Could Facebook be the ultimate tool for promoting your business and reaching new fans? The final part in our blog series weighs up the best and worst elements of using Facebook for your business to help you decide if it’s the right choice for you.
Over the last 3 months, we’ve reviewed how effective Pinterest, Twitter and Instagram can be for businesses, and now it’s Facebook’s turn. With over 2.07 billion active users in 2017, the social platform has a wealth of possibilities when it comes to reaching new audiences. But to actually get your posts in front of the right people, there are a few (billion) obstacles in the way.
To help you get to grips with what Facebook has to offer and see if it could be a useful tool for you, check out our overview below.
Facebook is good for:
Reaching billions of people with a huge variety of interests: there are more than two billion people registered to Facebook, there’s no denying that the social platform offers huge potential. You can reach audiences from a range of demographics with a variety of interests, so whatever your product, there’s bound to be an audience for it on Facebook
BUT – that doesn’t mean Facebook is for everyone. Read on to suss out if it’s the site for you!
Advertising to a global audience: if you’ve got the time and money to invest in finding the right approach for your business, Facebook’s advertising platform offers a whole host of opportunities for companies to reach out to new and existing audiences. With a range of objectives to choose from and various targeting options, there’s the flexibility for you to reach out to a specific audience or target a broad range of people
Targeting female audiences: 76% of all female internet users use Facebook, compared to 66% of men, so if you’re main target audience is women, you’re likely onto a winner. That being said, with 66% of male users on the platform, there’s a pretty strong database of men, too!
Influencers (for the time-being, anyway) – as Facebook continues to restrict non-paid-for posts from brands in the news feed, influencers are not yet affected by the algorithm changes. Influencers are present in a whole host of industries, from fashion and make-up to design, travel and photography. They’re renowned for their large social following and, more importantly, having a thorough understanding of their audience. There’s huge potential for marketers to connect and partner with influencers as their organic posts are still able to reach their ever-growing audiences
Vibrant imagery: With millions of posts shared on the platform every day, it’s increasingly more difficult to make your content stand out. The right image or advert design can stop the newsfeed-scrollers dead in their tracks as they eye up your eye-catching content
Competitions or giveaways – who doesn’t love the chance to win a prize? Facebook can be an awesome place to run promotions and competitions, with the added benefit of reaching new potential customers, so it’s a great opportunity to improve brand awareness
Facebook is not so good for:
Small businesses and/or small budgets: if you’re a small business with limited resource, there are some more brand-friendly sites out there for you than Facebook. Sadly, it’s looking more and more like Facebook and its ad platform are catered more to larger companies with lots of money to spend.
Here’s a quick reminder of the key changes to Facebook over the last few years that have made a big impact on how businesses use it:
- In 2015, Facebook released a new algorithm designed fire posts from your friends to the top of your news feed, leaving brands dwindling in the ashes
- In late 2016, another algorithm was released limiting the reach of brands on Instagram and Facebook to 30% of the follower count. This reduced the ability of brands to post organic content and pushed them to pay for adverts just to get their content seen
- Now, here we are in 2018 and there’s yet another algorithm change coming into play that’ll make it even harder for brands to reach their audiences
Planning far in advance: it’s not just the algorithms that get updated regularly. The platform seems to always be changing, whether it’s the appearance of the news feed, the release of new features or the most popular or engaging types of content. It’s an ever-changing platform that needs constant monitoring, so it’s not the best option if you don’t have a lot of time.
Reaching younger audiences – statistics show that Instagram is most popular with teens and younger generations, with 89% of users falling in the 18-29 age bracket. Compare this to Facebook, 35% of users are aged between 35-54, 26% between 25-34, and just 18% aged between 18-24.
Get the most out of Facebook with these top tips:
- Watermark any images you post to protect your brand and help raise your business profile with any shares you get
- Make use of tagging – Use Facebook handles (e.g. @alamy) or hashtags (e.g. #photography) to tag relevant words, people and companies to improve the visibility of your posts
- Link your other social media pages to your Facebook profile – there are some easy-to-use tools out there like Woobox, that let you easily add all your social profiles as tabs on your Facebook page. It’s a great way of getting some extra exposure for your social profiles, with minimal effort
- Engage with people on your page. Respond to messages, posts and comments, share relevant content and keep the conversation flowing on any of your posts. Upping your engagement will not only show that you’re active on the social channel, but the chances are, it’ll improve engagement rates on your posts as well.
Keep an eye on our blog over the next couple of months – we’ll be updating the blog as soon as we get the low-down on what the new Facebook algorithm means for businesses. In the meantime, don’t forget to check out this infographic that gives an overview of Facebook usage.