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Social Media: What I Learned By Posting on Instagram Every Day

11 September 2019February 3, 2022Ann Mills6 Comments

At the beginning of April, I set myself a challenge.

For one year, I decided to create a daily post on our company’s Instagram page. The post could be an image, video or carousel, but it had to be custom-created and relevant to our industry–digital marketing. To keep it simple, I decided to focus on only one social media platform, Instagram, but I would also add the post to Facebook. I chose 7 pm each evening as the posting time, and I decided there would be absolutely no social ad spend on the post. Any engagement would be strictly organic.

I have been surprised at what has happened since I began posting daily on Instagram, so I thought I would share. My experience confirms what we all have long suspected or perhaps known. When it comes to social media, consistency is of the utmost importance and posting consistently has ripple effects well beyond social media.

With five months of daily Instagram posts under my belt, here is what I learned (so far) by posting on Instagram every day:

1. I found my voice

When you have to put a post together every day, you stop overthinking the creation process. If you know your trade, there are plenty of topics your audience or clients want to learn. I stopped considering whether my post was interesting enough, creative enough, colorful enough. I found my voice when writing copy each day and just presented something simple, interesting and business-related that I was thinking about or had recently read.

2. I learned and learned and learned

One of my favorite concepts, pioneered by Gary Vaynerchuk, is “Document, don’t create.” When you are producing a lot of content–as you will when you post every day–you can’t make it up. If you are a practitioner in social media, you are immersed in your field each day. Documenting something interesting or valuable that you are working on or thinking about is not hard. Trying to come up with a creative post when you don’t have the background to talk about the subject matter is hard.

3. I thought about my business every single day

It may seem counterintuitive to suggest that business owners don’t think about their companies each day. Certainly, they do. However, putting a post together about your industry or field each day is a different type of mindfulness. It’s not about whether you ran your payroll. It’s about a challenge you may be facing, a thought-starter that made you pause or something that keeps you up at night.

4. I put myself in my clients’ shoes

Creating a social media post each day made me really think about our clients. I put myself in their shoes. What would they want to know from me as someone who is involved in social media each day? If we were sitting in a meeting, what questions might they ask me or struggles would they tell me about in their day-to-day business? I tried to think about whether my post for the next day would have practical utility and value-add for them.

5. I learned a new video marketing tool

One tool that I needed to learn which was on my to-do list was wave.video. Canva had always been my go-to tool, and it offers a simple video creation feature. However, given that I had 365 posts ahead of me when I started in April, I decided to tackle wave.video because it would allow me to create more complex videos for our Instagram feed. The versatility of wave.video was such that I was able to cancel the subscription my company had to a paid stock photo library. Wave.video has its own library of images and stock videos. Plus, it has a user-friendly video editing tool. You can even add music to your videos, and now I have learned it and can tick off that box.

6. I discovered interesting people and businesses to follow on social media

I love podcasts. I have a full library of regular programs I listen to about digital marketing. Knowing that I had to create a social media post each day, I became more disciplined at listening to a variety of podcasts. After each one, I would follow the person that was featured or interviewed. I discovered so many talented people in my field and thought leaders. Now, I follow these people and learn via my own social media feed as they put up their posts on their feeds.

7. People started visiting my LinkedIn profile

In following more people in the digital marketing space on social media plus posting more on Instagram, I noticed that many more people started viewing my LinkedIn profile. Not only that, but the seniority of people in the industry that were looking at my LinkedIn profile went up too. So, both the quality and quantity of LinkedIn profile views went up for me.

8. My website blogs received more views

Similar to the increased visibility on LinkedIn, our company blog saw more views and engagement on our website. Now, there are more regular comments on the blogs. Even older blogs seem to be getting some renewed attention. The quality of the comments is interesting too. Posting regularly on Instagram attracted a focused audience, and in fact, exactly the type of audience my company would want.

