Recently a number of Local U Faculty hung out to discuss all things Facebook marketing with some of the best minds in SEO: Mike Blumenthal, Mary Bowling, David Mihm, and Matt Siltala. Here are the top five things we think you should be doing for your business on Facebook:
1. Hop on your local “brandwagon”
Associating your brand with a local cause, movement, or larger brand will help give your business social presence. It can be as simple as posting how excited your staff is for the upcoming football game. The most important thing is to find something your business identifies with and to promote it. Promoting your post about the upcoming game can get impressions from their fans. Your business is essentially gaining exposure from someone else’s brand.
Promoting these posts helps target the proper audience and is beneficial to the community and the people you target. I like to think of it as the perfect storm of organic, paid, and viral all together. Hopping on your local “brandwagon” and finding out what your community is interested in goes a long way in giving your business a stronger social presence.
2. Request reviews
Did you know that people actually trust recommendations on Facebook? According to Siltala, 90% of people trust reviews they read on Facebook. Although they don’t show in Facebook’s stream, users see rating and reviews by visiting your page. Building trust between customers is an easy thing to accomplish by asking for reviews, so don’t be afraid to reach out for them. Once acquired, they can be repurposed and reposted to your website.
3. Target existing customers
Your existing customers are not only less expensive to retain, but they are also more likely to engage with your posts. Asking them to share your coupons, specials and sales with their friends is a great way to build existing engagement, retain customers, and share your business with more users at no cost to you.
4. Utilize listening tools
Listening tools come free on Facebook, but some businesses might benefit from paid third-party tools. The important thing to keep in mind is that not every business needs these tools. Single location, locally-focused businesses would be wasting their money with paid listening tools, but multi-location businesses targeting many locations could greatly benefit from a third-party tool.
Free listening tools from Facebook and paid ones like Hootsuite from third-parties benefit the business by giving them a simpler way to listen, leading to an easier way to respond.
5. Be responsive
Listening and responding to customers is great social practice, as Facebook is rewarding businesses who respond timely to messages with a badge on their page. With free and paid listening tools available, it’s easier than ever to track responsiveness and earn the badge. This responsiveness badge could mean the difference between acquiring a customer and losing them to a local competitor.
With the average user spending nearly one hour per day on Facebook according to a recent survey, businesses need to do everything they can to grab a bit of that consumer attention.
What about you? What are some of your favorite, top-secret, local-Facebook marketing hacks?
Will Scott has led teams responsible for building thousands of Small Business websites, building hundreds of thousands of pages in online directories and delivering millions of visits from search
At Search Influence, Will leads a team of dedicated professionals who put customer results first.
Search Influence is a national, full-service, online marketing company based in New Orleans. Search Influence serves local and small / medium size businesses with SEO, Online Advertising, Social Media and Social Ads, both directly and as a white-label provider for media companies and resellers.
The only New Orleans company on the 2011 Inc. 500 list, Search Influence is the largest online marketing company on the gulf coast with more than 60 full-time employees and more than 40 contractors supporting our hundreds of direct and white label customers.
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Hi Will, I watched the webcast the other week and definitely got some good tips out of it. A Facebook hack of mine that has really amped things up for a local client is making short videos for them each month and posting them on their page, which has generated way more likes and shares for the post and the page than anything done previously. At the same time I have used the exact same video in targeted Facebook ‘Promoted Post’ ads and the response has been remarkable. For a cost of $88.60 one ad that ran in the past month generated 619 views of the entire video, and 4,714 total views on 18,279 impressions. The client also told me he had a customer come in who saw the ad and spent thousands of dollars with him on custom furniture. A home run. So the hack is basically the ability to use a single piece of video content that imparts good information in both Facebook organic and advertising situations. Thx for the webcast and post, looking forward to more. Tim
Thanks Will (and commenter Tim) 🙂
Thanks for the valuable information. I never thought of second point “request reviews”. I can use that tip for the sites I work on.