Even the most popular businesses will have trouble marketing over Facebook without a social media marketing plan and some basic organization.
Social media can be a real energy drain if you’re not paying attention to the process. One of the biggest benefits to following the tips in this guide is the freedom to take your mind of social media and focus on other important things.
Here are 10 tips from the pros to help you organize your Facebook marketing strategy.
1 – Decide What You’d Like To Use Social Media For.
Before you start using Facebook it’s wise to decide what you’ll be using it for and what goals you’re trying to acheive. Not all businesses use Facebook in the same way. Here are some of the ways businesses are using Facebook other than for marketing:
- Creating a community around their product or service
- Collaborating with other businesses
- Customer service and feedback tool
Even under the banner of marketing there are several subcategories:
- Increasing brand awareness
- Humanizing your brand
- Establishing yourself as a thought leader
- Increasing website traffic
The more specific you can make your goal, the easier your job will be. So first, decide what your overall goal is with Facebook.
2 – Create Yearly, Monthly, And Weekly Themes.
Creating themes gives you a framework for deciding what to post on Facebook and how to interact with your customers. It takes a lot of the mental work away and ensuress your strategy is consistant throughout the year.
A good way to organize themes is to start with a yearly theme that compliments a goal you’re trying to acheive, then breaking it down into smaller categories for the following months and weeks following this pattern:
- Yearly goals
- Monthly themes
- Weekly topics
- Daily posts
For example, my goal for this year (as a web designer) is to focus on building and strengthening my existing clients’ websites.
To decide my monthly themes I brainstormed 12 ways I could strengthen my existing clients’ websites. For each monthly theme, I brainstormed 4 topics to discuss each week.
Without themes and topics I have no idea what to post about. But with my themes at hand, I know exactly what to say and I can measure it against last month’s topic.
3 – Keep a Social Media Calendar
With a social media calendar you can stop creating your posts as they occur to you and instead dedicate time to creating a bulk of posts at once.
A social media calendar is a great tool for collaboration. Its something your whole team can work with and ensures consistency in posting.
You can keep details for several social media profiles on one calendar, or create seperate ones. We recommend using a tool like Google Sheets (or Excel, sure) to create your calendar. There are also free templates online.
4 – Create a Style Guide
Using consistent branding, colors, images, and themes will allow you to make posts much faster and easier. It’s so much more pain-free when you come to make a post to have a general idea of what the post will already look like because it’s part of your branding style.
A social media style guide can include:
- Customer personas
- Voice and tone
- Jargon and acronyms
- Example posts
- Sentence, paragraph, and caption length
- How and when to use CTAs
- Language rules
- More (list here)
5 – Use a Posting Rule
How do you decide what to post between promotions, events, news, and funny pictures? Try using a posting rule. Here are some posting rules suggested by social media experts.
- Use the 80/20 rule
- 80% to educate, inform, entertain
- 20% to promote your brand
- Aim for 20 posts per week. 4 branded, 16 other.
- Use the thirds rule
- One third sharing ideas and stories
- One third personal interactions
- Last third promoting your business
- Use the 70-20-10 rule
- 70% original content
- Content relevant to your followers interest 20% of the time
- Sell promotional content 10% of the time
6 – Use a Post Scheduling Tool
Post scheduling tools have become popular for organizing posts across many profiles. You can track and automate much of your social media with these programs.
Post scheduling programs are often expensive but save you lots of time.
Hootsuite is currently the industry leader for post scheduling tools, but SmarterQue and Buffer are great alternatives.
7 – Post At Least Twice a Day
Heres a nice rule of thumb if you’re wondering how often to post. Aim for 2-3 posts per day.
This is the best way to keep fresh and consistent without over burdening yourself. Just don’t forget that you can make and schedule posts in advance.
8 – Post in The Afternoon or Early Evening
More people are engaged and likely to see your posts in the afternoon and early evening. Try to schedule your posts to go out at those times. Although try to mix up the exact times so you don’t give the impression of being stale.
This is just a general guide though. Many industries have different times for the best posts.
9 – Look For Spikes in Engagement and Build on That
Over time your social media strategy should evolve to be more effective. Take the time to go back and look at what posts are gathering likes, comments, and clicks and make decisions based on those wins.
Considet the 80/20 rule: that 80% of your gains usually come from around 20% of your efforts. Discover what efforts are bringing you the most gains and build upon those.
10 – Add a Small Budget
It doesn’t need to be much, but adding a small boosting budget onto your posts will give you the best data about what works for your page, fast.
Consider boosting your best post each day for around $5, then look at what was successful at the end of the month and use it to decide what to create for next month.
Conclusion
For many business owners, social media is a daily shot in the dark. Those businesses never get far on Facebook and most give up before long because they’re not getting the results equal to the effort they put in.
But with an organized strategy and a little time you will start to see results from your Facebook marketing.