Is your business struggling to see results on Facebook?
Does it feel like not enough people are seeing the content or engaging with your Facebook page?
With so much information out there it can often be tough to decide what to follow or who to listen to. That is why I believe one of the best ways to learn and grow your business is to listen to those who have already achieved success using Facebook marketing.
So to help you out I have gathered a great list of social media experts who have all experienced success with their Facebook pages to reveal their #1 practical tip for managing a Facebook page.
So get your pen and paper ready or open up that blank word document and get ready to be inspired!
1. Vanessa Lewis, Social Catapult
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Get into the minds, and hearts, of your target audience. Put yourself in their shoes…what do they want and need in terms of relevant information, ideas, inspiration and entertainment? Notice what they respond to and tailor your content accordingly. Be social and make relationships! It’s only by doing all of these things that you establish trust, and in turn yours will be the first business they turn to when they have a need you can fulfil.
2. Andrea Vahl, Andreavahl.com
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Managing a Facebook page happens best when you participate both on your Page and on the Pages of others. Make sure you are replying to comments or at least acknowledging comments with a Like. Then also watching the Pages of your community members. Tag them in a post, post a comment on their posts, or participate on Pages where they are participating. Widening your community space to include other Pages will help your visibility as well. You can use tools like AgoraPulse to show you your Top Users to help you keep track of who is participating on your Page the most.
3. Mark Schaefer, Businessgrow.com
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Consider “engagement” strategically. It is not a goal in and of itself but a tactic that leads to awareness, connection and eventually loyalty. Engagement comes at a cost, both in terms of time, attention and content creation resources so consider that engagement needs to support a metric for the business. Engagement is not necessarily the metric that matters.
4. Emeric Ernoult, Agora Pulse
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My number 1 tip for managing a Facebook page is to understand that this will require the same amount of time and efforts as it takes to build and nurture a “real life” network: – it will not be great overnight – you’ll have to give a lot first before you can expect to receive – you have to invest in maintaining the relationship alive. People forget you quickly when they don’t hear about you for a while – some people will give back after 2 weeks, some after 2 years. But you’ll have to treat them all the same (i.e., very well!) – people will come and go, don’t get mad, that’s normal. – when you care about your people, have their problems at heart and think about them before you think about yourself, it always pays off, always!
5. Scott Ayres, Postplanner
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My #1 tip for managing a Facebook page is to be human.No one likes to follow a page that never responds or responds with a regurgitated answer over and over.Call people by their first name and give them the respect they deserve. Make sure you tag every comment with your name so people know who they are talking to and they are reminded there is a human behind the brand.Part of being human also means to not delete negative comments or posts just because it makes you look bad. Own up to it and respond. You’ll get more traction and respect from doing that than simply deleting/hiding the comment.
6. Robert Caruso, Bundle Post
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If you’re not paying to play there’s little to manage.
7. Aaron Lee, PostPlanner
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Sometimes it’s easy to forget to post daily. The way we do it for our Facebook page is we plan and schedule our content calendar with a variety of content 2-3 weeks in advance. By doing so it helps us to save time, focus on building quality content and most importantly focus on getting social and building an authentic relationship with our fans.
8. Joshua Parkinson, PostPlanner
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The Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously said “No man steps in the same river twice” — referring to the fact that every time you dip your foot in a river, the river has changed. So it is with your Facebook community. You never really post in the same community twice — because
(1) The community is constantly evolving (fans are coming and going) and
(2) A different subset of that evolving community sees each post.
This is why you MUST continue re-posting your evergreen blog content on your Facebook page. Each time you re-post an evergreen article, it’s reaching fans who’ve never seen it before — and thus sending new traffic to your website. So that’s my #1 tip for managing a Facebook community — to not be afraid of posting the same content multiple times on your page.
9. Christian Karasiewicz, Christiankonline.com
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When building a community on Facebook, one of the best ways to do this is to engage with your audience.
You can do this a number of ways:
Respond to posts and messages from fans
Respond to comments
Tag fans in posts, photos, and videos
Share quality content
Ask your fans what they want to see
Building a community on Facebook isn’t a one-way street.
