If your small business sells products or services to consumers, Facebook can be a useful, free marketing tool.

Used correctly, this social media platform is a valuable conduit linking your brand with potential customers and a whole suite of tools to grow your business.

You can use your Facebook page to inform customers of business developments, offers and new products. However, you don’t want to post too often and you’ll need to share links, images and posts that your audience is interested in as well as sales-based stories. Promoting your business too much on a social media platform can lead to customers unfollowing or blocking your business page. It’s a fine balance between using Facebook as a tool to advertise your products and connecting with people.

Businesses can use Facebook Promoted Posts to reach a certain number of users, increasing the post’s reach. The tool allows you to choose your audience, for instance you can set a geographical location, age range or select interests, so you can reach the right type of people at exactly the right time, and not waste any of your valuable advertising budget on irrelevant eyeballs. You’ll be able to choose a budget and Facebook will estimate the number of people you’ll reach, giving you some useful insights into your possible advertising outcome before you commit a penny.

Promoting a post is a great way to attract new customers and draw them to your Facebook page and website. Carefully choose which posts to promote to make this functionality really work for you – fun and informative posts are more likely to increase engagement and drive traffic to your page than a sales pitch.

You also have the option to use Facebook Marketplace Ads. Again, Facebook allows you to target the audience of the advert, with a choice of sophisticated demographic options. The ad you create features in the News Feed sidebar and includes a headline, copy, an image and a website link. The price you pay will vary as the advert works on a bidding process. You can bid either on impressions (the number of times your ad is shown) or clicks.

Facebook contests and promotions are a great way to raise brand awareness too and can get users sharing your updates and expanding your network. Be aware though that there are rules for running a competition on Facebook and you’ll need to use a third party app.

Social media platforms are constantly evolving and trends are always changing. You need to monitor what is working and what your customers are interested in to get the most out of Facebook. Page insights can show you who your customers are, the Adverts Manager dashboard will allow you to see how your ads are performing and using tracked URLs means you can tailor the content you are sharing.

Do:

• Understand what your audience shares on Facebook – images tend to attract more likes, shares and comments than a simple status update.
• Engage with your followers – ask questions, share interesting new updates and reply to queries through Facebook.
• Measure the success of your updates – see what your audience responds to and adjust your social media strategy accordingly.

Don’t:

• Ignore feedback – Facebook is a useful tool for gathering feedback and customer opinions, make sure you take them on board.
• Be slow to respond – people expect quick responses when it comes to social media so make sure your response times are appropriate.

Only post updates about your business – you need to keep your audience interested so post news updates, funny videos, pictures and views throughout the day that aren’t directly related to your business.

Woya digital is a social media marketing agency in Chichester, that can assist companies of all sizes, anywhere, promote themselves through the internet. Our fixed price offering is straightforward and yields results! We are fantastic at social media management, website design and SEO, all paid monthly, with no upfront investment.