Facebook Marketing Strategy | Facebook Marketing Tips | Facebook Marketing Guide

Facebook is huge. As the largest social network in the world, it has more than 1.23 billion people active users, 62% of whom log in on a daily basis. It’s still the most popular social network around. Not to mention, Facebook owns 77% of all social logins. If you want your business' content to reach consumers, having a presence on Facebook is a given. But to make the most of your Facebook Page -- to attract and engage visitors, drive them to your website, and convert them into leads (and, eventually, customers) -- you need to optimize your Facebook presence and have to adopt a best Facebook marketing strategy, therefor, here is a complete Facebook marketing guide and Facebook Marketing Tips for you in this blog post, see basic information about what is social media marketing here, and about How to use twitter for marketing - twitter marketing strategy see this separate post.

With such a large user base, ignoring Facebook really isn’t an option for most marketers. You can bet your ideal market is using Facebook nearly every day. The question is: how do you target all of those users with your marketing?

The good news is that the Facebook advertising platform allows you to zero in and specify the type of people you’re looking for. You can target by location, demographics, and interests.

In this Facebook Marketing guide, I’ll show you the basics of how to use Facebook to your advantage. The guide is aimed at the beginner who wants an introduction into marketing their business on the world’s largest social network.

Peoples On Facebook?

Facebook may have started out as a social network for college students, but, by now, nearly everyone with an internet connection is using it. The minimum age requirement is 13, and there is reason to believe it is being used by all other age groups.

Facebook doesn’t publicly release data on their most popular age group, but a survey by Pew showed that social networking is most popular with the 18-29 age group. Its popularity decreases with age. It is least popular with those 65 and older.

I can assure you that, no matter what age group you’re targeting, there will be more than enough of those users on Facebook.

How To Start Facebook Marketing?

As per my Facebook marketing tips or  Facebook marketing guide, Facebook has three tools (pages, news, ads and groups) that can be used by anyone. Each of these options has its own purpose, and they can be combined for greater reach.

Facebook Business Page

How to Facebook Marketing with Facebook Pages

Facebook pages are the simplest, easiest way to get started Facebook marketing with Facebook. They’re free, relatively easy to set up (at least in their basic forms), and incredibly flexible. There’s not much of a downside, either.

Unfortunately, many companies don’t use them to their full potential; or worse, use them badly. These guidelines will help you avoid making those mistakes.

Make a business Page, instead of personal profile

Facebook pages are similar to profiles, but for businesses, organizations, and public figures. Users can “Like” a page, which means they’ll automatically receive updates from that page in their news feed. Users also have the option to “Like” a page but not follow it. (Users also can follow some profiles.)

While profiles require a mutual relationship between friends, pages can be liked by anyone, without a requirement for the page creator to accept a fan. They also don’t have a restriction on the number of friends/fans they can have (unlike profiles, which are limited to 5,000 friends).

You need to create a business Page -- not a personal profile -- to represent your brand. Pages look similar to personal profiles, but they include unique tools for businesses, brands, and organizations. Your fans can like your Page to see updates from you in their News Feeds, which is something they can't do for personal profiles. 

Not only will this maximize Facebook's business potential for you, but it's actually against Facebook's Terms of Service to use a personal account to represent something other than that person, like a business. If you've already created a profile for your business, you'll want to convert it into a business Page, which you can learn how to do easily here.

Setting up a page is simple. Just visit this page and follow the step-by-step setup instructions.

Facebook Marketing Tips

Advantages: Pages are free and easy to set up.

Disadvantages: It can be hard to get a foothold and build a fan base with a page.

Create your Page's vanity URL.

Once you've created your business Page, it'll get a randomly assigned number and URL, like facebook.com/pages/your business/123456789. To make your Page more shareable and easier to find, you'll want to create a recognizable vanity URL ( e.g.,  http://www.facebook.com/yourpagename ).

To create a vanity URL, visit this page, then follow the instructions. 

Add a great and attractive cover photo.

Facebook's page design lets you feature an 851 x 315 pixel cover photo at the top of your business Page. You'll want to optimize that cover photo to capture the attention of new visitors, encourage them to explore and learn more, and provide an effective mobile experience -- all the while ensuring you're following Facebook's Page Guidelines.

Page's profile picture or logo

Pick a profile picture that will be easy for visitors to recognize -- like your company logo, or a head shot of yourself if you're a solopreneur or consultant. Being recognizable is important for getting found and liked, especially in Facebook Search. Your profile image is pictured at the top of your Facebook Page and is also the thumbnail image that gets displayed next to all your Facebook Page updates, so choose wisely.

