As Facebook continues to be the number one social network used by most people, it is important to make sure that your business is using it correctly. So in this post, I’m gonna give you 11 business strategies to help you grow your business organically on Facebook.
The key to anything that comes into doing things on Facebook is gonna start with a killer content strategy. I have a free content planning worksheet for right here that you should definitely go grab before we dive into this.
Algorithm
The first thing that it’s important for you to know is we really need to understand how the algorithm works. This is gonna dictate how you’re going to create and do things on Facebook. So stick with me here ’cause this is a little explanation-y, but it’s gonna be really important as we continue through our other 10 topics.
The objective of anything that you post on Facebook is to show it to as much of your target audience as possible. With every single post that happens on Facebook, whether it’s in a group, a personal page or a business page, it’s going to receive a score.
That score is gonna determine how the whole post will succeed or fail on the news feed. The most important thing with understanding the score is that everything that gets posted has to be relevant to the user. Imagine you’re posting something about your baby on Facebook but you have some friend over here that’s a single person who hates children. The likelihood of Facebook putting that piece of content in front of them is very minimal. They’ve proven to the Facebook algorithm that they are very uninterested in that content.
User activity will determine who sees what. It’s gonna come from a score of highest to lowest. Every single person’s news feed algorithm is different. That’s over 2 billion unique news feeds! So it’s really important to make sure that what you’re creating is very specific to your target demographic.
What determines a successful post on Facebook?
There are three factors that come into the success of a post. These are going to be engagement, who posted it and the post age. When it comes to engagement, obviously, it’s gonna be things like comments, emojis, sharing, likes, not likes, hearts, all that stuff, and of course who clicks on the links that you have on your page.
When it comes to who posted it, Facebook’s gonna continue to serve your content to the people that are engaging. If you’re not already getting a lot of engagement, you basically will be dying a slow death on Facebook. So it’s important to make sure that what you’re creating is engaging and hopping. And I have some pointers for you – don’t worry.
When it comes to post age, the older it is, the lower the score is. That is why you usually have about a 48-hour shelf life on Facebook for your post to be relevant and matter. Now, when you post something new, how does that post get seen by the algorithm? Well, it will service your content to a small group of people that are most likely to engage with it.
If they see that that group is engaging with it, they’re gonna show it to more people to try and increase the reach to keep the engagement growth alive for that post, which is why when you first post something, it’s important to make sure that when you post and what you post has the best chance for success. So this leads into our next one, which is you want to create quality content.
Quality Content
Now, there is a lot of bad stuff on the internet. We know people need to get it together when it comes to creating content and stop being so dang lazy. I am sure that so many of you have scrolled right on past those generic stock photos that have a bitly link and probably have some kind of branding in the corner.
No one’s buying it. You need to make sure that what you’re posting is visually appealing and something that you would actually choose to engage with yourself.
So some tips for you are gonna be:
Link overload
You don’t wanna post a link on every single thing that you do. Even if you have a really great image that is engaging, maybe has cool texts or teaching them something, if everything that you’re posting has a link to something, it’s gonna get old real quick. And of course, Facebook doesn’t want you to always be taking people outside of the platform.
So try to be engaging and interactive without taking people away from the platform they are on.
Be personable
This is something that is really hard for older brands and big companies. It’s like, how can I be personable and relatable when I’m trying to be this big brand entity? And the best way to do that is to just remember that you are talking to people and you are a person yourself.
Show up in that way and it’s gonna be really helpful for you to connect personally because that’s what people want.
Call-to-Action
Make sure your post has a call to action or a CTA to engage.
This is gonna be where you ask them a question at the end. Leave a specific emoji response, like thumbs up if you like this or heart if you loved this or a sad face and tell me why didn’t like it down below. Whatever’s happening, give that specific call to action within the post that has nothing to do with clicking a link.
Share and show emotion
You wanna connect with people in a way that’s gonna make them be like, huh, I really feel something. This is what’s gonna make me connect with this brand even more. So really make sure that whatever you’re doing, you’re invoking a very specific emotion, like what do you want people to feel When they see your posts? Now, when it comes to emotions, you definitely wanna make sure you’re including emojis.
Emojis
Emojis is the default way to communicate any sort of feeling or emotion nowadays. Include them in your post. In fact, include them in that first sentence the most.
Whether it’s a star or a heart, set the tone of how people should feel when they’re reading this.
Different fonts
Another really fun way to make sure you’re standing out is to use different fonts on your feed.
You have different options for italicizing and bolding and things like that. And I do have a tutorial posted that will show you how you can do that from desktop and from mobile.
Social video
Next is social video. This is very, very different from what we do here on YouTube, where we have very specific search-driven content that you have either been searching for or was suggested to you.
This content that we do on YouTube is not really what you want to be doing over on Facebook. Facebook, you want short, snappy videos that you can probably deliver to somebody in 30 or 60 seconds. These might not even have anyone talking at all. It might just be all text on the screen or you include those closed captions because 84% of people are watching videos on Facebook without sound.
