Key Takeaways:
Facebook lets you tailor the ad’s target audience based on a variety of factors.
Facebook’s Insights tool provides post and page analytics, so you know what content is performing well on your business’s profile page.
Live streaming can help personalize your brand by authentically connecting with customers.
According to recent statistics, Facebook has 2.936 billion monthly active users. It’s important for many small businesses to have an active presence on this widely used platform and know how to leverage Facebook tools well. We’ve rounded up some essential Facebook terms you should know to help you talk about and use this platform like a pro.
Profiles and pages
Profiles and pages typically refer to two different features within the Facebook world. A “profile” is created by an individual, usually for personal use. A “page,” on the other hand, is an account that a business establishes to build awareness about its products/services while interacting with current and prospective customers.
Post
A post is any content that you share on your business’s Facebook page. This could be in the form of blogs, articles, videos, GIFs, images, etc. Depending on your business’s specialty and target audience, certain types of posts are more effective than others when it comes to audience reach and engagement. When you’re ready to take posting on your business page one step further, consider boosting your posts. “Boosting a post” on Facebook means paying money to promote certain posts to your audience. Though not as effective as paid ads, this technique can increase a post’s impact on your current customers and page followers.
Reach
A post’s “reach” refers to the number of people who saw “X” post on your company’s Facebook page. Reach can be subcategorized as either organic or paid. Both types of reach are part of a healthy marketing strategy for a business.
Organic reach is the number of consumers who saw a post on their own without first interacting with one of your business’s ads. Paid reach is the number of consumers who view a post after seeing and clicking on one of your ads.
Engagement
Businesses often use the word “engagement” when talking about how consumers visit and interact with content on their Facebook page. Engagement can come in the form of post clicks, likes (when users hit the “thumbs up” button at the bottom of a post), shares (when users share your business’s content with their network), and reactions (when users respond to content on your page with emoticon “reactions” listed at the bottom of a post).
For example, take a clothing company that shares a video of a celebrity wearing one of their products on their business’s Facebook page. If the post gets a lot of likes, comments, and responses, you could say the post had a high engagement rate. In other words, a lot of current customers and potential customers interacted with the post.
Insights
Use Facebook’s “Insights” tool to view post and page analytics. You can find this tool on your Facebook Business page when you navigate to the Insights tool then click “see all.” Insights will share a diverse array of useful data you can use to fine-tune your target audience, improve current posts, and get a better idea of what content to share in the future. It’s one of the tools you’ll want in your belt as you carry out and enhance your business’s Facebook marketing strategies.
Events
A Facebook “event” is a free way to promote in-person and online events for your business, whether it’s a meeting, webinar, or in-store pop-up event that your brand is hosting with another company. Facebook Events are a smart way to advertise one of your company’s events in a prominent place for customers that follow your page. You can also send an invite to the event to anyone (or everyone) who follows your page. It’s also a simple way to promote the event to a larger audience, since many Facebook users can share the event with their network.
Live streaming
A live stream is a recording or broadcast that is shared in real-time via the internet right as it’s happening. Small businesses can benefit from doing live streams of product demonstrations, tutorials, Q&A sessions, announcements, etc. You can use “behind the scenes” interviews with CEOs, staff, and customers to humanize your business’s image to customers.
Don’t go it alone
Whether you’re new to promoting your business on Facebook or have been doing it for years, we can all use a little help sometimes. Save yourself some headaches and increase the audience engagement for Facebook posts and ads when you book a mentoring session with one of our experts here at TTG.