9. I began to understand the value of Direct Messages (DMs)

It dawned on me that social media opens up an entirely new level of connectivity. In following more people in my field, I had questions on occasion based on a podcast that I had listened to or article I had read. Instagram Direct Messages, or DMs, allow the sender to message another person on Instagram. Think how challenging that task would be before DMs were around. I learned to DM industry thought leaders if I had a question they may be able to answer, and it was neat to be able to ask other professionals for their insights even though we had never met. Plus, they answered me.

10. I learned about Instagram Stories

Across the many social media platforms my company utilizes for clients, I don’t think there is anything quite like Instagram Stories. The sticker feature, which allows you to interact with people who have seen the Story, is unique. Stories have the right balance of authenticity, brevity and creativity. It’s no wonder they are so popular and fun, and I became facile at using them alongside my daily Instagram posts.

So, now you have 10 things I learned while immersed in my personal challenge of posting on my company’s Instagram page (@resourceful_business) every single day. It’s been 5 months, and I still have 7 more months to go. I am sure I will have 10 more things to share when I am over the finish line.

5 Reasons You Must Create Instagram Stories for Your Business

19 June 2019June 21, 2019Ann Mills8 Comments

Social media content is rapidly evolving.

Back in August 2016, Instagram launched Stories to compete with Snapchat Stories. Stories were meant to help capture the daily activities of Instagram’s now more than 1 billion users worldwide, and unlike posts, Stories are short-lived–disappearing in 24 hours.

By January 2019, Instagram stories had grown in popularity to over 500 million daily active users (DAU), meaning half of Instagram’s daily users are on Stories every day. With important, interactive features and a less formal type of content, Instagram Stories have become essential for businesses that use Instagram marketing.

Here are 5 reasons you must create Instagram stories for your business:

Reason 1: Instagram Stories have interactive stickers

With Instagram Stories, you can add a sticker. Unlike Instagram posts, stickers allow users to tap and interact with your Story in creative ways. There are many types of stickers available including:

Donation
Quiz
Countdown
Questions
Music
Poll or Emoji Slider
Location
Hashtag
Current Time or Weather
Selfie

As an example, suppose you are thinking about keeping your business open late one evening of the week. You wonder whether your customers would come. You can create an Instagram Story and add an emoji slider with a thumbs up emoji. Ask, “Do you want us to stay open late one evening?” Customers that see your Instagram Story can slide the emoji to the right if they like the idea, and you get feedback directly from your customers.

Reason 2: Instagram Stories are more informal than posts

There is an analogy used by Bella Vasta, a Facebook Group keynote speaker, which she uses to explain the difference between a Facebook page and a Facebook Group, and the same analogy applies to Instagram posts and Instagram Stories. Bella equates a Facebook page to the front yard of a house–formal and public. Similarly, Instagram posts have a more formal, curated look and feel.

A home’s backyard is the Facebook group – a gathering of people with something in common, informal, more personal and friendly. Likewise, Instagram Stories are the backyard–informal and personal.

The value of Instagram Stories is they give a business tremendous versatility in how it can present content with some reserved for the more formal Instagram page and other content posted in Stories. Another unique feature of Stories worth mentioning is that unlike posts, you can add to your Stories. So, if your business is attending an event, your followers can watch a Story and see new additions to the Story while you are there.

Reason 3: Instagram Story Highlights can help cultivate unique audiences

According to Instagram Business, 80% of Instagram accounts follow a brand. Not surprisingly, Instagram users look for Instagram Stories shared by their favorite brands, and Stories have a feature called Highlights – the circles that appear across the top of an Instagram page. These Highlights can be divided into content-related categories that are relevant for your business, and when Stories are added to Highlights, they do not disappear in 24 hours. One of our favorite Story Highlights categories is “Inspo” because we like to see what people in a company are reading, thinking about or doing for inspiration.

Here are some Highlights examples:

A hair salon may highlight different haircut styles
A retail store may highlight different seasonal clothing styles
A blogger may highlight different blog categories

Businesses should establish relevant Highlights categories so followers can discover new content in their areas of interest. Whereas Instagram pages do not allow partitioning of content by topic, Stories do via Highlights. Using Highlights effectively will allow a brand to cultivate unique subsets of their audience based on their content preferences.