So you really wanna make sure that whatever you’re posting up on Facebook from a social video standpoint, has this little tease, has lots of text that can really pull people in in that thumb scroll and make them watch. And it’s also really important to make sure that you’re adding a call to action within your video, like share this for a reason, let us know down in the comments what you think or whatever it may be. It’s also gonna let you know how many people are watching through to the end of your video or hitting specific points in your video.
Post frequency
How often should you post? I actually get asked this all the time. And universally across the board, all of the studies show that you should be posting a minimum of once a day on Facebook.
Now, you shouldn’t be posting the same kind of messaging all the time, for sure. And you also wanna make sure that you take the time to study your Facebook analytics to tell you the best time of day to be posting your content.
It’s important to remember that everyone’s audience is different. So when different demographics of people are spending time on Facebook is going to be different. For example, I spend a lot of my time on Facebook definitely in the mornings and the evenings, but there also might be a lot of people that spend a lot of time on it at lunch or maybe they’re night owls.
Whatever it may be, know that ideal time for your daily posts.
Leverage your audience
Number five is leveraging other audiences. This is gonna be where you reach into other things where your people are. Maybe you have a really awesome email list or maybe you have a killer Instagram or maybe you’re just doing something really smart in-house. Whatever it may be, reach into that audience, encourage them to come over and follow you on Facebook.
The only reason to do this, though, is if you’re going to offer something unique on Facebook. What you’re doing on Facebook should not be the same as what you’re doing on Instagram. You wanna give very different reasons why people should follow you on Facebook in addition to or as an alternative to what you’re doing on Instagram or on your email list.
Create a Facebook group
Facebook groups are a really great way for businesses that aren’t super sexy, fun, flashy to really connect with people. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with that business or the individual. It’s just those pages don’t tend to do as well as a group.
You’re also gonna be able to probably get more reach in this group because you’re gonna be able to be a person on there and build those personal relationships. And in fact, Facebook oftentimes will give a little bit more attention to groups over pages.
Additionally, you can build a really solid quality community where other people can be posting and being engaged with around your brand. You’re essentially gonna be bringing people together so that they can really thrive around you and what you have to offer.
Diversify your following
I really like Facebook. I’ve been using Facebook since 2006, but if I’m really honest, I don’t get the attention I’m looking for in Facebook from my page. That’s why I have diversified where I have my social following on Instagram, YouTube and my email list.
The reason that these things are important and the reason it’s vital to diversify but stay present is because you shouldn’t ever put all of your eggs in one basket.
You do not wanna be relying entirely on one platform to be giving you everything you need for your business. What happens if their terms of services change? What if whatever the reason is, that platform doesn’t exist, how are you supposed to continue that conversation with people? That is why diversifying is gonna be so important.
Facebook advertising
Now, while I usually try to give you tips to help you very organically, next is Facebook advertising. Facebook advertising is really helpful because it’s gonna give you a way to find people that don’t know you exist very specifically. There is so much data in Facebook that’s going to allow for you to find exactly who you want to work with, who you want to follow, who you want to give you money with Facebook advertising.
And what’s really nice is that it can not only help you find new people, but help you continue talking to your existing people as well. There’s so much that happens on the feed. There’s no possible way that every single person that likes your brand or is interested in your brand is seeing everything that you’re posting.
So if you have something very specific to share – maybe you have something to sell, whatever you’re trying to do… make sure you’re including Facebook advertising as a part of your Facebook strategy because without that pay to play model, you’re going to be very frustrated along the way and your growth is going to be incredibly slow and hard.
User-generated content
UGC is where other people are creating content about your brand. Now, this is done very simply. Think about last time you went to a hotel and they probably had some flyer up at the front desk or in the room that was like, if you’re enjoying your stay, take a picture and do hashtag blah, blah, blah or tag us at blah, blah, blah.
And what you do is you’re like, huh, I really do like this place. I wanna share with it and show everyone else how cool this is. So I am going to do exactly this. I am going to go take a picture and tag all of the people on Facebook.
This is a really easy way for you to get easy engagement. You have new content that you can share (with their permission of course). And it’s gonna be a really fun way for you and others to see your brand in a fun different way.
Experiment with Facebook live
Live streaming had a 26.8% increase in 2020. And I think that’s very valuable to see if you can do something with your audience around live streaming. It’s not only a fantastic way to build community and get engagement and participation from the people that follow you, but it’s a great way for you to just have that rambling effect and share information beyond what you can put into a post.
Sometimes you just wanna share more and do more and engage more. And live streaming really is gonna allow for you to do that.
Use hashtags
The last going to be use hashtags. Facebook has really wanted people to be using hashtags more on their posts. It’s gonna allow for them to better group your content and get it in front of the people that might be interested in it at best, which is again, the whole objective of this video, help you get your content in front of the people that wanna be there.
So think about a couple of different hashtags that you can add into your post that can group your post and help you be found by other people.
Now, if you are looking to figure out how you can create different kind of fonts in your Facebook posts, then you won’t wanna miss this post.
Remember, you are impossibly amazing!
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