When choosing a photo, keep in mind that Facebook requires your profile picture dimensions to be 180 pixels by 180 pixels (even though the image will display as 160 pixels by 160 pixels on desktop computers).

Optimize your "About" section

The “About” section is prominently placed right below your company logo. This is your chance to tell anyone coming to your page what your business does. A preview of it is located on the left-hand side of your page beneath your profile picture, and people can also navigate to the full section by clicking on the "About" tab at the top of your page. Be sure to optimize the preview section on the left side of your page with brief yet descriptive copy to give visitors a sense of what your Page and your business is about before they decide to Like you. 

The “About” section is prominently placed right below your company logo. This is your chance to tell anyone coming to your page what your business does.

Make sure you put good information here, telling people what you’re company does, why you’re different, and other interesting details. If you can, take the time to write it specifically for your Facebook audience. You can copy the text from the “About” page of your website or blog, if you’re in a pinch. Be sure to fill in all of your data under “Basic Info.”

Just remember to keep it friendly and informal. A casual tone usually works best on Facebook. Here are a few good examples:

To edit your own "About" tab, click on it, and hover over the section you'd like to edit, and click the pencil icon. 

Get the Title for "Very responsive to messages".

If you respond quickly to most users who send you messages on Facebook, then you can earn what Facebook calls a "Very responsive to messages" badge.  below your Page's cover photo if you have a response rate of 90% and a response time of 15 minutes over the last seven days.

If you're responsive to messages but haven't quite earned the badge, Facebook will still show off how responsive you are to visitors

If you're not very responsive to messages, nothing will appear. So, while it's not the end of the world if you don't respond, having that badge lets users know your business is listening and cares about their needs.

Add Milestones.

The "Milestones" feature lets you highlight some of your business' biggest accomplishments, like award wins, product releases, major events, or other accolades. Recent milestones will be posted to your Timeline, and users will be able to find them later under your "About" tab.

To add milestones, click on the "Timeline" section of your Page, and click the "Offer, Event +" option in the page update composer near the top of your page.

Add and customize call-to-action button

Facebook added a very handy feature in December 2014: the option to place a simple call-to-action button at the top of your Facebook Page.

You can choose from seven pre-made button options ("Sign Up," "Shop Now," "Contact Us," "Book Now," "Use App," Watch Video," and "Play Game") and link it to any website that aligns with your business' goals. It could link to your homepage, a landing page, a contact sheet, a video, or somewhere else.

Create custom page tabs.

By default, your page tabs are set as Timeline, About, Photos, Likes and More. But Facebook lets you create and leverage custom tabs -- which are basically like landing pages within your Facebook Page, or calls-to-action where you can feature anything from case studies to marketing offers to other promotions you're running.

They're right at the top of your page and let you give visitors specific path to do what you want them to do on your Page. For example, if you're hiring a lot of people, you might create a custom tab for "Jobs" that links to your jobs site

You can create custom tabs by signing in, visiting your Page, clicking the "More" tab and choosing "Manage Tabs" from the drop-down menu.

News Feed Visibility

Don't compromised quality over quantity, An important Facebook Marketing Tips.

Here are two questions we hear a lot: How often should I post to Facebook? Will posting more frequently will help me reach more people?

As per my Facebook marketing tips, In short, the answer is no. At the end of the day, how visible your posts are in people's News Feeds all comes down to the quality of your posts. These algorithms are meant to filter out the irrelevant and the poor quality posts so that the highest-quality stuff is what gets through and gets shown to users.

So don't overwhelm your customers with content on Facebook, and be selective about what you're publishing. Spend more time crafting better Facebook posts, and less time crafting a lot of Facebook posts. Remember: It's a marketer's job to post content to social that's interesting, entertaining, helpful, and/or relevant to the audience. This means picking relevant topics, writing delightful copy, and posting compelling images and videos.

Facebook Marketing Tips

• The best time to post on Facebook is 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday. Other optimal times include 12:00–1:00 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays and 1:00–4:00 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays.
• Engagement rates are 18% higher on Thursdays and Fridays, and weekdays from 1:00–4:00 p.m. tend to see the highest click through rates. On Fridays, Facebook use spikes by 10%. Since people tend to be happier on Fridays, Neil Patel suggests posting funny or upbeat content to match your audience's mood.
• The worst times to post on Facebook are weekends before 8:00 a.m. and after 8:00 p.m., according to Sure Payroll’s research.

Think of this data as a general guideline, and use it to help you find the optimal posting times for your business. 

Post Useful Information to Your Wall is best practice for Facebook Marketing Strategy

What you post to your wall will show up in the news feeds of everyone who has “Liked” your page, just as it does when you post something to your personal profile.

