The world of digital marketing is like an ocean - explored considerably but still full of possibilities that are unheard of. Though most of the businesses globally have identified the right digital machinery, social media marketing holds the top spot to drive faster results in terms of out-reach and lead generation. Social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter are inexpensive when it comes to organic digital campaigns and can be leveraged effectively to share targeted messages across.

Taking this into consideration, let us talk about Facebook Marketing and how easily it can help you set the sails of a long-term digital journey, if you haven’t already explored the benefit. Potential customers are always in the search for businesses like yours on Facebook. A focused, well-planned Facebook marketing strategy is the only way to tap into this existing TG. Your Facebook Business Page is the linchpin of your online identity.

Here are some easy steps to leverage Facebook Marketing for better & wider outreach, especially during this time when you can effectively cash-on the time people are spending on social media, with over 2.4 billion people using it every month.

Step1

Create a dedicated business page

Its as easy as making a cup of coffee. If you don’t have a business page or if you don’t intent to invest anything, go for page creation in Facebook for free. Just login to your personal account and go to facebook.com/pages/create to create your page. Don’t worry, your personal info will not get reflected in the page. Now, fill in details of your business-like description, contact info etc or whatever you want your customers to find out. Another important aspect is the visual identity. Add your business logo and other brand images. Make sure you follow the optimum size guidelines. Here are the specifications.

• Profile photo or logo: 170 x 170 pixels on desktop, and 128 x 128 pixels on smartphones.
• Facebook cover photo size: 720 x 315 pixels
• Facebook timeline photos size: 1200 x 630 pixels
• Facebook timeline ads size:at least 1200 x 628 pixels
• Facebook messenger ads size: 254 x 133 pixels

Step 2

Adding relevant call to action

For any business, getting sales inquiries is the primary objective. Hence, a prominent call to action is necessary to trigger interest and inquiries. For your Facebook business page, it is an important aspect. So, do it first thing after the page is created. You can do this by clicking on Add a Button under your cover photo to set one up.

 Step 3

Deciding on the kind of posts you want to share

Let us first take you through the kind of posts you can share on your business page. Here are the broad categories.

•  Text post
•  Photo post
•  Video post
•  Live video post
•  Linked content post
•  Poll post
•  Facebook Stories
•  Pinned post

So now you may ask, how can I figure out what types of post to use?

The best way is to learn from your audience and engage in social listening. This will help you to get insights on what your TG love about your business, brand or product. Besides, it also gives you an idea about their challenges and the struggle they are facing with your competitors.

You can share content that’s performing well on other social mediums. If you are on Twitter and your content is getting great response, or if you have a blog page that has a good engagement rate in terms of views and comments, consider re-sharing those as posts on your Facebook business page.

Step 4

Plan your content mix carefully

A well thought content plan will always help you move to the right direction. An important part of this plan is to decide on the right content mix.

There are 2 ways to do it. One is the 80-20 rule and the other is known as the social media rule of thirds.

80-20 rule:

• Use 80% of your content or posts to engage, educate and inform
• The rest  20% can be used to promote your product or brand as a whole

The social media rule of thirds :

• one-third of your content should share insights and compelling brand stories
• The next one-third should involve engagements with your followers on a personal level
• the rest can be leveraged to promote your business

The idea is to give more weight to value driven content rather than aggressive self-promotion.

Another important aspect is the time of posting content. Research shows that the best time to post on Facebook is:

• Between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. IST on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday for B2B brands
• 12 p.m. IST on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday for B2C brands

Through a combination of the above steps you can gradually improve your page performance and build a pretty good digital presence. As said earlier, Facebook Marketing is an ocean and this is just the beginning of your successful journey. The good news is you can use Facebook Marketing to build your online presence from scratch, without investing a single penny. Then as you go along, deep dive into more complex strategies and paid campaigns to take your Facebook Marketing to a completely new level.