understand whether it is worth investing money and effort into this advertising tool.
SMM on Facebook: useful links
- Facebook Page Manager- mobile application for management public pages for Android and iOS.
- Facebook Ads Manager- mobile application for managing advertising for
), and also talked about promoting the site on social networks (SMM and SMO). Moreover last method is gaining more and more popularity.
The audience of social networks is huge and it would be a mistake not to try to use it for your benefit. Why? Because when working with social networks, you get direct contact (in fact, a trusting relationship) with your target audience (without impurities), which significantly increases the likelihood that they will become your clients. Another thing is that implementing all this in practice is not always easy.
With today’s article I just want to start a series of publications on the topic of promoting your business (commercial website) using SMM and SMO. Let's start with, which, although inferior to VKontakte in terms of the size of the Russian-speaking audience, is superior in quality. We will talk about creating business pages on Facebook, about attracting an audience, about advertising, filling pages and much more.
What exactly can you promote on Facebook?
Let's talk a little about that first... why Facebook? In RuNet, the monthly audience of this social network is about twenty to thirty million users per month. This is approximately two times less than the VKontakte audience, but the figure itself is simply huge. At the same time, the age of the vast majority of users of this social network (more than three quarters) falls within the range of eighteen to forty-five years (the average for RuNet is about thirty years).
And this is a very active audience with money (managers, entrepreneurs, etc. people who are ready to discuss business issues, and not show off and assert themselves). Registration on Facebook is allowed only from the age of 13, and at the same time there is no such popular type of content on VKontakte as “free” films and music (meaning a ban on uploading such content to the social network itself), which is loved by “schoolboys” who have no prospects for business .
Content of this social network in RuNet it is approximately equally represented by entertaining and educational (intellectual) information. In connection with all of the above, it turns out that the average solvency of a Facebook user is higher than in other popular social networks on the Runet (Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki, etc.). Well, besides this, the functionality of this social network is very high, and it can be used to solve many different problems (as a replacement for a blog or website, as an online store, geolocation in mobile applications, etc.).
Those posts that generate the greatest response in the form of likes, comments and shares contribute to the influx of new users, most likely from your target audience. It is called viral effect, when popularity begins to grow like a snowball. Both entertaining and educational posts can go viral.
The opposite situation is also possible, when the content on your business page is not interesting, then it will not receive any development, and you, accordingly, will receive additional profit.
Previously, this could be abused even more (I don’t remember the details, but such a plug could, in my opinion, be hung on the BS itself, and not on the application button) and gain likes quite quickly. I think it still works well.
You can create an application with a title, for example, “Free video course”, and your page will be liked in order to gain access to it (the game from the user’s point of view is worth the candle). Moreover, then you can become even more impudent and offer to receive a video course by email, which will also allow you to collect an Email database (i.e. kill two birds with one stone - likes plus subscribers).
You can use tabs (application areas) to organize competitions or quizzes to again collect a subscriber base. On the other hand, you can use the application to create an online store based on Facebook a (with product cards, basket and other paraphernalia). Moreover, such applications will not necessarily be paid.
How and why to promote a business page on Facebook?
To do this, you can use both paid and free methods. Let's start with free, although not free, because you still have to work.
In addition, there are paid promotion methods your BS on Facebook:
- Targeted advertising on this social network - in the news feed or in the right column. In the first case, your advertising post will be shown in users’ news feeds, and in the second case, the advertisement you created will be shown in the right column of the interface of the window of this social network.
- You can give money not to Facebook, but to a specific owner of a community that interests you. He will publish the post you need on his page or in the desired group. This could be a regular post with information about your BS, or, for example, they publish some interesting information as an advertisement (the same tests or an announcement of free courses), and already on the landing page (tab of your BS) to satisfy interest the user must like your business page (this way you can gain a lot of fans with one advertising publication).
Classical example of making money on Facebook looks like that:
- You create a BS and a series of tabs on which you place something desired (free or interesting). But you can only get access to this coveted item by liking the page and sending you your Email address (through the form available on the tab, for example).
- Next, you inflate the budget into advertising your business page (through targeting or directly in communities). This stimulates the influx of visitors to your BS, which leads to an increase in the number of its fans and email subscribers.
- Then you send in emails everything you promised (for example, a free video course, a discount coupon, etc.). Well, only then can you start slowly sending letters with various “indecent” offers that have the idea of making money from this user. Those. you lure him, and only then, using the method of “social engineering”, persuade him to cooperate (feed him and only then set the hook).
- You again invest part of the profit received in advertising your BS on Facebook and continue this in a circle until you get tired of it.
