In our last two blog posts we introduced you to Facebook and helped you set up a business account, as well as going over the difference between pages, profiles and groups. This week we tell you what to do and what not to do and also how to improve your engagement.
Like we have already said on many occasions, social media is a two way conversation and should be approached as such. The key word here is ‘social’ and there are so many interesting people online who you can engage with.
How do you get followers?
Like all social media channels, this isn’t going to happen overnight. In our second how to guide, we told you how sharing and engaging in others posts leads to them doing the same for you.
Remember to:
Converse – show interest in other’s posts and comment on what they have written.
Listen – what are others saying? Keep up to date with what is current in your field, or what is being said about you. Google alerts is a great tool to use for this.
Engage – liking and commenting on others conversations. Include details that would be useful to your followers.
Share – share posts from other social media channels, or blog posts that will be of interest to your followers. Share information that can be shared and shared by others.
But don’t:
Spam – don’t leave fly-by comments on other pages or adverts for your products.
Use ‘add likers’ pages – you may get the quantity of likes, but it’s quality you are looking for. It is much better to have 50 likers that all buy from you than 5000 that don’t.
Like everything and anything to gain followers – if your newsfeed is full of information you aren’t interested in you won’t see any that you are interested in!
Sell, sell, sell.
Researchers at Rutgers University found that only 20% of us are informers on social media, while the other 80% are meformers (talking about only yourself and your products.) However, informers had twice as many followers of meformers. Sharing information is better for your follower count than sharing about yourself.
The content you share is essential for gaining and keeping your followers. Be consistently relevant and current. We also suggest to our clients to plan ahead when it comes to your social media posts. Think about what events or activities you have coming up, whether that would be a new blog post, staff day out, competition, seasonal activities or new product. By making a weekly or monthly plan this then gives you the content to post on a regular basis.
And post daily! Try to post at least once a day and make those posts relevant, interesting and current. If you struggle getting to a computer every day then think about scheduling your posts through Hootsuite or even directly through Facebook itself.
But remember…
Don’t worry about how many followers you have, focus on those that are interested in what you have to say. Concentrate on the ones that you do have and before you know it more will come.
Good Luck! Let us know who you are online and we will come and follow you. If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.