Instagram describes its stories product as a way to promote the sharing of moments that don’t meet the higher bar of a traditional Instagram post. –The Verge

Reason 4: Instagram Stories re-enforce the business brand

An Instagram Story can serve as an extension of a brand’s footprint on Instagram. As with websites or social media posts, Instagram Stories should have a hint of the company’s brand guidelines – colors, fonts, tag lines. People that see Instagram Stories should recognize familiar aspects associated with the brand. Whether it’s a cameo of everyone’s favorite furry mascot in the office or a behind-the-scenes look at the setup for an event, Instagram Stories give people a feel for the soul of the business while subtly reinforcing the brand.

Reason 5: Instagram Stories focus on moments and encourage sharing

An Instagram Story can reflect the little moments that occur throughout the day, and people love to feel part of someone’s journey. Instagram posts, on the other hand, allow businesses to build their brand’s presence in a more systematic way, include thoughtful written copy, tags, and imagery. When it comes to Instagram business pages, viewers expect a carefully curated feed that looks aesthetically pleasing.

Stories, in contrast, are spontaneous and current. The concept behind Stories is that people will want to capture moments and share them. Stories are ephemeral, and Facebook, which owns Instagram, hopes users will actively create content that is personal, relatable and captures the moment.

Great for branding, audience targeting and connecting with your tribe, Instagram Stories are a must for your social media marketing toolkit. If you’re interested in creating an Instagram Story strategy but don’t know where to start, contact us.

What’s Wrong With Social Media?

6 May 2019May 7, 2019Ann Mills4 Comments

After succumbing to her curiosity and peeking in the box, Pandora tries to quickly close the top as creatures representing evil and disease escape.

It’s hard to believe that Facebook only came into existence in February 2004–just 15 years ago. Once named thefacebook.com, it began a communication revolution which has put social media at the front and center of many parts of our daily lives. Whether we use Messenger to talk to friends, Instagram to follow our favorite influencer or Pinterest to find a trending product, social media is everywhere.

Negative headlines about data privacy and streams of egregious content have been flashing warning signs about social media for some time. As the manager of a digital marketing agency, here are a few cautionary signs that I see which tell me rigorous regulation of this industry is long overdue, and when it does arrive, it will be a welcome reprieve.

1. Influencer marketing means what you see is not what you get

Called brand partnerships, social media influencers often get paid to blog and post about products. As a rule of thumb, every follower an influencer has equates to a penny. Therefore, an influencer with 10,000 followers may charge $100 per post plus additional production expenses, but ethically, if that person is posting about a product or service as part of the brand partnership, (s)he should disclose it visibly. On social platforms, partner relationships are now being referenced more explicitly, but not always. That means that people may follow influencers and try products being promoted in the posts without realizing influencers are taking fees for creating the posts.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has caught on to undisclosed brand partnerships. The FTC Endorsement Guides require a “material connection” between the two parties, the paid endorser of the product or service and the brand advertiser, to be conspicuously disclosed. Social media platforms are busy rolling out branded content tools that will require tagging of a business partner where there has been an “exchange of value,” but prior to these guidelines, consumers, sometimes children, were none the wiser.

2. Online reviews provide no recourse

Online reviews are an essential part of the digital era, and social media platforms such as Facebook and Yelp are an important source of consumer reviews. According to the BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey 2018, 86% of consumers read reviews for local businesses, and that percentage jumps to 95% for people aged 18 to 34. The problem is that consumers know the importance of reviews, and some of them are savvy at abusing them.

For example, people who want to post a negative review frequently copy and paste the same review on as many social platforms as possible. Angry customers will put a negative review on Yelp, Facebook, and then Google My Business, a feature of the Google search engine. The business can answer the review, of course, but it can be incredibly difficult to defend oneself without being seen to disparage the reviewer, who by the way, is not always right. We recently talked with one of our customers that owns a local, 5-star rated business. They provided a retail service for a child, and afterward, the mother paid the bill and left with the boy, both quite happy. Two weeks later, the father returned with the boy to say how unhappy he was with the service that had been provided. The man proceeded to post a 1-star review on three platforms, remove a 5-star review that he had posted for the business a few months earlier, and disparage employees by name in the review.

