Growing Your Business: Facebook Strategies Part I

This week with my Social Media for Business Class, we are continuing with our social media planning efforts, and have further developed our Facebook Business Pages. We have created a Facebook Page to match our business websites; with some comprehensive themes and matching colors; as well as using quality pictures that will convey a unified brand and business image.  We are now going to focus on developing some Facebook Marketing Strategies in order to increase our Consumer Reach, and to improve our Customer and Facebook Fan Engagement.   

As I had mentioned in an earlier blog, when we are using Facebook Insights for our marketing analysis – The Overall Total Reach for our Facebook Business Page is defined as “the number of unique people (fans and non-fans) who saw any activity on your page; including your posts, posts by other people, page like ads, mentions, and check-ins.” In contrast “Post Reach” is described as “the number of Unique Fans (people who have already liked your page), who saw your post, which has showed up in their personal news feed.”  

Engagement or Post Engagement is when anyone clicks on your page at all (fan or non-fans) – and makes an action with your page/posts (which is considered engagement) either through their liking, sharing or commenting.  

  
While getting a lot of “likes” for your page can indicate increased awareness of your business – when you get more “Fan Engagement” you have more opportunities to interact with your page visitors; especially through your business related posts, which show up in your Fans News Feeds. These posts will be seen further by their Facebook friends – creating virility – and giving your Business Page/Posts more reach out into the Facebook Community. 

One strategy a business owner can use to increase their Facebook Business Page Reach and Engagement; is to be regularly active and social with your page. It is good to be in the habit of making regular posts with content that is varied, interesting and related to your customer’s interests. You can promote products, events, or respond to a customer’s complaint or praises. Using Facebook to manage your customer service can potentially be very successful and popular with your customers, as well as it can free up your store employee’s time in your brick and mortar locations. 

This week our class assignment was to think about how to develop a Facebook Marketing Strategy. Using a Facebook tool called “Featured Likes,” for increased reach and engagement with our fans and non-fans. The strategy entails seeking out some of the other Businesses/Organizations or prominent thought leaders in our prospective industries (professional personal pages) located on Facebook; which are relevant or are a complement to our business and our brands.  These should be other Facebook Business Pages that our customers and prospective consumers might be interested in, and they may already be located there as Facebook fans. 

When we “like” or “comment” on these pages ourselves (as our business), we create a connection to the related business which shows up in our news feed, as well as the news feeds of the followers (Fans) of our page. By doing this we can monitor what these businesses are doing (posting), and comment on them when they are relevant. This provides us more exposure to the Facebook Community – and can create viral communication that spreads rapidly, and can potentially increase our reach or even more importantly our engagement – which can ultimately end up in increased sales and/or reaching our business goals.  

I have been developing two different Facebook marketing campaigns simultaneously as I have been doing these Facebook assignments. One with a nonprofit fundraising group called the Sabrina Keller Foundation, as well as my own personal brand career page – a business page I entitled “HTD Consulting.”  

For the Sabrina Keller Foundation I have used the Facebook “Featured Likes” strategy explained above, by connecting with seven related organizations that complement the Foundations cause – which is to educate, support, and inform the community about SADS – Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome. As well as provide educational scholarships for girls who are a part of the San Diego Girls Scouts Organization.  

The most obvious Facebook Business connection I could make with another related organization was with the National SADS Foundation – who promotes national education on the sudden heart-attack death syndrome.  They are often posting about upcoming funding events, as well as educational information about the syndrome, which our Sabrina Keller Foundation Fans might have some interests to read and engage.  

The second Facebook Page I liked and featured was the memorial page for Sabrina Keller – this is where a timeline/wall was created for her family, friends from school, and church; as well as members of the San Diego Girl Scouts, to eulogize and celebrate her short life, when she died in 2011 at the young age of 16. There are still some recent posts being made here, with some pictures of Sabrina and others, from what was her very large network of friends and family members.   

The third page I connected was with another nonprofit called “Parent Heart Watch” - the title is pretty self-explanatory - the goal is to reach out to parents who are dealing with heart related issues with their children. The fourth was Rady Children’s Hospital – I chose this page because Facebook fans here will be concerned with children and their health, as well as professionals like nurses or doctors could be present on this page, and other types of children's-medicine content will be streamed through the Facebook news feeds.   

The fifth page connected was with the Girl Scouts Organization, in order to reach out to the girls and their parents, to inform them about scholarships and awards, and to engage with them for Sabrina Keller Foundation support and volunteer opportunities. The sixth Facebook page was with the Westside Cafe – a local Restaurant that recently held a fundraising event at their eating establishment for the Foundation. This page was included in my featured likes in order to reach out to the owners of the cafe, show some good will, and show our appreciation for their help, by highlighting them for a while on our page.  The seventh business page connected was with a Facebook page called “HealthyEats.com” which promoted heart healthy foods and recipes – I thought this would be of interest to our fans who are concerned about eating for heart health. 

For my consulting and personal brand page “HTD Enterprises,” I am still working on ideas for my strategies for the Facebook Page connections I am seeking. My goal is to find Companies and HR Managers or Marketing Managers, who are looking for personnel for their company or marketing departments.  

So far I have connected with several related pages but I am still in the process of looking for the most appropriate ones for reaching my career goals.  The first one I connected was with the American Marketing Association (AMA), for pretty obvious reasons; if I want to reach out to some marketing managers - there probably going to be there. Their news feed will provide excellent opportunities for me to comment on or like the articles related to marketing management  – if I comment with some intelligence and link them to my online resume, I might just get lucky and see some results with a job offer. 

The second one I chose was a page called “Simply Measured” - it is a Facebook Page and Blog dedicated to Marketing Research and Statistics – another place I expect some marketing managers can be found online. I also have connected to several other marketing based pages which are mostly blogs about marketing strategies. I have a feeling these pages I have featured will be changed in the not so distant future, as I find pages more relevant to my career search. 

One important page  - I ”Liked” - was called “Red Door Interactive,” which is a Marketing Development Company located in downtown San Diego, that has often hired Cal State San Marcos Business Students. So I thought maybe they would be a good business to have relaying messages on my news feed also.