Your business is too important to NOT have an active and exciting social media account. Social media is:
- A powerful tool with reach to thousands of people.
- Where potential clients go to research your company.
- How you can engage and build relationships with existing clients.
From my experience, the biggest mistake social media accounts make is not having a social media strategy. As the sports saying goes:
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
Today, I’m going to present a strategy for Facebook, the biggest and most powerful social media platform, that’s about turning you into an expert authority in your field.
Best of all, you can download my Facebook strategy template, which I use to schedule content for Eagle Software, implementing a strategy with an entire MONTH of awesome posts that will increase your likes, followers and leads.
Keep reading to learn:
- Why Facebook?
- Your Facebook strategy
- Tried and tested content for Facebook (with examples)
- Tools you can use to find/make content
- Your personal 1 month Facebook strategy
My Credentials
But first, a bit about my credentials. I’m Marcus, Eagle Software’s Social Media and Marketing Officer. Before I worked at Eagle, I had the same role at Coachbase, a #1 featured sports app startup with a front page Google ranked basketball blog with over 28K Facebook followers, 16K + twitter subscribers, and an email list with 25k+ basketball coaches.
If you want to see my work in action, just google “4 out 1 in motion offense” (a very popular offense).
Why Facebook?
3 Key Reasons:
- It’s where everyone’s at. As of today, it’s the most used social media platform in Australia.
- No other social media site has integrated marketing as well as Facebook. Facebook ads and boosted posts are two powerful tools in your arsenal. A side effect of paying for ads is that people will also visit your page, making it important you leave a great impression.
- Facebook is often the first place people will go to (after your website) when they want to look you up. With many options for customization, it’s a chance to make your presence stand out.
It’s so easy to tell an active, engaged Facebook account apart from a barren shell. Because of these three reasons, building a professional Facebook presence is your number 1 priority.
Your Facebook Strategy
Visual Content
When starting out, I suggest focusing on sharing visual content (images and videos) over written content (articles, posts). Why?
On social media, you have 3 seconds to capture attention before your viewer moves on. It’s much more likely an image/video will catch their immediate attention than a sentence.
Organic Content
I’m also a believer in organic content- that’s content that your company creates. When you post something made by someone else, no matter how viral it gets, you’re ultimately just advertising their brand.
Posting something that you’ve made means that you get to control the message it leaves on the viewer. That message should be that your business is professional, knowledgeable and is the best in your field.
Provide Value
Another important question to always ask yourself before posting is:
How am I providing actionable value to my audience?
Examples of value include: knowledge, motivation, new information, ideas. The actionable part is a bit trickier. Basically, you want to provide something to your audience that they can use (right away!) to improve something.
For example, to potential clients, a photo of a cute puppy might be interesting, but it ultimately provides 0 value. Instead, a graphic showing the top 5 most dog friendly neighborhoods in Melbourne would be useful in their buying process and hence provides value.
Making people realize that your content is useful, is how you gain credibility, authority and respect from your audience.
Don’t Burn Out
One last tip that I like to follow is the maxim “minimal effort, maximum impact”. Too many companies try to post daily for a month and then burn out.
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Growth in action! From when I started at Coachbase.
Fortunately, I’ve found growth to be compounded- like getting interest in a bank.
This is why a social media strategy should be part of any long term business growth plan and not just a one off. You won’t see results until after about 6-12 months of hard work, but when they happen, they will amaze you.
Because of this, I suggest you initially just post 2-3 times a week. Once you start seeing results, it’s time to invest more time into social media.
So to sum up my key Facebook strategy lessons:
- Share visual content
- Focus on organic content
- Provide value to your audience
- Social media is a long term game
Tried and Tested Facebook Content
Here’s some tried and tested content (with successful examples that I’ve created) that people love on Facebook:
Quotes
People love insightful and motivational quotes. This simple quote got a 100 likes and 80 shares over Facebook.
Although it’s very easy to search them from the net (Pinterest), for just 10 minutes of your time you can add a watermark to your own (Canva)- that way when it’s shared it’s free branding for you.
Just don’t quote yourself- that’s cringy.
Infographics
These take longer to create than quotes, but provide useful information in an easy to digest format. It’s the type of content that let’s viewers know you’re familiar with the in’s and out’s of the industry.
Some guaranteed hit formats include:
- 7 things to avoid when doing X
- Reprint a famous list from an industry leader like “Warren Buffet’s 10 Rules to Success”
- 5 steps to success for X
- 9 facts you probably didn’t know about
Pro tip: long infographics look great on mobile, but less so on desktop, so keep your audience in mind.
Videos
As everyone has a smartphone, shooting videos has never been easier. One format that I’ve found successful with Eagle Software are fun VLOGs. VLOGs are a chance to let everyone know about any notable accomplishments in your team.
One successful example was this video we made for Eagle’s 3rd Anniversary party. It was silly and a lot of fun to make, but also managed to advertise our party to a large audience.
Don’t take yourself too seriously and you’ll be right.
Finally, videos are the one form of media that I recommend you share from other sources, simply because creating high quality videos is difficult.
A keyword searching tool like Buzzsumo is great for picking up on trending videos. Another strategy is to simply follow similar pages using Facebook insights. You’ll see what their most popular posts for a week are, and able to share them right away. Here’s how to do that.
Animated Quotes
Another type of video that I’ve been experimenting with recently are animated quotes, like this one.
They take advantage of the fact that Facebook auto replays videos, making a simple text animation incredibly eye catching.
You can whip up a quote video in seconds with a free app like Legend.
Your blog
When approaching blog writing for small businesses, I tend to ask myself one question:
How can I use my knowledge to solve a problem for my readers?
A great blog can be reposted again and again every month, to equal levels of engagement, because your new readers will always want a solution to it.
That’s why you should not be afraid to tackle the big, frequently answered questions in your field.
When we started the Coachbase blog, we did SEO research to find the most popular search terms (basketball drills and offenses). Now, we have complete guides covering every type of drill and offense in basketball and are on the google front page for many.
How to write a great blog is a topic unto it’s own. For now, just know that you have information that your readers need, and the blog is the best platform to express it.
Your Personal 1 Month Facebook Strategy
The following spreadsheet is the exact tool I use to organize social media for Eagle Software. Here’s how to use it, in 3 easy steps:
- Download it here.
- Open it up and fill it in, using all the tools I mentioned above to create/source content
- Schedule the content on Facebook using the “publishing” function. Here’s how to do that.
The great thing about a social media schedule is it lays out your plan clearly. You can mix content to keep it fresh and you’ll never go through a dry spell without posting. Best of all, it keeps you focused. Fill the schedule up one step at a time and before you know it, you’ll be set for the entire month.
Download the social media schedule here.