There’s no arbitration for an online review, no “other side” of the story and with some exception, the review site often does not verify a purchase has even been made. The same BrightLocal survey says, “Negative reviews stop 40% of consumers wanting to use a business,” so the ability of consumers to post any review they would like, even if they have never purchased the product or service, needs to change. Even competitors can post a negative review using fake names; there’s nothing in place to stop them. A fair review process requires vetting–did a purchase actually take place–and some form of reasonable recourse for the business, a monumental technological challenge for both social networks and search engines.

3. Social media platforms offer no real customer service

You might imagine that as a digital marketing agency, we are working with different social media platforms each day. Facebook has a market capitalization, the value of its outstanding shares, of circa 550 billion dollars. Yet, if you have an issue, you have one preliminary option for support. You can click the round question mark button in the navigation. From there, you submit your help request online using their Report a Problem form.

As measured by its market cap, Facebook is the sixth largest company in the world. Facebook also operates Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, and it is not obliged to provide any human form of customer service. Of course, neither are small businesses, but it’s hard to imagine one of the largest companies in the world operating with a Report a Problem form as the first stage of the customer service journey.

4. Social media content is now too vast to police

If you think about movies, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has a rating system for films to warn audiences about film content and its age appropriateness. Contrast the MPAA rating system to the current social media landscape which has no enforceable content guidelines. If you disagree with content posted about your business and even content that tags your business, you can appeal to Facebook to remove it. Our agency’s experience has been that those requests have been declined 100% of the time even when there is a clear pattern of abuse.

Facebook Live, a broadcasting feature available within the Facebook app, has been used to capture murders and suicides. Social media posts on many platforms are rife with profanity and hate speech. As a user, you can block people, but you have no way to actively filter newsfeed content for profanity or inappropriate imagery. I suppose that similar to the movies, you can choose not to “attend,” but really there should be a viable filter available for social media users who wish to block images of violence or profanity in the copy if they so chose. However, allowing the user to filter content would imperil the revenue model for social media networks which is dependent on users seeing ads interspersed in the newsfeed.

5. Personal data is not secure with social media companies

The revelations that came to light in the Cambridge Analytica scandal were shocking. Cambridge Analytica employees and contractors acquired the data of tens of millions of Facebook users via a Facebook data breach in 2014. This data was utilized to construct user profiles in advance of the 2016 US presidential election and effectively audience target marketing campaigns. According to The Guardian, when Facebook found out about the breach in 2015 and that individual data had been harvested, it failed to notify Facebook users that were affected. Facebook also did not work to recover the data from the breach.

In fact, the rapid growth of social media platforms over the last 15 years has meant that social media companies have not been held to the same standard as other traditional media companies and corporations in many areas, including privacy. They should be. It’s been convenient to be labeled a social media platform as if best practice for other companies does not apply. Facebook put out a recent announcement that the company anticipates a fine from the FTC of 3 to 5 billion dollars for privacy breaches and has set aside 3 billion for legal fees which reaffirm the gravity of the situation.

So, what’s wrong with social media? Ads drive the revenue model for social media companies and only work if the platforms are continuously and actively used. Otherwise, no one would see the ads. To a certain extent, questionable content attracts more users, and this phenomenon has fueled the success of companies such as Snapchat where often teens, in particular, post inappropriate content that conveniently disappears. But of course, the posts have already served their purpose and captured the attention of the audience the teen was hoping to reach. Similarly, outrageous reviews, hate speech, and online bullying attract an audience, so social media companies are not particularly incentivized to restrain them. If you haven’t done so recently, scroll through your Twitter feed and glance at the barbs traded daily.