So, make sure what you’re posting is useful to your fans. Don’t post endless updates about the same thing, and don’t post too many updates, clogging the news feeds of your fans.

Here are some ideas for the kinds of things you might want to post to your wall:
Facebook Marketing Tips

·         Links to articles related to your company or your industry

·         Links to your blog posts

·         Coupon codes for fans to save on your products

·         New product announcements

·         Links to online tools your fans might find useful

Again, make sure that your posts are useful. Also, don’t post more than a few times each day unless there’s a special event going on.

Post your best blog content

According to Facebook Marketing Guide, for businesses, social media continues to be driven by content. It's a marketer's job to post content to social that's interesting, entertaining, helpful, and/or relevant to our audience. Start populating your Page's timeline with content by handpicking your best, most helpful blog posts.

If you're strapped for resources but maintain a business blog, you can try connecting your blog to auto-post links to new blog content you publish. Many blogging platforms automatically offer this feature within the software -- you'll just need to turn it on and sync it with your Page. You don't want to put too much emphasis on automation, though. It's OK to auto-publish some content, but make sure a real human is posting and engaging with your fans, too.

Is Meta descriptions are completed?

Have you noticed that when you post a link to Facebook, it pulls in a brief description as well as an image?

The description gets pulled from the page's Meta description, which refers to the HTML attribute that explains the contents of a given web page. It's the short description you see on a search engine results page to "preview" what the page is about, and it's also the copy Facebook will automatically pull in the populate the description of a post.

Without a Meta description, Facebook may pull in the first text they can find, which doesn't make for a very good user experience. Plus, Meta descriptions are your chance to sell your visitors on what you have to offer: informative, valuable content.

Your Meta description should be compelling enough to get people to click, and it should be 155 characters or fewer in length. 

Remove links from your post copy.

Keep your copy succinct by removing the horrendously long URL you're sharing from the text in your post.

Your post real estate is precious, and you want to ensure any characters employed are purely for the sake of sparking a reader's attention. Plus, any user can click on the generated thumbnail or title for that URL to navigate to the blog post, web page, or any URL you're linking to -- so no need to include it in the copy of your post as well.

Share your most compelling visual content as Facebook marketing strategy.

Facebook's new timeline page design places more of an emphasis on visual content like images and videos. After all, Facebook posts with images see 2.3X more engagement than posts without images. One study found that Facebook posts with photos saw the most engagement over any other type of post, accounting for a whopping 87% of total interactions.

That's why posting compelling visual content is one of the most important things you can do to improve your Facebook Marketing strategy. Use this to your advantage posting your best visual content to your Facebook Page, or making more of an effort to make the content you already create more visual.

A successful social strategy will often include photos, videos, and screenshots of infographics or other graphs. In addition to being fun to look at, it's important that your visual content be compelling and relevant to your audience.

Another reason to post lots of visual content? It'll help auto-populate the "Photos" and "Videos" tabs, which are automatically added to every Facebook Page. You want those to be rife with visual content when people click on them.

Your Images should be properly formatted.

Don't just post images for the sake of posting images. To give your users the best experience possible, you need to optimize your images for Facebook so that they're the right sizes and dimensions. 

Below are a few of the most common Facebook image sizes:

Facebook Marketing Tips

• Cover photo: 851 px wide by 315 px tall
• Profile image: 180 px wide by 180 px tall
• Highlighted image: 1200 px wide by 717 px tall
• Shared image: 1200 px wide by 630 px tall
• Shared link thumbnail image: 1200 px wide by 627 px tall

Videos Post, especially live videos

Facebook is continuing to tweak how the algorithm measures people's interest in video content on Facebook, but the main takeaway is to make your videos as visually engaging as possible -- especially in the first few seconds.

The folks at Facebook know that people like watching videos on Facebook. The number of people watching video content is rapidly increasing: Between April 2015 and November 2015, the amount of average daily video views on Facebook doubled from four billion video views per day to eight billion.

Why? Because although all videos on Facebook auto play in people's News Feeds, they're on mute until the viewer manually turns the volume on. The more visually engaging your video, the more you can entice people to stick around. Getting people to spend more time watching your video will help your video rank higher in the News Feed because to Facebook, signs of user engagement with a video include spending time watching the video, turning on the audio, switching to full-screen mode, or enabling high definition.

In their continued effort to promote video content in the News Feed, Facebook recently launched Facebook Live, a live video streaming service that lets anyone broadcast live videos from their mobile device straight to their Facebook News Feed. Use Facebook Live to your advantage, as Facebook ranks Live videos higher than other videos and other types of posts.