By taking the time to connect with your audience through discussions on posts or engaging with them to find out why they came to your page and how you can help them.
You can start to build a loyal following and strong community presence on Facebook.
10.Francisco Roles, SocialMouths
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Use Audience Insights to learn more about your own community
I think the best way to manage a Facebook page is to start by learning more about who its members are. I mean, beyond the demographic data. This might sound a little “basic” but you’d be surprised to see how many community managers fail to take the necessary time to understand who they’re talking to.
Page Insights and Graph Search can help you get started, but the new Audience Insights will take you even deeper to learn things like other interests, occupations, purchasing behaviours, and Facebook activities among other things that were not available before.
Once you have a good understanding of who’s behind your community, you’ll be able to create a better strategy to SERVE them.
11. Mike Gingerich, Tabsite
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Jay Baer says that people use the Internet for 2 reasons…
To solve a problem, or
To be entertained
I think he’s pretty much right on! So if you want to do well on Facebook you need to understand that most people are not there to solve a problem. They want to be entertained. Your Facebook page content needs to connect with them. It is a social network! To do this your posts must create an emotional connection and that connection will then be associated with your brand. Posts that prompt a laugh or a even tear can do this. And what communicates that way? Stories. How can your posts tell a story? Imagery. That’s why images continue to win and that’s why Pinterest and Instagram (and tools like Canva) are on the rise!
Let’s put it another way. Author John Maxwell notes that, “People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.” It’s about the connection! Companies on Facebook need to keep this in mind. It’s critical and underlines the importance of connecting emotionally with your community. You can’t be all “selly sell” (Chris Brogan speak) on Facebook. Users are on Facebook mostly to be entertained. So to connect with them you must entertain. The more you connect, the more they engage, the more they will see your other posts that click through to your website and apps, and the more likely they will be to click through and go! Do NOT overlook the need to connect and entertain on Facebook. It’s the gateway!
12. Ian Cleary, Razor Social
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Pay for advertising on Facebook.
We pay our email marketing tool provider to email our email subscribers; we pay Google if we don’t rank organically for content so we should pay Facebook for increased reach of our posts. Provide content that is only relevant to your target audience and promote the most relevant content through paid advertising. If you deliver great content relevant to your brand you will increase trust of your audience but if they don’t see your content you won’t build that trust.
13. Michael Todd, xeeme.com/michaelqtodd
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Talk regularly on the pages of other businesses in your niche and/or locality.
This will put your brand in front of the people you want to connect with and be seen by and you will only be a click away from getting new business.Be fun, friendly and educational and you will have great success with this strategy.
14. Hugh Briss, Social Identities
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The power of social media is not in selling directly but in inspiring and motivating others to do it for you. That doesn’t mean you only need to post content your fans and followers will share but first and foremost, you need a quality product they can believe in and a solid brand behind it. When you have that, your followers will create their own content There’s only so much any of us can do with a few social pages but once you have hundreds or even thousands of brand advocates, that’s when you’ll see the true power of social media.
15. Jenny Brennan, Virtual office Worx
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Running a Facebook page is a full time job. Like any other community you need a strong leader who understands the needs of the fans. Define a vision for your community and you will find it easier to create and curate amazing content that people will want to engage with and find value in! Having committed fans is the key to your success but you don’t need hundreds of thousands to be successful. Attracting the right fan that believes in and can be part of your vision is your ultimate goal!
16. Pam Moore, Marketing Nutz
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Always focus on the needs of your community. It is what happens “after the like” that matters most. Inspire them to connect with you with a goal of helping them achieve their goals. When you help your fans achieve their goals, you achieve yours by default. Inspire, connect, achieve. Don’t make it harder than it has to be.
17. Kim Garst, Boom Social
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The #1 tip for managing my Facebook page starts with a solid content plan. The key to a content plan is to develop a list of types of content that you think your ideal customer will relate to. For me, this includes social media and business tips, related blog posts, inspiration and motivation, personal or brand stories, humour and, of course, my marketing message. I recommend an 80/20 split on your content. Eighty percent of your content should be useful and value based to your ideal customer and the remaining twenty percent can be used to weave in your marketing message. once you have a content plan in place, consistency is critical. I post relatable content that ties back into my content plan, 6-8 times a day; sometimes more. This content strategy has helped me build a great community of engaged fans!
