A few weeks ago, I told you why you need a website because facebook could go down someday. But I know facebook isn’t totally useless. Actually, it has an amazing ads manager and specific market feature. Also, everyone’s on facebook – so it’s good to be out there.
Unfortunately, it’s pretty challenging for businesses to have any organic success on the platform because it’s kind of a pay-to-play system. Meaning, you must buy ads/ pay to boost posts in order for people to find you. This can be annoying for any business owner that doesn’t have a lot of money to invest.
Why your business should be on Facebook…
Your customer is out there
My sister isn’t on facebook, but I think it’s safe to safe most people are. And they expect to “like” a Facebook page for your business. Usually that’s where it stops, though. I heard a good tip recently, to boost your posts just to your own followers: this method is cheap, and ensures that the people who have ALREADY SAID THEY LIKE YOU will see your work.
Guests can leave reviews of your shop, and your local community will usually check in when they post a photo. Moms, grandmas, businessmen, entrepreneurs, are all on facebook (many, many times throughout the day), and you should be reaching them!
Access to Ads Manager
Next, start playing with Ads Manager. I’m only slightly obsessed with the level of detail you can go into here. You start with the basics, age, gender, location, and then you can add interests like music, food, crafting, and the possibilities are endless. The system will tell you if your segment is too large or small to be effective. Keep adding or removing features until you get it right!
It might take some time to find the perfect segment of the population, but start with a small budget and go from there.
Remember, the goal is to get people to buy from you. Because of that, you’ll want to link to a landing page on your website. Your Facebook followers probably won’t see our posts that often, so you need to get them to your website and on an email list
Sponsored Instagram Posts
You can’t create ads on Instagram without a Facebook Business Page… If your target audience is on Instagram more than Facebook, you’ll still need a facebook account to reach them :/ However, you build the Instagram ad in the same place as Facebook Ads, so that’s simple.
Creating a business page…
You will need a personal facebook page in order to manage a business page. So if you don’t have one, you’ll need to make one. Or ask your assistant. I’ve made a bunch of these in the past have the hardest time choosing a category. Fortunately, you can change this and it doesn’t affect your audience. Once you have that figured out, Facebok will guide you through the simple setup process.
Choose photos that represent your company and start posting away! I do push all my Instagram photos through to Facebook, but creating specific content for the platform is always a good idea. I also pin a recent post or promotion to the top of the page so visitors see it right away.
You can also share useful articles on this page, so you educate your customers, not just sell to them. Or funny videos. Everyone loves funny Facebook videos.
Facebook Live videos greatly help to increase engagement and just build content on your page. They’re all saved to your page after completed, so even if you don’t have many followers at the time, guests will see how active your page is when they visit.
Aaaaand if you’re a blogger, Facebook stats are another thing that sponsors want to see. So, you should probably get started on that.
