Research compiled by Zephoria shows that 42 percent of marketers say using Facebook is critical or important to their business. Moreover, Facebook reported more than 30 million active small business pages in June of 2014. However, people soon learn that just setting up a page isn’t enough; pages need to be active to make a real difference. Faced with this challenge, many business owners choose to be more conservative with their posts, but in doing so, fail to engage and interact with their potential customers.
As a business, connecting with an audience is not as difficult as it might seem. Mashable reports that approximately 70 percent of Facebook’s monthly active users in North America are connected to a local business on the site. To help you navigate the waters, here are a few tips for adding personality to your brand on Facebook; personality that consumers respond to.
Social Marketing
A common mistake is only publishing posts that serve as announcements about their company. But you should know that this form of ‘push’ marketing is ineffective and doesn’t use the social medium of Facebook to its full potential. Facebook is about interaction, so your posts need to be the catalyst for more engagement, rather than just churning out messages with no room for conversation.
Instead of posting about your company and linking to your website, share a news story about your industry and ask the audience for feedback. Don’t just announce a new service or product, share a story about how that product has influenced a real person and open the floor for people to share their own stories. The point is to promote discussion, not just provide information. A good example is identity theft protection company LifeLock. Although credit monitoring may seem boring, LifeLock engages its Facebook following with timely discussions about pertinent issues in their industry.
Give Your Brand A Face
Another way to engage with users is to have real employees appear in posts and share a little bit about themselves as individuals. This concept has some business owners concerned about seeming unprofessional, but adding faces to the names of people who work hard to run the company is an unmatched method. The Facebook setting is similar to someone coming to visit your office in person, or having a business meeting over lunch. The conversations you have in these scenarios won’t be strictly business, so there’s no reason why your posts have to be.
Obviously there are a few topics you want to stay away from (i.e. politics and religion) but Facebook is a great place to share photos of your company culture. You can post pictures of employees at an event, share a new hire or record and post a video of your employees in a brainstorm session. Then, tag the employees (with their permission, of course), so the post is also visible on their Facebook timelines, further expanding your reach in an organic way. By sharing your company culture with the world, your brand is perceived as more approachable, which helps retain current clients and encourages potential ones to get in touch. Visit the Moz Facebook page for awesome examples of using photos to highlight company culture and even the employees themselves with photo albums like “Mozzers Then and Now,” which pairs Moz employees with their baby photos.
Define Your Culture, Define Your Brand
The more you post, the more your community becomes accustomed to interacting with you. If your posts appeal to the individual interests of people within your industry, other Facebook users will be more likely to interact with your brand because you don’t just talk about yourself or your industry. The great thing about Facebook is that social growth is exponential. The more that people engage, the more your brand will show up in the news feed. So stop blasting out bland posts and start putting out content that encourages people to become involved with your company’s community.