- Naturally, interesting and useful publications for your target audience should regularly appear on your BS. This will allow you to increase the number of subscribers and fans. in a natural way, i.e. no additional advertising costs. Although, it is possible that you will entrust filling the business page to a contractor who will have to pay for it. In any case, this increases trust and, as a result, improves the conversion of users of your BS into clients of your business (the feeling of being scammed is reduced).
But this, of course, is not the only way. Your Facebook business page can solve, for example, the following tasks:
- Attracting additional traffic to your website (commercial or informational)
- Receiving additional sales directly from the BS or again by attracting traffic to your online store
- Increasing the popularity and recognition of your brand is only relevant for large companies.
To achieve your goals you will have to regularly do the following(or entrust them to a specially trained person):
- First you need to create and properly design your BS
- Analyze your future potential target audience and understand what content they will need to provide
- Promote it daily using both paid and free methods
- Fill your page daily with new and interesting materials for your target audience. This is great for you, which helps you set up scheduled publications on many social networks, including Facebook.
- Answer questions asked daily (in comments and personal messages), and also periodically get creative with competitions, tests, etc. things.
- Read the news on your competitors’ BS every day for “inspiration” and get new ideas (adopt positive experiences and not repeat their mistakes)
- Monitor statistics daily to quickly make adjustments to purchased advertising
Everything we talked about today is, of course, general words and pure theory, but it doesn’t cost us anything go directly to practice, which we will not be able to do in the next publication of this section.
The best way to bring people together on Facebook is to create a Page or Group. However, simply creating a community is not enough. You need to tell your target audience about it. Many people think that promoting a group is simple, but in fact it is a very complex process that requires time and sometimes even money. We will talk about the features of promotion within Facebook in this article.
Do I need to promote Groups?
On a social network you can find two categories of communities – Pages and Groups. The first are open fan publics, which can be accessed even by people who are not registered on the social network. The purpose of Pages is to expand the audience as much as possible and attract as much attention as possible to the products or services being promoted.
To expand your audience and increase the number of subscribers, you can use online service for promotion on Facebook – Soclike.ru. Also, using of this service, you can increase likes on your publications and make friends on your account.
With Groups the situation is completely different. For the most part, they are created for isolation Facebook users, united by one or another topic. Most often, they launch closed or secret Groups, which can only be joined by invitation and approval of administrators. In essence, they are VIP clubs, access to which is strictly limited by privacy settings. Naturally, in these cases there is no point in talking about promotion - why advertise something that is planned to be kept secret?
However, there are often cases when brand owners still decide to create a Group, and not just a Fan Page. This is done, first of all, to ensure clear control over all actions that occur within the community. Excessive openness of public pages sometimes leads to the creation of chaos, and the classic Groups option will help to avoid this.
Promotion methods
It is clear that the promotion of any community occurs according to schemes known to all. In any case, if we are talking about small public spaces, the owners of which do not plan to invest additional money on advertising. It all starts with the banal sending of invitations to all your Friends. Moreover, we are talking not only about Facebook users, but also about all available contact lists, incl. recipients in e-mail.
As a rule, the majority accepts the offer to join the Group. Some for the reason that she really seems interesting to them. Some out of solidarity. The reasons are no longer so important; what is important is the fact that these people create a primary audience that attracts new visitors in the future.
This leads to the “golden” rule of Group promotion: current community members attract new members. And this is quite understandable. Surely, you will be more interested in a public page in which hundreds, thousands of other Facebook users have already shown interest. People simply have the classic crowd instinct to see what is so unusual that could attract the attention of so many people. Accordingly, the primary task of the owner of a new community comes down to finding and attracting new members.
The process may include the following methods:
- Direct invitations. If your list of Friends is expanding, you need to take the opportunity and invite them to your Group. The method is tedious and time-consuming, but the results are definitely worth the effort.
- Help from third party services. We are talking about sites known to many, where new participants can be “purchased” for a purely symbolic amount. In this case, large costs are not expected, but you should not abuse this method, since blocking by the Facebook system is possible. And the users of the social network themselves may be confused by the activity of sometimes openly fake participants. Lack of trust in the Group will ultimately backfire.
- Advertising. We can talk a lot about this direction for a long time, since it is the main one when promoting communities on Facebook.
Effective advertising
Having created a Group and realizing the urgent need to expand your audience, you will definitely eventually come to use advertising services.
In most cases, the creators of Groups promote them themselves. However, sometimes it makes sense to turn to professionals. Still, you need to understand that SMM is a full-fledged field of activity, which includes specialists with the necessary knowledge and skills. The work of professionals will definitely be more effective.
And, of course, also think about creating Fan Pages. If you plan to promote your brand on a large scale, such publics will attract a much larger audience than standard Groups.