Erika Brookes is an employee of Virtue. Virtue is a social media management company. They provide technological solutions to help brand grasp the potential of marketing on social networks like twitter, facebook and linkedin. During the Craking the Code: Advanced Social Media Strategies webinar Thursday, Erika shared what Virtue believes are the 10 best practices for Facebook publishing. Below, I have listed the 10 practices Erika named and a little tid bit about each.
1. Conversational Calendar: Developing a calendar will help you map out you social media. You want to make sure that the things you are posting should mirror your other online activites as well as offline activities and any other marketing tactics you use. It is important to be consistent in your post so as not to confuse your audience.
2. Engagement vs. Shouting: When speaking to your publics you want to make sure that you are using a brand voice. This means use the same voice in your social media as you would in all other forms of media. Make sure you audience feels engaged, talk to them, not at them.
3. Meaningful Content: When creating content you want to make sure that your customers are reading things that are relevant to them as well as relevant to your brand. It is important to be an "expert in your field." If you can show your customers that you know why they need your product by using relevant and informative information you should. Be careful though, make sure you are not just promoting yourself. Show your audience you care about them just as much as you care about your product.
4. Post Type: According to Brookes, image posts are the most popular and most effective type of post. It is much easier to share and image than a video, not to mention much easier to create. It is important to speak to your public as you would speak to someone one on one. If you customize each post to your brand and your audience you automatically raise the share value, which is your ultimate goal. All content that you publish is created to be liked, shared or commented on, remember those things when creating a post.
5. Time of Day/ Frequency: Be consistent with your posts. If you post around dinner time everyday keep it consistent. You want to be posting when your audience is using social networking.
6. Wall Strategy: News feeds are getting 110 times more use than the tabs. It is important to remember this when using your wall. If you set your default page to your posts only then you will show up on your customers news feed more often.
7. Moderation: It is important to protect and manage your brand through your social network sites. A great way to be in tune with what is being written on your wall is by using key words. This will allow you to make sure the posts or conversations from your customers stays clean and not explicit. However, this is where moderation comes in. Don't be an overprotective parent type. Allow your audience to be heard and have conversations just make sure that the image of your brand can stay foul language free.
8. Fan-gating: This is the idea of increasing your fan base. I don't believe you could find a person who doesn't enjoy getting something for free. A great way of fan-gating would be to giveaways, coupons, etc. An example Brookes mentioned was a Baskin Robbins giveaway. The campaign ran that if you could get 31 of your friends to like the Baskin Robbins page, you would receive a coupon for a free scoop of ice cream.
9. Shorten URLs: By shortening your URLs you can use your brand name to keep your fans interested and make your site easy to remember. However, when doing so, be sure that you are the only one who has access to your data on that website.
10. Tools for Brand Advocates: The largest goal of using social media to market your brand is to get your key publics and their friends to like, share or comment on your page. The more your brand is being talked about the better the situation for your company. Give your existing fans reason to share your posts. Examples of how to do this would be sampling, giveaways, polls, voting. Get them interacting with your social media and they will start sharing with their network of friends.
I found Erika Brookes's "lecture" to be very fascinating. It seemed as if Virtue has pretty much hit the nail on the head as far as Facebook tactics for companies goes. I think the important thing for companies to remember is not to shy away from the numbers. You may have hundreds, or thousands or maybe even millions of fans, but it is important to talk to them as you would one on one.
