book: A content marketing guide //
Facebook is the most popular social media platform worldwide. It has 2.96 Billion active users per month.
You are most likely on Facebook and you use it frequently. Is your business on Facebook too?
You should also make sure your business is on Facebook .
You should respond “yes” to the following questions if your audience is on Facebook. Simply being on Facebook doesn’t suffice.
A plan is essential if you are to reach the full potential of your destination. Goals. Consistency. It is important to publish the right content at the right moment.
Let’s take a look at how to set your Facebook content marketing.
How Facebook can help your brand’s overall content marketing strategy
Publishing on Facebook is an important part of a comprehensive content strategy. It can increase your brand awareness and reach. You can also drive more traffic to the site and generate leads.
Facebook’s sheer reach means that you have many opportunities to connect with your audience.
You may be able tap into new segments of your audience by creating a brand presence on these sites.
You don’t need to spend any money on Facebook content marketing, if not you want to or if your budget isn’t sufficient.
You can post high-quality content on Facebook as long as you have the ability to do so.
First steps to marketing on Facebook: Create and manage a Facebook Business page
Before we move on, make sure that you have a page created on Facebook. Without one, you can’t market on Facebook. Advertising is included in this.
Facebook calls a page a “page” which is essentially a business profile. They are different from personal profiles in that they provide unique, beneficial features and tools specifically for businesses.
Pages can also display business-specific information that is helpful to your customers and audience. For example, a call to action button you can tailor to fit your brand and what your visitors want to do (“Contact us”, “Call Now”, or “Sign up”) ).
Make your own page
To get started creating your Page on Facebook, use this link: facebook.com/pages/create/
Fill out the following information about your business: your brand name, brand type, and short bio. After you’ve created a basic Page, you can add additional information or customize it to reflect your business.
Invite friends, peers, customers, etc. to like your page
Once your Page is set up, invite your friends, customers, and peers to like it.
A Page like on Facebook is equivalent to following. People who like your Page will see all of your posts in their feeds. They can also follow your activity, including any content that you post.
It’s a fast way to inform your Facebook followers that your business has been officially established.
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How to make a Facebook content marketing plan
Once you have your Page created for your business, it is time to start planning your Facebook content marketing strategy.
This should be integrated with your overall content marketing strategy. Your website and blog should be priority 1.
Why do I not suggest focusing 100% on Facebook content?
Why Facebook is not your top content marketing channel
You don’t have Facebook access.
Who is it belonging to? Facebook.
All content posted to their platform is allowed. Your rights to the content you share or post becomes very limited once it is shared. Facebook’s rights to this content are expanding like a balloon.
It is risky to build your platform entirely on social media. Even though you will spend a lot of time publishing content on Facebook, the majority of that content should link back to your website.
You can, for example, include links to your Facebook page in every piece of content.
- Your blog content.
- A page to sign up for the email newsletter
- A lead magnet
- A landing page that is specific to a product or service.
TL;DR
While maintaining a Facebook presence can help to build brand awareness and nurture leads it should not be the primary focus of your content market.
Instead, make Facebook the second or third priority in your content strategy. Make sure that every piece of content you publish on Facebook links back to your website so that you can capture leads.
Now let’s get to the fun part: building your content marketing strategy on Facebook.
1. Set goals for your Facebook content marketing
What are you hoping to accomplish with content marketing on Facebook
This is the most important thing you need to do before you can do anything else. As you create the rest of your plan, your goals will guide every action.
It doesn’t need to be complicated. You can make your goals very simple by using these examples:
- Increase traffic to your site.
- Increase brand awareness
- Get leads.
Next, determine how you will track and measure your goals. You can use Google Analytics to see how many people are visiting your Page or Facebook posts over time.
2. Define your Facebook marketing audience
Next, set goals and make sure to understand your audience on Facebook.
You can also use audience research if you have already used that information in your larger marketing strategy. You can drill down to find out what the goals, preferences, and habits of people who found you on Facebook are compared to other channels.
Start from scratch if you don’t have any connections to people like your ideal customer. To find out what they like and what content they are looking for, interview them.
To learn more about your existing Facebook followers, you can use the Audience Insights free tool. This will include demographic and behavioral data. Go to the Ads Manager, click on the menu icon (All tools) and you will find it.
Scroll down to the Report section, and then click Audience Intelligences.
If you are unsure of where to begin, Facebook offers an official tutorial on Audience Insights.
3. Decide what content you will post and how often
Knowing who you are creating content for will help you decide what type of content to post and how often.
It is vital to keep this document:
- Establishes accountability.
- This will help you stay focused.
Let’s begin with the content you’ll be posting. These questions will help you figure this out:
-
What content is my audience looking for?
- Example: You might find your audience prefers to read detailed text posts. Perhaps they like infographics and shareable images. They may prefer bite-sized tips or short videos. They might enjoy all three.
- You can experiment to find out what content types you like best.
-
Which topic areas are best for me to focus my attention and be of benefit to my audience?
- Example: You offer content writing services to health food companies. Your content is primarily focused on writing content tips and tricks about health, cooking, and wellness.
Next, determine the frequency that you will post, including when.
As you make your decision, keep in mind the best social media posting practices.
