FAST FACT: When it comes to online marketing (and specifically Facebook), your greatest asset is your content. Having. Really. Amazing. Content!
This is true for all online arenas, but particularly for social media marketing.
Great content will attract interest, fans, and customers, and it will go a long way towards encouraging prospects to become paying customers.
Your content marketing strategy needs to actively engage and inspire your target audience – and when it is done well, your content will be widely shared by your audience within their own community. Achieving this, however, is not as easy as it may seem.
Marketers are constantly seeking new and effective ways to engage audiences, encourage brand loyalty, build brand-consumer relationships, and ultimately convert.
One of the most effective ways to achieve all of these is to use Facebook for social media marketing.
While other social media platforms certainly do have high value in brand and product marketing, Facebook is by far the most widely used and demonstrably effective of these.
There is nothing worse than creating any kind of post for Facebook (or any other social platform) and getting silence in return.
No likes. No comments. No shares. Just … crickets.
To avoid this, your content needs to elicit real, tangible engagement and discussion.
Why is this so important? The more engagement your posts have, the bigger an audience Facebook will deliver them to. Your SEO will be boosted.
Traffic to your website will grow, and you will be exposed to more consumers who will become paying customers. This is the entire point of social media marketing!
- Likes VS Shares
“Liking” a post on Facebook can actually mean a myriad of things – it can signify literally liking the post, agreement with the post, or a simple acknowledgement of the post.
While likes are great, they don’t mean an awful lot in the big picture for your content marketing strategy.
“Sharing” a post is, however, a much more meaningful action on the part of your audience.
It is by much more valuable to your business and to your marketing efforts. Shares exponentially increase the reach of your posts and ensure your content is being seen by the largest audience possible.
Generating shares is nowhere near as easy as generating likes. To achieve shares, a post must resonate on a personal or emotional level with its audience. Sharing is the ultimate “like”.
Why do audiences share content?
The New York Times conducted a study on “The Psychology of Sharing” (Source: Post Planner). It concluded that social media audiences share content for a number of reasons:
- To learn – with a majority saying that when they share content, they process the information contained in it more thoughtfully and thoroughly.
- To influence – to change others’ opinions to comply with their own.
- To inform – to distribute information and educate.
- To assist – with almost all believing their share will benefit the recipient.
- To connect – an easy way to remain in touch with others, and to build connections with people who have common interests.
- For identity – to give others a sense of who they are and what matters to them.
- For support – to showcase and support causes that are important to them.
- For your community – to feel more involved in the community and the world.
What kind of Facebook posts generate most shares?
Much market research has been conducted into what kind of posts get shared most widely on Facebook.
The consensus overall is that posts that are most shareable will deliver at least one of the following:
- Advice – tips, hints, or how-tos.
- Offers – discounts, special deals, or open competitions or contests.
- Amusement – funny memes, images, quotes, stories. These must be inoffensive and appeal to a wide and general audience.
- Inspiration or motivation – quotes (your own or someone famous) and word pictures.
- Warnings – to the benefit of all (for example, weather or traffic alerts).
- Wow factor – amazing images, facts or stories.
- Unification – a post that unites the audience, for example a way to broadcast one’s membership in a group they are proud to be part of.
It’s important to note that real, active followers will share posts.
It’s another reason to not buy fake followers or to spend too much time trying to gain page likes from people who don’t then bother following your page.
Completely inactive page likers will do nothing for your content marketing strategy in the long term.
11 tips and tricks for creating shareable content
- Check out your competition: First and foremost, analyse the Facebook activity of your competitors.
Never copy another’s posts (unless you curate and share them, but if they are your competition it’s not the greatest idea!), but instead be inspired by them.
What are they doing well? What are they doing poorly? How can you do it better? Look at what kinds of posts receive the highest traffic and shares.
- Understand your target audience: What kind of content will they appreciate? What will be valuable to them? Put yourself in their metaphorical shoes and go from there – what would you want to see?
- Be clear with your messaging: For the benefit of your audience, be very clear and concise about the value you can offer them and your intent in doing so.
- Invoke emotion in your audience: Without an emotional response of some kind, content will not be shared. Emotionally touching content will be widely shared on Facebook – whether it is happy, funny, sad, whimsical, embarrassing or even if it invokes anger.
- Quiz your audience: People love thinking and talking about themselves.
Some more than others, granted, but it’s a human trait we all share to some extent.
Run a quiz to allow your audience to pipe in and show how knowledgeable, interesting, fun, or smart they are. These types of posts tend to generate huge shares as people want to compare themselves with their friends (and perhaps show off a little).
- Headlines are important: They need to captivate the audience from the outset so that they feel compelled to read or watch more.
Just make sure to not go too overboard on the obvious Clickbait – it works well some of the time, but all of the time and it will annoy a proportion of your audience.
- Images are crucial: According to psychologists, the vast majority of human communication is non-verbal, and “a picture tells a thousand words”.
Our brains process visual stimuli many tens of thousands of times faster than text; as such, visuals will grab audience attention and hook them faster, even when some of the content is text-based.
- Distribute information in short-list form: This allows audiences to scan the post quickly and absorb information contained therein.
- Ask a question: People love to give their opinion – and will often share with or tag a friend in these types of posts.
- Offer fun facts and trivia: Anything that interests, fascinates, or informs will be welcomed.
- Inspirational quotes: Yes, they are cliché. But there are entire Facebook pages, Instagram pages, Twitter pages and even websites devoted entirely to these – so they are obviously popular.
Inspirational quotes don’t just inspire; they motivate, empower, and are very highly shareable.
OTHER HOT TIPS FOR YOUR CONTENT CREATION:
Create a mix of content to keep your timeline interesting – blog links, product links, inspirational images, funny memes, old-fashioned e-cards, questions and polls (“I wish I was vacationing in ____”; “would you rather ___ or ___?”), behind the scenes snippets, fun facts, news, and niche content from other pages.
And always structure your content so that it is easy to read, and always, always proof read your content for spelling, grammar, and punctuation before you publish it.
There is nothing more exciting for the owner or manager of a Facebook page than when one of their posts is shared widely, or better yet, goes viral.
The only way to achieve this is to create great content. Use the tips above and also be inspired by other Facebook pages you admire.
Just make sure your own posts, unless curated and credited, are one 100 per cent unique.
Here’s some more innovative social media tips, tricks secrets and sauce.
Head over and have a look at these blogs:
BLOG 1: >>> 13 ways to succeed with social media marketing
No matter how well your social media marketing campaign is going, there is always room for improvement. But exactly do you improve your marketing on social media? What are proven tactics that work?
Here are some invaluable social media marketing tips and social media marketing ideas which have proven to be successful for large businesses. Whether you are a large business, a small business, or a sole trader, these ideas can be tweaked to suit your own brand and they can work really well for your own individual campaign.
Try these social media marketing ideas … CLICK HERE
BLOG 2: >>>> How to use social media as a great customer service tool
True or false? Most consumers these days expect their preferred brands and service providers to have an active presence on social media. Providing not only product showcases and brand snippets, but also superior customer support, is crucial to your overall social media engagement strategy.
According to a survey by J.D. Power (Source: groovehq.com), almost 70 per cent of consumers look to a brand’s social media profiles for customer support.
Why is great customer service so important? CLICK HERE
BLOG 3: >>>> Want 7 easy ways to trigger more customer reviews?
FAST FACT: Customer and client testimonials and reviews are very powerful for businesses.
A great review can help convince an audience to patronise your business; a poor review can be incredibly damaging to your brand. So obviously having good or great reviews is of paramount importance.
But what about businesses that have no, or very few, reviews? Is this a bad thing?
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