The Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Marketing: Master Organic & Paid Reach

Originally published on Independent.ie

70% of marketers use Facebook to gain new customers, while 47% of marketers say that Facebook is their number one influencer of purchases, according to a recent report published on Business2Community. Below I’ll explain how to make the most of your Facebook marketing – read on to discover exciting, new ideas for increasing your page’s engagement and discover my top tips for propelling your paid and organic reach.

1. The Power of Organic Facebook Marketing:

Organic reach is the number of people who have seen your post through unpaid distribution.

The benefits of organic reach is that you can publish posts for free. With the increasing flood of content published in newsfeeds in recent years, decent organic reach is getting harder and harder to achieve. However, there’s no need to be daunted if you don’t have a budget to spend – this predicament can allow you to get more creative and strategic with your ideas. Ensure you focus all of your Facebook marketing efforts on meeting the needs of your customers and try implementing a few ideas I’ve outlined below.

2. How to Keep Your Facebook Fans Engaged

Establish Your Unique Selling Proposition:

To keep your Facebook fans engaged you will need to establish a unique value proposition for your audience – essentially, a reason for people to keep coming back to your page, clicking on your posts and sharing your content. Ask yourself: ‘What value am I providing for my fans?’ ‘Is it something that our competitors can’t compete with?’

Content, Competitions & Surveys:

Some ideas to keep your Facebook fans engaged include posting quality content, creating exciting competitions and sharing surveys that ask for their opinions. For example, you could create a survey and ask your fans what content they would like to read or what new products they would like to see in your new fashion line. Take your community’s advice on board and let them know when you’ve created their chosen item or have written that post they wanted. It’s also important to add images and/or video content to your posts to enhance the visual impact and help them stand out in your fans’ crowded newsfeed.

Interacting With Fans:

You job is to make your fanbase feel part of a community. It’s equally important that you respond to all queries and complaints in a timely and polite manner. This will show your customers that you genuinely care. Address any concerns that your fans have about your product and/or service and do everything you can to address any issues they might have. Use a social media monitoring platform like Hootsuite to keep track of all of your social media interactions.

3. Target Your Messages to Reach the Right Customers

Use Facebook Insights to gain a better understanding of your Facebook fans. You can then target specific messages to meet the specific needs of subsets of your audience. For example, if you’re selling clothes and have written an article on the latest fashion trends for women, you can target your post to appear in the news feeds of women who have expressed an interest in clothes. Targeting options include Gender, Relationship Status, Location and Interests, etc. To target your Facebook post, simply click the targeting icon at the end of your post before you click Publish.

4. The Power of Paid Facebook Advertising:

With more and more content being created on Facebook every day, organic reach is steadily declining. That’s why you might want to consider using Facebook’s paid advertising options to promote and increase the reach of your posts. While organic posts only get shown to your own Facebook fans, paid ads allow you to target people who have not liked your page but have similar interests and/or demographics.

To Boost a specific post, simply click on the ‘Boost’ button on the bottom of the published post, select your Audience type, allocate your budget and select the duration you would like the post to be boosted for. Facebook gives you an estimation of the audience size you will receive for the amount of money you spend before you pay.

Example of Paid Advertising Ad Creation Layout:

Stay tuned for next week’s article where I’ll reveal my top tips for getting the most out of your Twitter presence.

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