Facebook recommends posting at minimum once per week. However, most experts will say to post between 1-2 times per day and a maximum of 3-7 per week.
However, don’t post more than your brand can handle. You will lose your credibility if you post too frequently without the resources and time.
Schedule posts to go out at a particular time of the day, when your audience is most likely browsing Facebook.
Stats can be used to determine optimal posting times. Or you can experiment to determine which times receive the most engagement from your audience.
4. Follow brand style guidelines and create them
You may already have style guidelines for your brand if you are posting content to other channels, such as a blog.
If you don’t know where to start or have no guidelines, the next step is to make some.
Your brand’s style guidelines define the tone, voice, and personality. Anyone who creates content for your brand can follow the guidelines and write in your style so your content stays consistent (i.e., it always sounds like the same person is talking/communicating) across channels.
This will allow your audience to not only remember your brand, but also associate it with a particular style.
The following guidelines may be included in your brand’s style guidelines:
- Your brand’s preferred voice (the brand personality).
- Your preferred tone (how you sound when you write/speak/communicate).
- Grammar preferences and punctuation (Oxford commas anyone? ).
- Guidelines for how to refer to and use your brand name within content
- Guidelines for the use of visuals in content
- Guidelines for the display of your logo
- Social media rules, including how to format captions and use hashtags. Also, learn how to use Emojis.
- Inspirational sources
Keep them updated and documented once. This tool can be used over and over to create content for all your channels, not just Facebook.
5. Create a social media calendar
How will you keep track of all your Facebook posts topics and the date/time that each one is published?
How can you ensure you are always ahead of the curve when creating and publishing content so that you don’t have to rush to finish a post?
A social media calendar is essential.
This tool is essential for any content strategy. You will need a calendar whether you are using a spreadsheet, MeetEdgar or Airtable to organize, plan and track your content pieces.
Depending on what you need and which tool you choose, one calendar can be used with tabs for each channel or two calendars can be created (one for Facebook, one for blog). ).
A good calendar will show you weekly and monthly views of the content schedule so that you can see what content is going out. This allows you to ensure that you are posting the right mix and covering a wide range of topics.
Some paid tools, such as MeetEdgar or CoSchedule, allow you to schedule posts ahead of time so that you don’t have any worries about posting at the correct times.
6. Engage
The main word in the phrase “social media” is “social”.
This means that content marketing on Facebook must not only be about posting but also engaging.
Here are some tips:
- Be responsive. React as quickly as possible (within reason), to messages, tags, or comments.
- Have discussions. Do not be afraid to go deeper with your comments. Ask questions, share your ideas and be friendly.
- Provide customer service. Many customers use Facebook to contact businesses when they have a problem with their product or service. ( 64% people prefer to send a message rather than calling a business. These issues can be addressed using customer service skills.
- Engage with content from others. Share only relevant content to your audience. However, do share and don’t forget comments and likes.
- Hire help if necessary. Social media managers are hired by most brands for one reason: it can be exhausting to keep up with all the above and post regularly. It is a full-time job.
7. Analyze and track your results
You should monitor your progress towards your content marketing goals on Facebook by regularly checking the relevant data.
If your goal is to increase brand awareness, for example, you might track Page visits and Page likes. Both of these can be found on Facebook’s Page Insights.
You’ll also find here a list of all your posts, along with metrics such as reach and engagement. This information will come in handy when you are fine-tuning your content types and topic choices.
These are the best Facebook posts for content marketing
You’ll need to post multiple content types on Facebook to get the best engagement. These are your top choices.
Text posts
A variety of post types have emerged in recent years, including short video! Live video! Stories! Stories!
This post type has the highest engagement rate ( 0.13) among all types, even videos.
Text-only posts should be kept brief and sweet. Short posts receive the most views. You can share your thoughts or ask questions using them.
Follow these links
Link posts – You guessed it! – contain a link to content that is not on Facebook.
This post can be used to share your best blog content, a product or service launch, or an email sign-up page.
To encourage your Facebook audience’s visit to your website, you can include link posts in your content calendar. If your blog/website is your primary content channel, then this is where you will convert leads and capture them.
Photo posts
A photo post can contain one image or a collection of images. These posts can be short captioned or include hashtags. They are second in engagement on Facebook.
There are many options available for sharing photos depending on the industry: beautiful product photography or day-in-the life snapshots, infographics and quotes.
Videos
Videos are engaging and communicate better than any other media. There are several video types that you can post on Facebook:
- Short videos, reels – This format is Meta’s answer for TikTok’s popularity.
- Live video: Stream your live stream to your followers. They can view you and interact with you in real-time.
- Standard videos You can also upload longer videos to Facebook, such as tutorials and interviews, demos or webinar recordings.
Facebook content marketing can help you grow your reach
Facebook content marketing is an excellent addition to your overall marketing strategy.
It hosts billions of users each month and is the most popular social network worldwide.
Your audience may use Facebook, and they will most likely. You should be there regularly with relevant content to keep them interested and grow their connections.
Focus first on your blog and website content, then use Facebook to expand your reach.
Smart content strategy will allow you to seamlessly connect your Facebook and blog content marketing.
Customers want to be able to connect with brands on social media. This opportunity should not be missed.
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