Your social media marketing goals are downright lofty compared to when you started. Rather than simply asking everyone you know to like your page, you’re chasing after some serious objectives. You want improved engagement, more website traffic and relevant content to encourage sharing.
Does that mean that Facebook likes are left to the newbies, the shallow social media marketers who haven’t gotten the lay of the land? Absolutely not.
Even though likes aren’t the main goal, they still count. But not all likes are equal.
You need to cultivate likes that represent more than just an acquaintance who likes your page because they run into you at the grocery store sometimes and it will be awkward if they don’t provide that coveted like.
No, you’re after something a bit more sophisticated. You want likes that represent engagement with your specific target market. It’s social media marketing that takes the fundamentals and makes them nuanced for growth.
Create a Strategy: Your social media marketing must be guided by a strategy. You need a defined audience, an awareness of what your competition is doing and a set of measurable goals that help you determine what to post and what not to post.
Create a Great Profile: You need more than just a logo or a cover image for a strategic approach to Facebook. Use all of the fields in the profile set-up, so that audiences can learn as much as possible about you. When it comes to the image that you use on your profile, think about the different aspects of your brand that you would like to convey. Keep in line with your consistent brand imaging so that it’s a representation of your identity.
It’s also important that you cultivate what first impression your audience gets of your brand. If you have a post that performed particularly well, or that when you read it, you think, “yes, that’s us,” then consider pinning it on your profile. That’s right, you can pin a post that will permanently be prioritized in your page until you change it.
Focus on Quality: Everyone’s posting; why should anyone take time to click on your content? The answer is quality. You’re investing in high-quality blogs, infographics and videos that deliver important how-to’s, discussions and insights to your audience and they will feel a distinct pull to click on whatever you post. You’ll have built a reputation for expertise, and maybe even more important, for not wasting your audience’s time.
Be Findable: Skip the fancy keywords and catchy phrases. Keep your Facebook page name simple and, if at all possible, just make it your brand name. Your username or vanity URL should be consistent with the way you identify your brand on other channels. You can also add a Facebook button to your website and blog posts so that your audience is encouraged to engage with you on social media.
When you’re employing all of these techniques in your social media marketing strategy, you’ll be more likely to count likes that mean something. They’ll mean engagement, sales and growth for your company.
We’ve seen this smart approach to social media marketing first-hand in our work with Dani Beyer Real Estate, where highly-targeted social media engagement strategies have bumped up their Facebook likes. Bumped might be a bit of an understatement. Think more like rocket propulsion. In less than 18 months, their likes have nearly doubled. That’s some serious liking going on.
You wear a lot of hats. Maybe you even wear all the hats in your company. Toss that social media marketing one to us, and we’ll make sure you’re seeing the growth that translates to sales.