Facebook Insights.

Facebook Insights is Facebook's internal analytics tool right that helps you measure and analyse your Facebook presence and Facebook Marketing Strategy. The tool provides Facebook page administrators with analytics data about Page visits and engagement, which can help you understand which content is and isn't engaging to your fans.

Access your page's Insights here, or by clicking into the 'Admin Panel' on your Page.

Schedule posts in advance is a good practice of Facebook marketing.

Schedule your Facebook posts (and other social media posts) in advance. Then, use that third-party Facebook application to actually schedule out your posts. However, just as we advised against too much Facebook automation with blog auto-posting, the same holds true for scheduling. Don't get caught in the trap of turning your page into a robot, and make sure you're actively engaging with your fans, too.

Add Facebook social media buttons to your blog and website

Adding Facebook social media buttons will help encourage visitors who are on your website to also connect and interact with you on Facebook, as well as spread your content and expand its reach.

Facebook Marketing Tips

The Facebook Follow Button lets you expand your Facebook reach by making it easy for your site visitors to like your business' Facebook Page with just one click. It displays your page's number of Likes, as well as faces of people who already like your page, using social proof to amplify its effectiveness.

To customize your button, visit this page and follow the instructions.

The Facebook Like Box lets you promote your business' Facebook Page on your website and blog, highlight other users who have already Liked your page, display your follower count, and feature recent posts on your page. With just one click, people can like your business Page -- without leaving your site. 

To generate a Facebook like Box for your website, visit this page and follow the instructions.

The Facebook Like Button lets people easily Like your content. When a user Likes a piece of content, it may show up in your friends' News Feeds because the algorithm takes it as a signal your friends will find it relevant. 

(Note: This button doesn't allow them to add personalized messages to links before sharing them. To allow users to add a personalized message, use the Facebook Share Button, explained below.)

To customize your Facebook Like Button, visit this page and follow the instructions.

Facebook Share Buttons act similarly to the Like Button by sharing your content on their Timeline and in friends' News Feeds, except they also let people add a comment or message to the link when sharing it.

To generate a Facebook Share Button, visit this page and follow the instructions.

Subscribe to Facebook's Official Blog for future announcements

Give yourself a competitive edge by staying on top of the latest announcements from Facebook such as new features and tools by subscribing to the official Facebook Blog.

Extend your Facebook Marketing Strategy and Advertising on Facebook

To Extend you Facebook marketing strategy, you can also use this paid advertising service. Facebook offers a fantastic targeted advertising platform. You can create ads targeted at specific geographic areas, ages, education levels, and even the types of devices used for browsing. Facebook also lets users close ads they don’t like and “Like” a page right beneath an advertisement:

Facebook Marketing Tips

Advantages: Ads have powerful targeting parameters.

Disadvantages: Ads can get expensive, depending on your goals.

Targeted Advertising as per Facebook Marketing Guide

Because it gathers so much demographic information about its users, Facebook has one of the best targeted advertising programs online. You can target users based on virtually anything you might find in their profiles, as well as track your success with each segment.

Ads can be run on a per-impression or per-click basis. Facebook shows you what bids are for ads similar to yours, so you know if your bid is in line with others in your industry. You also can set daily limits so there’s no risk of blowing your budget.

Types of Facebook Ads as per Facebook Marketing Guide

There are a number of ad sub types you can choose from.You can create ads that direct to your Facebook page, or to a site not on Facebook. You can create ads to promote a Facebook event, complete with an RSVP link. You can create ads for mobile app installs and app engagement.

Users Can Hide Your Ad

Facebook used to offer the option to “Like” any advertisement on Facebook. Not anymore. People can “Like” an advertisement (if it’s that type) or hide the ad. Upon closing an ad, Facebook asks the user to specify why they didn’t like it.

It’s valuable information, providing insight into why your ads might not be doing very well.

Powerful Targeting Options

As already mentioned, Facebook has some of the most powerful targeting tools of any online advertising program.

You can target by virtually anything on a user’s profile. You might start with the location, if that’s important. You can specify either city, zip code, county, or state. This works particularly well for local businesses. From there, you can choose basic demographics, including relationship status, age, workplace, education (including major and years of attendance), birthday, and much more.

You can target ads to people who have recently moved. So, if you own a gym in Scottsdale and want to find all the individuals who recently moved to the area, you can target your ads and ad copy to those individuals.

You also can target people based on their interests. Say, for example, you have a product that’s targeted at baseball fans. You could enter baseball in the Interests field.

