A Guide to Using Real Estate Hashtags for Social Media Marketing RealtyBizNews
* This article was originally published here
Saturday, April 30, 2022
Friday, April 29, 2022
How to Create Social Media Content: 10 Tips That Help You Drive Results
Some may say social media is one of the best ways to promote your brand or business. It’s also easy to use, and all you have to do is upload some photos and write captions.
Could it be true or that simple?
The truth is… we live in a world ruled by content. Quality content.
People expect to read exciting topics every day, see creative posts, and feel like they are part of a community.
Unfortunately, the main disadvantage of the entire online ecosystem is that thousands of social media posts are added per second.
And there’s another thing all content creators should take into consideration: users tend to easily forget the information they read or see on social media channels.
Creating high-performing social media content can be challenging and time-consuming but not impossible.
Today, you’ll discover how to create social media content that brings value to your brand, achieve engagement from your audience, and help you drive results in this so competitive environment
Let’s start!
How to get better at social media content
- What is social media content?
- What is quality content?
- Why do you need a social media strategy?
3.1. What is the meaning of social media content strategy
3.2. How to start building your social media strategy - 10 tips on how to create content for social media
4.1. Attend conferences and read industry updates
4.2. Craft eye-catching infographics
4.3. Use videos and animations
4.4. Collaborate with influencers
4.5. Run social media contests
4.6. Share images that trigger emotions
4.7. Write attractive and neat captions
4.8. Build a social media content calendar
4.9. Use Facebook groups to grow your business
4.10. Measure results
1. What is social media content?
Social media content generally means anything that an individual or company has posted or shared with others on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube.
It can be a text, a photo, video, links, infographics, or gifs.
However, while almost anything can be social media content, that doesn’t necessarily mean it should be considered good social media content.
Before getting to the part where I’ll list the ten tips on how to create content for social media, let me give you a brief explanation of what quality content means.
Keep reading to find out! 😉
2. What is quality content?
Whether you’re a social media newbie or have tons of experience, you’ve probably heard those working in your industry talking about the need to create high-quality content.
But what does it really mean?
The keywords and phrases that describe quality content are attractiveness, informative potential, and ability to communicate the message clearly to the target audience and bring them a benefit.
Chuck Hester, client services director at Converge Consulting, quoted by Content Marketing Institute, says that quality content is “anything that adds value to the reader." Moreover, “it’s industry-focused, not trite and trivial” and “it increases a reader’s understanding of a topic in a way they may not have been aware of.”
Thus, if you want to make sure that you deliver high-quality content to your audience, Chuck Hester advises you to ask yourself the following questions:
- Is my content relevant?
- Is my content educational?
- Does my content bring value?
3. Why do you need a social media strategy?
Social media content mirrors your brand, meaning that it directly represents its tone and quality.
That’s why it’s essential to maintain a consistent and aesthetically pleasing look and feel throughout your feed.
Also, by planning and following a social media strategy and paying close attention to each detail, you demonstrate that your products (brand or services) are not only high-grade, but also that you know and understand your audience very well.
3.1. What is the meaning of social media strategy?
A social media content strategy implies more than posting images or sharing links.
A social media strategy can be defined as a master plan for creating, publishing, and maximizing engagement across social media channels to achieve the objectives of a brand or company (like improving brand awareness, lead generation, driving traffic, and creating viral effects).
Ultimately, a social media marketing strategy should always be data-driven and contain the tactics you’ll use to reach the goals and the metrics you’ll track to measure your results.
Tip: The content of your social media strategy should answer the what, when, how, and why.
3.2. How to start building your social media strategy
It’s said that the beginning is always the hardest.
But it shouldn't be that way.
When working on your marketing strategy, make sure you always:
Define your business goals
You can set one or multiple goals within your social media strategy. Furthermore, it’s important to keep in mind that each of your goals should be S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound). They must be aligned with your marketing objectives and will help you track your business’ progress.
Identify your target audience
It’s fundamental to know who your target audience is, what they’re looking for on social media, and where to find them.
By gathering data such as location, gender, age, education, interests, or job title you’ll get to know your fans better, understand how to address them, how to customize the content according to their needs, adjust your tone of voice, and how to engage them on your social media pages.
For example, TikTok’s audience is much younger, while on Facebook and Instagram, users between 25 and 34 make up the largest user demographic, according to the latest Statista report.
Learn everything about your competition
Try to obtain as much relevant information as you can about your competitors: on which platforms are dominant, what type of content they share, how they interact with their audience, how many page likes and followers they have, how often they post, how many hashtags they use etc.
Tip: Narrow down the list to five competitors. Choose those that have the closest fit to the industry to which your brand belongs.
If you analyze how your competitors use social media, you can learn from them, do things better, develop something that truly stands out, and come across exciting trends.
Conduct a social media audit
Conducting a social media audit means performing an analysis of all your social media accounts and using cross-channel data to build your social media content strategy from scratch, improve it, and understand the results.
It can also provide valuable insights about competition, what is your most engaging platform, and many more.