Maturing social networks need leadership that is sensible, ethical and genuinely interested in doing what is in the public interest. Company leadership must be held accountable too, which becomes difficult when within our own legislative branch, there is such a limited understanding of the revenue model that drives social media companies. In a Joint Hearing of the Commerce and Judiciary Committees on Capitol Hill in April of last year, Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, asked Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, “So, how do you sustain a business model in which users don’t pay for your service?” Mark Zuckerberg replied, “Senator, we run ads.” Without a broad understanding of that basic truism and how to impact it, no real behavioral change will occur by social media networks.

Perhaps not quite as grim as the Greek myth, Pandora’s Box, wherein Pandora’s curiosity gets the better of her and she unleashes all the evils of the world from a box, the exponential growth of social media has nonetheless unleashed its own form of tyranny. Only when the latest features and app updates are truly secondary to the ethical execution of a meaningful company mission will the issues caused by social media start to wane.

Finding Your Ideal Customer Using the Power of Digital Marketing

8 September 2018September 27, 2018Ann Mills4 Comments

An excerpt from Ann Mills’ presentation on digital marketing at Swap The Biz, Short Hills, NJ.

_________

You are on your way to a networking event.

When you arrive, you are surprised to find not one room but three to choose from–each filled with 50 people. Tacked on the door of each room is a sign with some information about each of the people in the room–ages, income bracket, and town. The information also includes whether the person is a parent and his or her areas of interest.

You look at the information on each door and think:

In Room #1, there are one or two people who seem like they might be an ideal networking opportunity.

Room #2–about half of the people in the room seem to fit the profile of your ideal networking opportunity.

In Room #3, all 50 people fit your ideal networking persona. They are the right age, live in a nearby location, and they seem like people who might be interested in the product or service you sell.

Which room will you enter? Probably Room #3.

In the context of marketing:

Room #1 with its 2 to 3 prospects is perhaps the equivalent of a mailer like this one about dining room sets. If you are not buying a dining room set, you’ll probably throw the mailer out. Even if you are buying a dining room set, you may not look at the mailer. If you’re the business that sent the mailer, you can’t be sure who actually read it, and as one print company executive said to me recently, “People pretty much open their mail over the trash can.”

Room #2 with about 25 possible networking opportunities is representative of a networking group. You have a higher chance of connecting and exchanging business with people in the room. They more closely fit your ideal networking persona, and you have more in common with people in the group than acquaintances you make outside the group.

Room #3 with 50 of 50 people seemingly possible networking opportunities personifies digital marketing and, in particular, a powerful tool we use called audience targeting.

What is digital marketing?

If you ask someone what digital marketing is, they will probably tell you that it is advertising delivered via a digital channel. It might be a website, Pay-Per-Click campaign (the advertiser pays for the ad only when someone clicks on it), remarketing campaign, email, social media post, or even a response to an online review. Weaved together, digital marketers create omnichannel marketing strategies.

However, that definition of digital marketing does not convey what is so important about it. Primarily:

A digital campaign audience is not guesswork.
Campaign results are measurable, actionable, and data-driven.
Marketing campaigns can be timed to maximize impact.
Digital campaigns can be changed and scaled quickly.

Let me give you two examples of the agility and versatility afforded by digital marketing:

A mortgage banker in New Jersey deals almost exclusively with clients purchasing high-end homes. In an effort to broaden his target audience of potential clients, a digital agency does an analysis of zip codes in Manhattan where residents typically pay four to five-thousand dollars in rent each month. Intuitively, it’s clear that many of these young professionals might be thinking of starting families as well. The agency develops a Pay-Per-Click ad campaign to market the banker’s services into specific zip codes in New York City where the high-rent-paying population lives.

A client with multiple retail locations in New Jersey has her online reviews on Google, Facebook, and Yelp managed by a digital agency. The agency notices that some of the online reviews are in Spanish and come to believe that it is perhaps a far more important demographic than had been previously realized. In addition to Google AdWords Pay-Per-Click campaigns targeting English-speaking people which are already in place, the agency turns Spanish-speaking living in the United States on as a demographic trait for her Google AdWords campaigns. In addition to posts in English, the social media agency also begins to add Spanish posts to her social media feeds. The agency then rolls out corporate overview videos–one with an English voiceover and another with a voiceover in Spanish.

