It’s time to start posting, but now you are faced with the big question of what to post and how often. Simply building a page and expecting your ideal client to show up isn’t realistic. It is time to pull out your Buyer Persona and start crafting the story he wants to hear.
Would you build a hot dog stand in the middle of a vegetarian conference? No, but you might set one up at the local park during t-ball season. For the same reasons, why would you throw up random content in the hopes of catching a potential customer? You have to know where your customer is. Simply saying they are online so I should be too is not enough.
It is important to know where your customers are, both in the real world and the virtual world. Learning their pain points, desires, and wants will make you relevant. Knowing what they want and providing it will set you up to offer them what they truly need, your product. Even if they don’t yet know they need it.
Get To Know Your Audience
Learning your audience will come naturally over time. The more you engage with them the more you will get to know them. If all you do is post and log off, you are leaving valuable information behind.
Engage with your audience. Ask questions and answer their questions. Consider dedicating one day to addressing frequently asked questions through a Facebook Live post or posting video content every now and then . Let them see your face and get to know you as well.
Follow their pages and engage in friendly conversation. By building relationships, you build loyal clients and may even gain a few friends along the way as well.
Learn to listen and your customers will be more than happy to share what they are looking for, what they love, and how they would like to be wowed by your business.
Original vs. Shared Content Marketing
No one likes to get stuck in a conversation with a narcissist. This holds true online as well as off. Learn to talk about topics that interest your customer. Share their posts when relevant to your message.
Before creating original content or sharing content created by others make sure it either entertains, educates, or does both. If you only talk about yourself, if you only share your own work you will become noisy and irrelevant quickly. People want to hear about themselves. Don’t be the narcissist in the room. Instead learn to elevate those you are speaking with.
Not every piece of content you create is right for Facebook. You don’t have to share everything. Other platforms like Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn may be a better medium. Over time as you review your data it will become more clear on what content performs best. It is okay to cast a wide net at first and then refine it over time with data and customer feedback.
Pro Tip: For all your social channels, it is generally a best practice to start with one post a day for 5-7 days a week. It’s not a hard and fast rule but it is a good baseline to begin with. On Twitter you can post several times a day without creating any challenges for your followers but for the other platforms one a day is generally plenty of content. Over time you can test different posting strategies but start with one a day and see how your prospective customers respond.
When To And When Not To Post
Social Media can be noisy, but it’s not always best to try cutting through the noise with the loudest voice. Sometimes the one who whispers gets the most attention. Think of when you were a kid or how you deal with your own children. When mom or dad started whispering did you lean in closer and pay attention? Chances are if you didn’t want a good scolding for missing valuable instructions you did. A whisper demands the listener’s attention. It offers secrets and instructions not offered up to everyone. The one who hears it has to listen intently.
Buffer ran an experiment to see if frequency of posts resulted in increased engagement. What they found was exactly the opposite. The more they posted to Facebook the less reach they received.
When creating a content marketing plan for Facebook only schedule one to two posts maximum a day. This forces you to only share the best, not the spontaneous. Don’t get sucked into the noise and lose your brand’s message along the way. Make sure each post is relevant, educational, and entertaining to your audience. Specifically, make it relevant to your Customer Avatar.
Use your analytics to learn when your customers are online. You wouldn’t post at mid-day if your avatar is a night nurse, unless maybe the article is about struggling to find a sleep schedule that works with your night job. Pay attention to when your audience is online.
Before hitting post ask yourself “is this something my customer avatar would want to see?” If the answer is yes, then post. If it is no, hit delete. You’re only posting once a day. Don’t waste it.
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