Facebook isn’t just a tool to show off baby pics and your cute little kitten. Facebook is a great tool to produce amazing content that your followers or friends are craving. Figuring out how to use Facebook effectively can be a challenge, though. We can use every post, comment, like, share and everything else there is possible, as data points to figure out what works and what doesn’t. We even test who and when should we push posts. How do we do it, your piece of gold, The Advanced Guide To Facebook For Business is here. 

How to be bad ass at facebook and get results.

Likes, Shares, Comments, and all.

1. Be authentic

This is the golden rule in everything social media (and a lot of real life stuff too). Just be yourself. Be honest, and don’t try to deceive. In the age of the internet, your followers have seen every sales gimmicky trick in the book. The truth is that being too ‘salesy‘ will be a major turnoff because like we said they’ve seen it before and they can see right through it. You don’t need to sound like a salesman, or to pitch your product or service nonstop. You should simply exude your own passion for your business at every step along the way. Your customer will still be able to see through it, but what they see isn’t a person trying to make a sale. They see you and your real passion for your business. More often than not that’s the best sales pitch.

2. Reply to every comment you post

Replying to all of your comments comes with several benefits. One, it encourages people to engage with your posts when they know you’re going to be active and engage back with them. So this adds to the number of comments your post gets which generates more conversation, which leads to the second major benefit. Because of Facebook’s algorithm, the more engagement and comments a post has, the higher and more frequent it will appear on your friends’ news feed. That means you’ll be getting even more comments and engagement!

ProTip: Have a business Facebook and a personal Facebook? Use one to comment on the other and not only will you benefit from the perception of engagement, you’ll benefit from the appearance of organic engagement. Don’t do this a lot because it’s a bit inauthentic. Just do it enough to ‘seed the thread’ and let the conversation blossom.

3. Ask questions

Another easy was to generate more engagement on your posts is to ask questions. Ask for their feedback, as their opinion on a certain topic, ask them anything. When you ask a question, it’s a natural call to action for humans. We have a biological need to share our opinions. So provide people the platform to express their thoughts. Make it meaningful. When you ask about topics that carry a lot of value to people, whether emotionally or intellectually, they tend to respond with passionate answers that will help to saturate your post with good conversation.

4. Engage with your followers and friends

Social Media shouldn’t be a one-way activity. The only times you engage online shouldn’t be based around your own posts. You need to actually spend time sifting through your news feed content stream. When you come across something relevant to your company, comment, like, and/or share! Be the type of user you wish your own followers were. But don’t just comment on things directly related to your business. Sometimes things tangentially related to your topic can be used to great effect. Comment when you can and share your opinions and reactions to the things you’ve seen online. Be a vocal and active user. Even if your followers only ‘liked’ your page, you should still treat them like friends.

5. Share the Good’s and the Bad’s

It’s obvious that you want to share your good news with the world. Whether your event was a huge success, or you reached a specific goal, or whatever you have to celebrate your successes, SHARE THEM. Showing your followers how well things are going, and they will start to generate trust for your company. So, even if they aren’t a customer now, for whatever reason, when they get into a situation where they could become a customer, you’ll be top of mind.

But also, don’t be afraid to share the not so good times. Now, this doesn’t mean you should fill your timeline with nothing but all of your miserable failures, and how poorly business is going, because that simply makes you look bad as a business and will make your followers lose faith and trust in you. When posting about something that happened to you that wasn’t the best, share the story, but keep a positive attitude towards it. Talk about how you learned from a certain situation and how you plan to better yourself because of it. This strategy allows you to show your followers that you’re transparent, and will boost their trust in you.

6. Respond quickly

Let your followers know that you value their input and engagement. If they’re taking time out of their day to engage with you, DON’T LEAVE THEM HANGING. You will do harm to your image if you just leave a bunch of open comments on your posts, versus actually responding and creating real conversations with your followers. Let them know you value their time, and they’ll value yours.

7. Don’t be too controversial

A good strategy to follow when deciding what kind of content to share and produce is to stay away from things that will be too controversial. When it comes to these types of topics, everyone has a strong opinion about it. There will generally be just as many people in favor of it as there are opposed to it. While it may excite the people who support what you’re posting, it may equally turn off the other half of the people, and, depending on the topic, may extinguish any chance of them becoming a customer to you. We recommend that you stay away from anything that will give people a negative feeling towards you and your company. 

8. Showcase what you are doing

Be transparent in your work day operations. Give people a behind the scenes look at what you’re building. The more familiar they are with you, the more likely they are to engage or become a customer. Make them feel like they’re “in the loop” for following you on Facebook. This also gives you a wider base of content to post from. More frequency of posts will keep you higher in the Facebook algorithm so that you can remain at the top of mind of your consumers. 

9. Use shares and name comments as warm leads or intros

You see it all the time. When big companies posts something to Facebook, the comments section is filled with people tagging their friends in the post. They do this because they see the connection between what the content is, and how their friend will respond to it. So, if you post something on Facebook, and someone comments with just a tag to one of their friends. Thats a warm lead. That person felt the need to bring your post to that persons attention, which means they’re probably in need of whatever it is you’re offering. Respond to that comment and spark a conversation with that person instantly. The longer you wait, the less likely they are to stay engaged. You’ve got to act quick, and keep that warm lead cookin’!

10. Facebook likes its content to stay on Facebook, it also would rather you push their content as a medium and not someone else’s. Example YouTube.

This is another time when knowing how their algorithm works can be beneficial to you. When you share a link to a YouTube video, Facebook won’t treat that as well as something that is hosted on their media players, which means it won’t get as much love in their algorithm, and won’t show up as frequent or as high on your followers timeline. So, if there is a video that you posted on YouTube that you want to share with your facebook followers, take the time to actually upload the video directly from the file. That way its hosted on Facebook’s own medium, which is way more compatible with their algorithm, and will ensure that your posts gets the most engagement possible.

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