18. Dennis Yu, BlitzMetrics
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Change your setting to be fully open in terms of letting people comment, tag, reply, and so forth. Unless you are absolutely vilified, you’re opening yourself to a lot more growth and positive feedback. If you have a large email list, you can invite them (up to 5,000) people and run custom audiences.
19. Blake Jamieson, Pool Supply World
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Facebook changes so often – and the changes are entirely out of the page manager’s control. It’s important to stay up-to-date with platform changes, but even more important to diversify your points of contact with your fans. Leverage your Facebook page to grow your other social media channels, as well as email list. on the PoolSupplyWorld page I manage, we offer a coupon to our fans, but collect an email address before sending them use a coupon. This gives us the opportunity to stay in touch, even when Facebook throws us a curve ball.
20. Brian Carter, Briancartergroup.com
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My number one tip would be to really get to know who your audience is by keeping track of the engagement rate you get when you post to them. Divide the likes by the reach. You should get at least 1%, then try for 3-5% and I have some pages now where we’re trying to hit 6-9% regularly. It’s painstaking but each month, look at the list of posts and their engagement rates, then sort them so you can see which posts got the most and which got the least. What do the least engaged with have in common? Avoid doing that in the future. What do the most engaging post have in common? Try more of that. Every audience is different. Make sure you’re really talking to who your unique audience is. Also, use graph search to find out what other interests and pages they like- that can be a great way to start!
21. Liz Azyan, Liz Azyan’s guide to engagement online & research
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There are so many things we could do to really excite our Facebook communities. We can share valuable information, recognise our community members creatively by putting the spotlight on our members, run contests and interact with them on a daily basis. But the main common thread that runs through any successful Facebook community is their ability to create unique and memorable experiences for their members. Understanding their connection is not only with you, but with each other and the wider Facebook community. The core of it all lies in NOT what type of post they like, or comment on or share. It’s what type of post makes them FEEL happy, sad, excited, awesome, motivated, inspired and most of all what makes them FEEL connected and have a sense of belonging to your community. So ask yourself, how did you make your Facebook community FEEL today? If you can answer this question, you’re on your way to creating a Facebook community that is one of a kind.
22. Juan Felix, Felix Relationship Marketing
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My number one tip for managing a Facebook page would be to spend some time to use the right visuals for your content. You know, as social visual communication is becoming more important, you need to search for high quality content and visuals at the same time. So spend enough time to find the appropriate visual before you share an update on your Page. By doing that consistently you develop a sense of what type of content resonates with your Facebook community. Plus you can check your stats to see if you were right or not! And to find the right visuals you need to think out of the box and use your imagination. To give you an example: you could use an image of a delicious dish with fresh Thai food and add a text overlay that says something like ”Six key ingredients to create the perfect Post”. It makes total sense to use the image of colourful Thai food in this context and it will ignite emotional reactions. So, spend some time to curate high quality images that move people emotionally and tell your story with visuals.
23. Zsusa Kecsmar, Antavo Promotion Builder
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We see that our customers use contests and sweepstakes successfully to build a vibrant community on Facebook.They deeply involve fans with a photo contest, or run a lighthearted sweepstakes where fans can enter with a single click.A good Facebook contest has multiple, lower value prizes (so the chance of winning is higher), allows public voting (so those people who don’t upload their own entry can participate), and promoted well (unless no one shows up).
24. Alex Houg, BlitzMetrics
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Let the community do the work for you. Promote trusted members to admin, share their statuses, and elevate them. Public praise and encouragement shows you have a true two-way community. And nobody is going to do a better job in demonstrating expertise or passion than your best fans. So recognize them!