In case you’ve never conducted an Instagram audit, LinkedIn audit, or Facebook audit, maybe now it’s the perfect time to do it.
Start elevating your business!
4. 10 tips on how to create content for social media
Now that you know what social media content is and why you need a solid social media strategy to skyrocket your business, it’s time to find out how to create social media content.
Take a look below to get your dose of inspiration!
4.1. Attend conferences and read industry updates
Regardless of your level of experience in the social media field, joining conferences represents a great way to exchange ideas, expand your network, and acquire new knowledge from experts in your industry.
Social Media Strategies Summit + Influencer Marketing Conference (June 7-10, 2022) and Social Media Strategies Summit (October 26-27, 2022) are just two of the events dedicated to social media managers and social media specialists.
Use the code "socialinsider10" to save 10% off registration on any of their 2022 corporate events.
The main subjects that will be covered during the virtual sessions are social strategy development, content marketing, video, audience growth, and brand engagements.
4.2. Craft eye-catching infographics
A scientific study has proved that people are more attracted to visuals than to a simple written text. In other words, illustrations that contain text increase people’s learning abilities up to 323%.
What does it tell us?
Yes! You’re right. People are highly visual beings. That’s why they find visual content much more interesting than plain text.
Now, speaking of infographics… There are lots of reasons why they should be included in your social media content plan. Infographics are:
- Engaging
- Informative
- Easy to understand
- Faster to read
- The most used type of content marketing used among B2B marketers in the last four years (67%)
Take a look at the infographic below. Complex information is explained in a clear way, using only numbers and a few texts.
Source: Social Media Today
So, if you need to present data and statistics compellingly and effectively, sharing infographics is always a good idea.
And you can make them without too much effort. All you need is tools like Piktochart or Canva and worthy information that can be presented to your audience.
4.3. Video is the future
Wondering how to create engaging social media content?
Then, undoubtedly, videos must be part of your social media content plan.
Being the most dominant form of online content, video is now more crucial than ever for any marketing and communication strategy.
Before creating the social media calendar, which, most of the time, is not the same for all social networks (since the audiences are different), you need to know what video formats perform best.
For example, video tutorials are among the most popular types of video content. Why?
The answer is quite obvious.
Users prefer to watch a video rather than read an article and get lost throughout the text when seeking information
It’s easy and fast to learn everything about anything.
At the same time, live, Q/A, and interview videos work better on Facebook, while behind the scene videos perform good on Instagram and are also among the most loved types of video content.
4.4. Collaborate with influencers
Influencer marketing, also known as working with content creators, is an excellent way to boost brand awareness, expand the reach of your business on social media, and create engaging and genuine content.
Over time, influencers have managed to build their own communities and gain the trust of their followers.
Influencers’ endorsement has the role of building trust for your products, giving your brand a human touch, and making their followers find your message more relevant.
Influencers can try your products and then talk about them. The reviews can be in the form of videos, stories, or testimonials.
So, if you haven’t collaborated with one till now, you might want to reconsider the idea.
Tip: Make sure that the influencer you choose to collaborate with is in the same niche and resonates with your products
4.5. Run social media contests
Hands up who loves social media contests!
Giveaways and social media contests have the potential to get tons of engagement from your followers and fans.
Users love to compete and they usually spread the word.
Therefore, it’s a great way to grow your reach, drive site traffic, generate leads, and gain some new followers.
Just pick a nice idea, set your goals, and follow the social media platform rules where you run the contest.
Do you need some ideas? Here are some to inspire you:
- Photo contests
- Creative answer contests
- Ask your followers to share the post or tag their friends for a chance
- Challenge contests
4.6.Share images that trigger emotions
A picture worth more than 1,000 words, it is said. And I agree. But only if it’s the right picture.
Posting creative and well-designed photos is not enough. Emotions like anger, happiness, romance, sorrow, or joy have the power to engage people and make them share your content.
One study has revealed that people remember only 10% of what they hear once 72 hours have passed.
However, if you pair a picture with your material, they can retain 65%, even after three days.
Though, be careful when you decide to post a powerful, sensitive picture, especially if the subject is not related to your brand.
Users might find it inappropriate, and there could be no way to bring them back on your profiles.
4.7. Write attractive and neat captions
Now you’re at the stage where all your creatives and texts are ready. The next step is to post them on your social media profiles.
It's a piece of cake, right? Not really.
Captions go hand in hand with visuals. They should be like an appealing unitary whole in order to stimulate the viewer.
Captions should be related to the image, catchy but straightforward, and grammatically correct.
Let me give you some tips on how to write good captions:
- Write like a human
- Insert a break between paragraphs
- Use emojis (if necessary)
- Use relevant hashtags
- Write the most important stuff first
- Include a CTA (on occasion)
4.8. Build a social media content calendar
A social media content calendar can help you visualize better your ideas and make the process of posting more manageable.
I know, it might seem a bit overwhelming to fill in a calendar with posts for an entire month.
