Growing Your Business: Facebook Strategies Part II

Today we are finishing up our lessons on using Facebook Strategies in my Social Media for Business class.  And the topics were covering include creating some engaging content for our page, planning it out over time, and then scheduling it to be posted using the Facebook Event and Scheduling tools. 

We have learned this week that we should think about our Brand and our Customers Psychographics (target audience), and then think about the “language” or “tone” of our Facebook Pages – what we can say or not say - and what we should use to attract and engage with them online. Can we be light hearted and fun with the audience, or is our Brand Image something that needs to be more professional and we should maintain a more reserved tone? 

Does it need to follow a strict corporate image such as maybe for a law firm, banking, or an accounting agency? Or can you be more personal and campy like an owner of a used car lot called Big AL’s Automotive?   

Getting personal when you can is what makes Social Media most effective – so even if you have a certain corporate image that needs to be maintained and more reserved; it is a good idea to get creative and reach out to your customers on a more “intimate level.” Some articles I read this week suggested you create Facebook Company (upper management) Personnel Profiles connected to Blogs, which can make the owners or senior managers more accessible to customers.  

Topic number one for this week has been challenging for me – how do I reach and engage my nonprofit audience?  What do I post to engage both my Facebook Fans and the non-fans who visit my page and/or see my posts? What kind of content will get them to take some actions while on the page or when they see my news feed, to get them to click on them by liking, commenting, or sharing?
 

These are questions I am still struggling with for the (SKF) Sabrina KellerFoundation Page, as well as my Personal Branding and Career Page HTDEnterprises.  The images above are some of my first attempts with planning out some content for SKF.  

SKF is a nonprofit and little is going on right now for events – the next planned event which is still in development is not until next year - sometime in February. So I am essentially just trying to build the brand knowledge and awareness of the page right now as I do my class projects.   

I am searching for content that is going to be interesting and hopefully engaging.  I have linked or “liked” and “featured” several pages such as the National (SADS) Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome Foundation Page and some other related nonprofits, which promote SADS education and raise funds for research. 

Before we were assigned this week’s lecture and assignments to learn how to use the Facebook Scheduling and Events tools (which are located at the top of your Facebook Business Page in a text box with the labels “Status,” ”Photo/Video,”  “Offer/Event+” -refer to Facebook Help).  I posted a link on SKF to an article for a related SADS story; about a teen collapsing recently on a football field, and I also posted a question I wrote out asking who ate healthy food today. At first I got little or no response.   For the question post I made there was no one but myself (through my personal page) who responded and answered the question I had posted. I was disappointed. For the article I linked - I paid Facebook $5.00 for a 24 hour “Boost” – to prospectively reach several thousand people with extended news feeds. 

According to the Facebook statistics 1,432 people saw the post; just ten of them actually saw it on my page.  There were eight (8) that engaged with the page. We received five (5) page likes, six (6) “liked” the article linked to the post, but only two (2) actually clicked the link to go and read it on a third party webpage.  

I also had placed some other linked article-posts which did dismally without any boosts over the past week or two.  So I am still struggling to find the content that can be engaging for my nonprofit. It is recommended we make our posts and content “dynamic” and varied”. I am kind of running out of ideas. I have read that women (a core target audience who has been doing the most engagement by my analysis with Facebook Insights) are more visually interested in pictures than men who prefer videos. So I am going to try to post more pictures or images for women in the future. I shared an image of a short epigram which spoke about a "Happy Heart" which has received several likes in just a few short hours. I will have to strategize with some more content like this. If you have any ideas of content for a Non Profit such as The Sabrina Keller Foundation Page please leave a blog comment.  I welcome your ideas.

With the next four SKF Posts illustrated above - I have scheduled them over the course of the next two days. I have tried to mix them up a bit - first with a question asking about the importance of genetic testing for SADS related diseases. I have that scheduled for two separate days at different times (Monday 6am & Tuesday 2pm). I am hoping to get existing fans to engage with the page more. Something the SKF page has received very little of in the past few years.  While the SKF director has posted content and events in the past, people have not engaged with them very much so far. We need to work on this.

I also have posted an Event (see above) – inviting people to come “LIKE” the new Sabrina Keller Foundation Page from on our older page - “The Sabrina Keller Scholarship Foundation” - which was set up first and actually has more Fans following that feed. We are trying to migrate our older fans to our newer page. According to the director this has been very challenging to do – the old page has over 400 “likes” - the new page has just over 150.  I have created an “Online Event” to get people excited about the newer page and come to comment on it. I used an eye catching photo with lots of balloons to attract some attention and hopefully spawn some actions. 

The second post pictured above (Scheduled for 10 am, Tuesday, Oct. 15) is to an article about living with SADS related diseases which is located on the National SADS Website.  The third post is for an embedded video that is about SADS - it is touching and emotional as well as educational – it is also short and to the point - lasting only about two minutes. I am hoping these scheduled posts bring our page some more engagement over this coming week.I will probably “Pin” (a way to keep an important post or picture at the top of your page/feeds) this video post to the top of the feed.   

The planning out for my SKF strategy is still a work in progress with trial and error sure to come - I need to come up with something more creative to engage my audience that is fun.  What do you think?