The results seen by our digital marketing clients have been striking. One client has quadrupled sales. Another found that their seasonal summer dip in sales disappeared. One company was named to a prominent list of the fastest growing companies in New Jersey in 2017 and in America in 2018.

Micro-Moments

Google defines something called a Micro-Moment. A Micro-Moment is an intent rich moment when a person turns to a device to act on a need–to know, go, do or buy.

The power of digital marketing is that it allows your business to be present at those micro-moments in a way traditional media cannot. In so doing, your business can get:

the right message,

to the right people,

at exactly the right time.

________________

Interested in learning more? Contact us.

Social Media Marketing Pixie Dust – The Facebook Pixel

13 July 2018July 13, 2018Ann Mills2 Comments

What if there was a marketing tool that would allow your business to tailor Facebook ads based on what pages people viewed on your website or what items they added to their shopping cart?

Think of the possibilities.

Maybe you own a retail store, for example, currently showcasing spring dresses on one of your website pages. Your advertising campaign delivers Facebook ads showcasing dresses only to people who visited the spring dresses page of your website.

This hyper-targeted form of marketing happens every day with a bit of social media marketing pixie dust called the Facebook Pixel. According to BuiltWith, it’s a marketing tool employed on 3.8 million websites across the Internet. So, let’s find out what a Facebook Pixel is and how you can use it in your company’s social media strategy.

What’s a Facebook Pixel?

A Facebook Pixel is a snippet of tracking code placed in the backend of a website page that tracks certain actions or “events” by your website visitors such as buying an item from your online store or searching for specific content on the site. The importance of the Facebook Pixel lies in the data it collects which can help a business build a powerful marketing campaign that targets potential customers in a structured, relevant way. Site visitors that are tracked by the Facebook pixel become part of a Custom Audience created in Facebook, and even if you only install what is often referred to as the “base Facebook Pixel,” you will immediately have more insight into what people are doing when they visit your website. Installation is a little technical, but Facebook covers the many installation options in an excellent knowledge-based article.

Why should you use a Facebook Pixel?

With a base Facebook Pixel, your default Custom Audience is anyone who visits your website. But, now the magic begins.

Let’s say you want to track site visitors by pageview or by the type of content they searched for while on your website. There are nine standard events that can be tracked by a Facebook Pixel. There are also some simpler custom conversions which are different than the events. Within the standard events, most of what a business might want to know about a site visitor is covered. For example, you can track:

Purchase
Lead
Complete Registration
Add Payment Info
Initiate Checkout
Add to Cart
Add to Wishlist
Search
View Content

Think about the value of being able to target site visitors who take one of these actions? You can add them to an event-specific Custom Audience created for your Facebook advertising.

The importance of the Facebook Pixel lies in the data it collects.

Facebook Pixel data and Custom Audiences created, what next?

Grow your target audience by creating a Facebook Lookalike Audience

Using your Custom Audiences, you can then create Lookalike Audiences, which are exactly what they sound like – audiences that have the same characteristics of the Custom Audience created with the Facebook Pixel. To be effective, you want a minimum of 1000 people in your Custom Audience, and the more specific the lead type, the better the Lookalike Audience will work. Your target audience for your ad campaigns has just grown based on the data collected with the Facebook Pixel.

So now you have three ways to hone in on and grow your target audience using the Facebook Pixel. First, you can identify certain behaviors of your website visitors and create Custom Audiences in Facebook with specific interests. Second, you can create custom Facebook ads based on actionable “events” taken by your Custom Audiences, and third, you can grow your target audience by using a Facebook Lookalike Audience.

Using the Facebook Pixel, you can deliver Facebook ads with timely, relevant information to the people that actually want to see them. It’s the type of digital marketing savvy made possible with a bit of social media marketing pixie dust – the Facebook Pixel.