25. Rosh Khan, SocialRankMedia.com
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As many brands have seen on Facebook, there has been a dip in organic reach. It’s also no secret that FB has moved more towards the “pay to play” model. And in an attempt to ‘stay connected’ with their Facebook communities, many brands spend a lot more on promoting their posts. However… My social media agency has had the unique opportunity to test a variety of strategies for our client and we’ve found that you need to be STRATEGIC about the TYPE of content that gets promoted (either through “Boosts”and/ or Page Post Engagement ads). For us, the trick is to determine if your content falls under one of two categories — it’s either ENGAGING or it’s for BRAND AWARENESS. An engaging post will fuel conversation, increase reach, and drive up your overall EdgeRank. This also has a direct effect on your organic posts — if Facebook’s algorithm notices that a certain amount of folks have engaged with your post, they will serve the next post to more people. Also, by having huge engagement, your post will show up on more peoples’ newsfeeds. A brand awareness post will display products, testimonial graphics, and/or a direct product/service promotion. This assists with “immediate ROI”. (After all, you’re running a business and it’s always great to see some direct measurable “return on investment”.) So once your post is either ENGAGING or for BRAND AWARENESS, it’s worthy of being promoted. The basic premise here is to ensure that you get the “most bang for your buck” by being strategic. How much you spend per post will depend on our budget, your current audience size, and the potential reach you’d like to hit. At the end of it all, study the stats and modify the plan accordingly — the numbers don’t lie.
26. Jon Loomer, JonLoomer.com
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Experiment with publishing at non-peak times! I’m finding that I get the most reach and (most importantly) engagement from posts that are published in the middle of the night my time. I will schedule posts for 2:15am and wake up to a flurry of activity. While I have an international audience, the number of fans online during that time is only 70% of peak times, yet I get far more engagement when I publish late at night. My theory is that due to less competition, my content is less likely to get filtered out, resulting in reaching more people. And since it gets early engagement, that could be momentum to help it be seen when people on the East Coast in the US wake up (thanks to Story Bumping).
This won’t necessarily work for everyone, but my main point is that you should experiment with publishing times!
27. Keri Jaheing, Idea Girl Media
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Focus on Your Target Market
This may sound so simple. We all imagine our ideal customer reading our posts and loving (liking) what we send out into their Facebook news feed. Don’t we?
For big brands it is fairly easy to grab the attention of their target market on Facebook, as they already have brand recognition and a large base of brand ambassadors willing to interact with them online.
But for the small to medium sized brand, it is a bit more difficult. And even harder still for the start up and solo entrepreneur. It takes investment of time and money to attract your ideal target market to your Facebook Page!
As you’re personally networking on social platforms and socializing our brand pages on Facebook, it is quite easy to fall into a friendly pattern of marketing to our competition.
The liking, sharing, collaborating – Of course you will see your friends and colleagues. It is natural to want to extend goodwill and cooperate. However, these actions alone can leave your marketing efforts fruitless. And, unfortunately, I see this all too often.
Avoid that scenario by:
* Networking – online and….Offline! Live handshakes keep it real – Especially with those most likely to purchase your product or service.
* Attending Facebook Friday Parties Strategically – Not every week, and vary your visits at different online gatherings.
* Advertising – Even a small budget for promoted content can attract your target market to your business on Facebook.
* Finding Collaborators – Identify and nurture working relationships that are in your industry and in a complimentary niche (rather than competing).
Eventually you can be supporting each other with referrals. Until then, you can team up to combine efforts where it fits, and also to reduce some promotional expenses.
* Putting A Facebook Like Box on Your Blog – Your content is what magnetizes your target market to your website. Capitalize on this traffic by placing a “Like Box” on your blog’s side bar. This encourages your ideal customer to click the Like button. In turn, they will see your content in their Facebook news feed will be more likely to interact with you at your Facebook Page community. From there, you can warm up your relationship so they move into your sales funnel.
There are indeed more ways to focus on your target market at your Facebook Page. The above five ways will get you started in the right direction.
Just wanted to say a BIG THANK YOU to all the social media experts that shared their practical tips for managing a Facebook page.
Wow! Now that’s a lot of value crammed into one post. So feel free to bookmark this post so you can come back to it anytime you want to or need a reminder.