By Alan Mariasch
An online platform where more than 1 billion users of all ages and social classes, 76 million Brazilians (2nd in the world in number of registered). Increasing rates of digital inclusion in Brazil, with 36% of the population already owning smartphones and 83 million people who already have Internet access.
Knowing all this, is possible to say that the potential for Facebook marketing and communication may not be well used by the corporate world. But how to disclose my company this powerful tool called Facebook, and how I relate the most appropriate way with my stakeholders that are there?
1- Be Present: Would you buy something from a company that has no website? For something like that happens with Facebook, especially for B2C organizations (business-to-consumer, companies that sell directly to final consumers). All major companies, and those who want to be great, already have their fan pages. What are you waiting to create yours?
2- Add content: With the overdose of information to which we are exposed daily, it is difficult to stand out on Facebook with merely advertising posts, like “Buy our product, it is great!”. They will probably be ignored or hidden from the feed users. It’s time to offer something more: a funny banner, a curiosity, a promotion, a novelty, a tip, etc …
3- Be quick in the answers: Forget the “reader’s Charter” section of newspapers. You do not have much time to answer your Facebook fans, even if it is a criticism or complaint. If you delay, you can share it to your friends, which can make the snowball grow exponentially
4- Targeted advertising: Facebook is one of the main tools online where you can advertise your audience targeting by location, age, gender, interests, etc., reaching niche to capture tanners to your fan page and / or sponsor posts, increasing its viralization.
5- Use sparingly: OK, you understand the enormous importance of Facebook for your company and will begin to post often. Careful! Fan pages with several daily posts may annoy users and run the risk of becoming unbearable. Or you like to see your feed contaminated with a single subject?
6- Planning is required: Anticipate yourself. Make monthly schedules with special programming on commemorative dates and distributing threads evenly during each week, so do not stay too long without communicating with users or not abuse of frequent postings.
7- Invest in quality: Research of Facebook itself indicate that the visual content is what stands out most in the network, when compared to those with just text. So if you have not mastered design tools, do not venture into Paint: hire a professional to do your banners and you will see the results.
8- Stimulates viralization: Understand your target audience. He likes a more complex content or just looking for fun? What is your age group? The equation of viral post is complex but goes through some key factors: time of posting, originality, humor and awareness.
9- Benchmark: Study how your competitors use Facebook. It is also important to analyze the success of the network cases, even those of other segments. It is vital to be always aware of new trends in Internet and frequent changes of Facebook, which constantly adds (and remove) tools, change layouts, update rules, etc.
10- Measure the results: All this work makes sense only if you measure their effectiveness. Analyze your posts, excluding the next schedule those with low returns and investing in those that succeed. Study carefully the statistics provided by Facebook to optimize your results: time that the fans who are more online involvement rate of posts, evolution of the number of tanners, etc.
* Alan Mariasch is a PR account manager in Race Communications
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