How to Market Your Business With Facebook

24 July 2017May 19, 2021Ann Mills6 Comments

Facebook is one of the most powerful marketing tools available. When a company has a strong core business and then layers on well-executed Facebook marketing, it’s transformative. Sort of like the expression “building strong communities one child at a time,” Facebook marketing can be a game changer for businesses with high impact results built one campaign at a time.

Surprisingly, many companies, both large and small, neither prioritize social media nor feel like they have the time to commit to it. To the extent that there is a social strategy in place, results are neither tracked nor measured. Many people perceive Facebook as a social network rather than a powerful marketing platform. But, if you’re a business owner and you are not actively using Facebook to market your products and services, you are missing a huge opportunity to find, reach and connect with your customers.

Here are 10 ways to market your business with Facebook:

1. Boost your Facebook posts

The numbers are grim. According to an article by Social@Ogilvy, organic reach, people who see your Facebook post without any paid advertising boost, amounts to approximately 6% of your followers. For Facebook pages, the primary tool for business, it is closer to 2%. Social@Ogilvy’s prediction based on their interactions with Facebook is even more bleak,”Organic reach of the content brands publish in Facebook is destined to hit zero. It’s only a matter of time.” So, if your social media strategy includes posting to Facebook without a paid social strategy, you are not reaching the vast majority of people that follow your page.

Facebook Tip #1: Create an audience in Facebook Ads Manager, and boost your posts. If your business is small, even a dollar or two spent per post will dramatically broaden your audience reach.

2. Add images to every Facebook post

Facebook posts with a picture outperform ones without – dramatically. According to BuzzSumo, “…updates with images had an amazing 2.3x more engagement than those without.” Every Facebook post should have an image, and the abundance of high-quality free stock photo sites makes this task an easy one. Instead of having a Facebook page that looks like a mishmash of posts plus the occasional image, represent your business with great pictures and thoughtful copy every time you post.

Facebook Tip #2: Add images to each and every Facebook post. Use free stock photo sites like Pixabay, Pexels, or Stock Up to find them. WhoIsHostingThis also has a list of close to 100 free stock photo sites. If you are curating the post content and you don’t like the attached image, you can still upload your own graphic and make it the primary image for the post.

3. Use demographic and location filters when setting up Facebook ads

Facebook has an incredible array of audience targeting options. You might be surprised just how granular the targeting can be. When setting up Facebook ads, filters help you zero in on the audience you are trying to reach. In addition to age, gender and location, one filter that is often overlooked is net worth. If a business sells high-end homes, luxury cars or exclusive experiences, for example, it’s not a bad strategy to use the net worth income filter. Another important filter in the suite of audience targeting tools offered by Facebook is location – the ability to target a certain radius around a city or even a certain zip code.

Facebook Tip #3: Identify and then target your ads towards potential customers by using relevant demographic or location Facebook audience filters.

4. Consider trying the new Store Visits Facebook campaign

Location based businesses want to know whether social media campaigns drive foot traffic into their stores. Facebook has introduced a Store Visits campaign option. The idea is that if you have a bricks and mortar business, you can create an ad and Facebook will show the ad to people most likely to be in that area. Apparently, Google plans to roll out something similar for display network ads.

The Facebook Store Visits campaign has limited metrics. We recently compared the results for an established Google remarketing campaign against a Facebook Store Visits campaign over a one month period. We had the same marketing dollars applied to each and it was the same client – one month we tried Facebook Store Visits and one we kept the original Google remarketing campaign. Website traffic and Facebook referral traffic to the website were markedly down using the Store Visits campaign, so our conclusion is there’s still lots of work to do on this front, but it’s the right idea for sure.

Facebook Tip #4: Use the new Facebook Store Visits campaign option in addition to, not in lieu of your current marketing strategy. The idea of in-store foot traffic as a measure of social media conversion is here to stay.