Or, maybe you’ve written a book and you’re sure that people who like another certain book will like yours. Enter the book’s title under Interests, and you’ll specifically target those users.

You even can target a private list of users. If you have a list of email addresses of people that you want to target, you can use Facebook’s ads manager to target just those people. So, if you run a SaaS business and have 200 people on your “prospect list,” you can use their email addresses to target them with ads in Facebook.

Customize Your Ads

The other big advantage of this Facebook marketing strategy is to tightly-targeted ads is that you can create different ads for different demographic groups. Better-targeted ads are going to garner better results.

If you’re targeting baseball fans, you might create individual ads for different popular teams. You could have one ad specifically aimed at Red Sox fans, one at Yankees fans, and another at Cubs fans, and then have those ads shown only to people who have indicated in their Interests that they are fans of those teams.

Or, let’s say you’ve targeted people based on their love of a particular book. You could mention that book in the ad itself to make it more likely to catch their attention. Create different ads for different books, and then target accordingly.

Choose the right advertising tool. (Probably the Ads Manager.)

A Plus value Facebook Marketing Tips

Facebook offers users two different tools for creating a paid ad: the Ads Manager and the Power Editor. The Power Editor is usually best for larger advertisers looking for more precise control over many campaigns. If that doesn't sound like you, the Ads Manager works great for most companies. Figure out which is best for your business based on your company size and the number of ads you plan to run at once. 

Use Audience Insights to learn about your audience.

The best Facebook ads are high-quality, relevant ads that fit seamlessly into the user's environment on Facebook. Learn more about your customers and prospects using Audience Insights, which you can find inside the Facebook Ad Manager in the left-hand navigation.

The tool will help you target your ads more effectively and learn about your audience -- even if you are not advertising to them. How? The data can help you build stronger buyer personas, create more compelling content, and uncover some gems for your competitive research

Test multiple versions of a single ad.

Running a single campaign won't give you much to work with in terms of finding your audience, optimizing your ads, and determining if Facebook advertising works for your business. You need to be able and willing to run multiple campaigns to test and experiment with different parts of a single campaign.

Then, you can test the creative side of the ad, including images, headlines, and body text. Try testing 20–25 variations on your proven targets: "You aren’t really doing Facebook ads well until you’ve created 15–20 ads," says Carter. 

What other Facebook marketing tips and tricks would you recommend for making the most of a business' Facebook presence?

How Facebook Groups are helpful in my Facebook Marketing Strategy?

Facebook groups are similar to discussion forums, but with additional features that pages and profiles have (like a wall). As a good practice of Facebook marketing strategy, you can create groups related to your industry or product offerings as a way to reach out to potential customers.

Facebook Marketing Tips

Advantages: Groups are free and have high levels of engagement.

Disadvantages: Groups can be very time consuming.

Ask Your Fans Questions

Getting your fans involved with your page is a great way to inspire loyalty.

Asking questions in your updates gets people involved, but on their own terms. What you ask depends largely on your product and your niche, but asking open-ended questions usually garners the best responses. Asking opinions on a new product idea or project can be a good way to convince your fans that your company cares about what they want.

Don’t Spam

Spam is one of the quickest ways to lose fans. If you do nothing but send out promotional blurbs about your company, without ever adding anything of value, then you’re going to have a hard time getting and keeping fans.

Before you send out any update, ask yourself if it honestly adds value to the conversation. If not, don’t send it.

Study Your Statistics and Results

Facebook offers some really great analytics for pages. Pay attention to them. If you see a big surge in fans (or a drop off), look at what you’ve posted recently and see if you can figure out a reason for the trend. Then, post more of that kind of content (or less, if you’re losing fans).

Conclusion

Facebook isn’t just powerful. It’s flexible. No matter what type of company you run, it has enough different marketing options that you can tailor your marketing efforts to fit your company, your budget, and your time constraints.

Yes, it can take some time to get to know all of its features, but it’s worth it. Facebook still is growing at a rapid pace, and every day it becomes a more indispensable part of social media marketing.

It’s also important to strike while the iron is hot. For the moment, companies that are savvy about Facebook marketing still enjoy an early-adopter advantage. Once more traditional marketers start transitioning into the space, competition will increase, advertising prices will rise, and users will become much pickier.

If Facebook Marketing Strategy is not a current part of your marketing campaign, it should be. Set aside some time to tinker around, start a few test campaigns, use these facebook marketing tips and facebook marketing guide and see what happens. Like anything, it takes practice to get good at it.

Another Detailed blog about what is social media marketing? is available in my posts and about How to use twitter for marketing - twitter marketing strategy see this separate post.

Thanks!