With 800 million users, Facebook is a social network in which many companies or brands put the focus to promote its service portfolio, showcase their new products or build a user community around our brand or our product. To this day I take is difficult to know how many pages or how many groups addresses but what is certain is that a good page on Facebook is able to build much , strengthen the ties that bind us to our audience and get closer to her so that we know so we can talk “face to face” but, as usual, open a Facebook page does not result in a miraculous process that automatically attracts the users needs of our time and effort to really succeed.
1. Strategy
Occasionally we have said it is essential to take time to translate “on paper” why we see the need for our company and our brand has a presence on Facebook, do we realize that presence (in the case of companies, brands or pulic figures as page), how are we going to direct our audience , what things we talk and how we will measure the achievement of the objectives.
Without a plan of action is likely to pull up hard but, over time, our presence may become erratic or something unidirectional. There are people fleeing the schedules or the definition of a strategy but this type of exercise helps us to analyze where we are, what path we will follow and we want to go, three key factors that define what we do.
Any strategy must have objectives that must be achievable and measurable and therefore should be measured and enforced. If we decide to spend time and resources to be on Facebook is because we want to achieve something (greater impact of our brand, build a community of users, increase our sales, etc), however, we can not expect this to be open the page, publish and ready, we must consider the effort we make and compare it with the revenue they get for it, if necessary, readjust what we are doing.
And how do we raise the strategy? Not long ago, in another guide of the week , we review some of the points that should cover a strategy of social networking presence , perhaps this note may serve to face the dreaded “white paper”.
2. Plan
Once we know what we do, we want to go (objectives) and how are we going to do (to use applications, design of our website, we will use tone, message we want to project, etc.), the following step we must take is that leads to action plan. Planning is important because it helps us dispense our efforts and uniformly distributed in time, avoiding long and often publish and then spend time without posting anything.
Our presence should be constant, ie, our users should note that there are people behind the page they are visiting or who decided to press the button “like” and for that we must consider how many initiatives, for example, we will be capable of undertaking over a given period, what could publish content (comment a photo, share a link, make a survey, etc.) and whether the actions defined are regular or occasional.
For example, if we decide to make weekly schedules, it is interesting that we collect this type of planning details:
- Total number of publications which set the goal for the week and the deal that will do the same (2 daily given that one will be at 10 am and the other at 5 pm because they are the hours that our target audience in and out of work).
- What kind of content we will publish in the week (photos, share links, ads that we do, raise discussions, surveys do).
- Singular actions that we will perform this week, ie, specific activities outside the regular program we want to ask (events, contests, virtual meetings, etc.)
We must avoid, when planning to fall into the monotony and repetition, so good planning is that we see on paper or on a planning or on a schedule, what we do and we compare it with what we have done to detect whether we are getting too boring.
However, if we are new and we are about to launch our Facebook page, one of the details that we need to plan a boot action, ie, our presentation to the public, something that we model with the aim of seeking greater impact of our actions to start position and begin to capture users around our brand, product or service.
3. Converse, interacts and delivers value
Among the thousands of pages on Facebook can find examples of good and bad practices, ideally, over time, our site is placed in the group of “good practices” but for that we must try todeliver content attractions that bring value to the user and to cause him some curiosity by visiting the link to share or display the video we have posted.
If someone decides to use part of their time in visiting our website should not disappoint by offering content that are nothing more than ads for our products. It is clear that increase sales, for example, may be one of our strategic objectives but should not that be the smell that must emanate from our website but, through conversation and closer to the user, we should be able to the user to capture, convert customer first, and then to “friend”.
4. You are human, behave as such
Following the thread of good and bad practices, a Facebook page with comments closed is a unidirectional channel loses all the advantages of social networks and brands to bring users and encourage debate or conversation. I do not think that is best suited to raise a channel that is only for us to talk without listening to what our users have to say, however, not much use to open the comments and not paying attention to what is said, for example, ignoring the questions that we do.
According to one study , nearly 40% of U.S. users would consider not buy from companies that do not reply to comments that they leave their customers on Facebook or Twitter.
Reply to comments encourage our users to participate and therefore conducive to write more and others are also encouraged to leave comments they will see that we value what they say and listen to them. Sometimes, depending on the seriousness of the topic, we need to answer the questions raised in private, sometimes we will do in public and, in extreme cases, we will deploy the user to send us an email or call us by phone, but we use the means we use, everyone will see that our website can make a window more attention and customer support.
As we listen, we also have to apologize when Go for the leg because, although we have made our planning and have developed a strategy, the site is operated by people and can make mistakes. If we are wrong is not the end of the world, and if there is a crisis we face it, it is important not to be afraid to apologize if we are wrong, is something our users will value.
5. Measure and adjust your plan if necessary
It is difficult for our strategy to work perfectly at first, probably need some adjustment. How can we detect that our Facebook page is working? A visual inspection could give us an idea of what we are doing or the number of reviews posted, however, Facebook offers administrators a powerful tool pages named Facebook Insights gives us reports of our activities and the impact it has generated (users that came our publications, amplifications that had our publications by the users to share their contacts, comments about our publications, etc).
Furthermore, as is common in the strategy will make a special effort to catalog and segment the target audience of our website, Facebook Insights data will help us verify that we had identified demographic profiles match those actually accessing our Facebook page. If we are doing well, there should be many discrepancies between the estimated and actual unless, for example, we let out a collective self that is entering our site or the opposite, ie we have assumed a profile, really is not accessing (which we must study, evaluate and, if necessary, adjust our strategy or bring any action to capture that segment).
Facebook Insights is a tool that should be monitored weekly to discuss the impact of publications, identify what worked well and who did so in order to readjust our plan content and always deliver valuable content to users and encourage creating a community around our brand, our product and our company.
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