5. Set up Pages to Watch in Facebook Insights

This Facebook feature is really useful. In Facebook Insights, there is a section called Pages to Watch. You can add Facebook pages for your competitors and look at comparative metrics such as Total Page Likes, Posts This Week and Engagement This Week. If the engagement for one of your competitors’ Facebook pages spikes or is consistently strong, Pages to Watch serves as a reminder to see what they are doing.

Facebook Tip #5: Use Pages to Watch in Facebook Insights and track 5 competitor Facebook pages. Set a goal to surpass their metrics and be cognizant of what they are doing, and see if your page can climb to the top of your Pages to Watch list.

6. Post videos on your Facebook page

According to TechCrunch, over 8 billion videos are watched on Facebook every day. It’s equivalent to 100 million hours of time that people are watching video on Facebook. Even more important, Facebook is rated as the most impactful social channel for video — 8.4X higher than any other social channel, according to Animoto.

Currently, a Facebook video can be up to 45 minutes in length while Instagram, by comparison, only permits video uploads of between 3 and 60 seconds. The ability to upload lengthier videos on Facebook makes it a versatile, robust video platform.

Facebook Tip #6: Build video into your marketing strategy and post videos on Facebook. As of June 2017, you can use a video for your Facebook cover too.

7. Collect customer reviews on Facebook

A steady stream of online reviews has become the new normal for business. In a list of top 10 review sites, Facebook ranks #2. With an estimated 214 million Facebook users in the US and 1.94 billion monthly active users worldwide, it is an ideal platform to collect online reviews and respond to customer feedback. Positive reviews on 3rd party platforms such as Facebook are credible social proof for your business and drive revenue, foot traffic, and consumer purchasing decisions.

Facebook Tip #7: Activate the Reviews Tab on your Facebook business page so that you can collect online reviews and engage with your customers. Answer your reviews promptly and professionally.

8. Encourage Facebook check-ins

When customers visit your business, they can “check-in” on Facebook, an option which tells others via the news feed that the customer is at your business. Depending upon what audience the customer chooses, either the public or just friends can see (s)he is at your business. Could there be a better endorsement? In addition, the person checking in at your business can tag friends, upload photos and write a post. As a business owner, you should LIKE the check-in post as a way to say – we’re glad you’re here!

Facebook Tip #8: Take advantage of Facebook check-ins by reminding your customers to check-in while they are at your business. If you’re a retailer with free samples, put some in a basket on your counter and let customers choose one if they check-in. Check-ins are an easy and effective way to get the word out about your business to people who may not otherwise know about you.

9. Connect to more customers with Facebook Wi-Fi

If your business offers guest Wi-Fi, Facebook Wi-Fi is an interesting way to advertise your business, reinforce your brand and build engagement with your Facebook page. Once you set it up, the way it works is that when customers want to access your guest Wi-Fi, they are presented with two options. If they check-in on Facebook, they get immediate Wi-Fi access. If they don’t want to check-in, they can still input your guest Wi-Fi password as normal and skip the Facebook check-in. As mentioned in #8 above, check-ins are broadcast on other people’s Facebook news feeds, so it’s great advertising for you.

Facebook Tip #9: Set up Facebook Wi-Fi and actively add your promotions on your Facebook page. When people check-in to access your Wi-Fi, they can see business specials, events or announcements that you have posted.

10. Give an insider’s view with Facebook Live

Facebook Live gives you the opportunity to live-stream broadcasts to potential customers and see their reactions and comments. You can give an insider’s view of what you do behind the scenes or offer a longer how-to instructional video. As you build a following, people can choose to get notifications when you are streaming, and there is even a Facebook Live Map so people that may not know about you can find Facebook Live videos currently in progress.

Facebook Tip #10: Interact with your audience using Facebook Live. Give them a glimpse of an event on location, a walking tour of your store or even share your desktop screen and offer a tutorial.

Every company, no matter the size, can use Facebook to market their business. It’s one of the most versatile, impactful marketing platforms available, and much of what you can use is free. What’s not to LIKE about that?

If you need help with your Facebook marketing or don’t know how to get started, contact us.