No matter how much imagination you have, there are days when you can run out of ideas.
But don’t panic and take it step by step!
The main advantage of using a social media calendar is that you can schedule the posts in advance.
For example, reserve a day to create the social media content plan for the first two weeks of the month.
Then, you can continue with the posts for the remaining weeks on another day. When you have them all done, you can start scheduling them.
There have been many discussions about the times when to post on each platform and how frequently you should post.
According to Sprout Social, the best time to post on Instagram would be Tuesday between 11 a.m.–2 p.m. and Monday through Friday, at around 11 a.m., and on Facebook would be Monday through Friday at 3 a.m, and Tuesdays at 10 a.m.
If you want to get more visibility, data suggests to post:
- 1-2 times per day on Facebook
- 3-10 times per day on Twitter
- 1-3 times per day on Instagram
- 2-5 times per day on Instagram Stories
- 3-20 times per day on
- 1-2 times per week on LinkedIn
4.9. Use Facebook groups to grow your business
Facebook groups can offer great marketing potential to any business that wants to attract loyal customers or increase awareness.
Through Facebook groups, you can have direct access to your target audience, see what your customers think about your products, offer support to your clients, connect with them on a much personal level, and understand their needs.
Building a solid and big community takes time, but once you have all your fans together in a Facebook group, it’ll be easier to interact with them.
How to keep your community engaged:
- Organize live video sessions
- Discuss current events related to your niche
- Run contests
- Ask for their opinion
- Let them know how their feedback helped with improving your services or products
4.10. Measure results
Your posts are now scheduled, and some of them are already on your social media platform.
But how can you know your social media content strategy has been successful if not by measuring your efforts?
The most important social media metrics you should track are:
- Awareness - represents the number of times people saw your content as told by impressions and reach
- Engagement - is the sum of interactions, shares, and comments for the posts published in a specific time period
- Conversions - represents the total number of users who take the desired action after clicking on a link in your post
These metrics are provided by social media analytics tools, such as Socialinsider.
By measuring data each month, you can figure out what has performed best, what you need to do to improve your content plan, and accurately adjust your social media strategy.
Final thoughts
The topic of how to create social media content is ample, and what I have enlisted here could no longer be available next year as new trends and features specific to each platform appear.
Despite this possibility, I think we can draw some interesting conclusions:
- Social media gives brands the opportunity to connect with their audiences and create strong relations.
- It’s not enough to only know who your audience is. It’s necessary to understand it and get engaged.
- The content you share must resonate with your followers.
- Quality content should bring value.
- Building a social media content strategy is an ongoing process. It implies constant research, creative ideas, planning, keeping-up-with trends, scheduling, and monitoring.
Are you ready to start building your social media content strategy?
Related articles:
* This article was originally published here
Thursday, April 28, 2022
TikTok Audit: How to Analyze Your TikTok Page Performance
Despite being the newest social media platform, TikTok is the most engaging channel of the moment, having an average engagement rate of 5.96%, according to our social media industry benchmarks study.
Even though most social media managers are reluctant to use TikTok, as per Social Media Examiner’s Industry Report, there is no denying that this platform yields excellent marketing benefits.
If you are one of the adventurous ones and have already started experimenting with TikTok marketing, you should know by now the importance of running a TikTok audit.
A TikTok audit helps you review your business’ overall activity and metrics to assess growth. It’s the first step when determining whether you’re meeting your business goals.
In this guide, we’ll go over a TikTok audit, the main benefits, and a TikTok audit checklist to help you get the best of your marketing benefits.
Let’s begin!
How to run a TikTok audit?
1. What is a TikTok audit?
A social media audit is the first step to understanding how your business can best interact with its customers on social networks.
You'll learn what content works best for your audience and what content can be improved or removed from your strategy by doing a social media audit.
Like carrying out an Instagram audit or any other audit, a TikTok audit will help you meet your marketing goals.
If you have a TikTok business account just for fun, but you're not constantly auditing it, your marketing efforts and resources will be in vain.
By running a TikTok audit, you'll get valuable insights into how your brand is performing, and you will confirm that you're moving in the right direction.
Don't get alarmed if your first TikTok audit results aren't positive.
You'll get to decide if you'll focus your budget and resources elsewhere or if your content strategy needs an improvement.
2. Benefits of conducting a TikTok audit
Constantly analyzing your content strategies will provide you with plenty of benefits.
By doing a TikTok audit, you’ll be able to:
-
find what is the most liked, commented, and shared content on your TikTok profile - improve your least-performing content;
-
review your TikTok strategy - you might be surprised by old ideas that worked better than new ones or vice versa;
-
determine if there are TikTok videos that no longer comply with your strategy, tone of voice, or brand values;
-
get rid of fake followers - remember it’s about quality, not quantity.
3. Pillars to cover when doing a TikTok audit
Now that you've decided a TikTok audit is what your account needs, it’s time to see what pillars you’ll have to check.
We’ve put together this step-by-step guide for your TikTok audit, which can be repeated every time you want to analyze your performance.
3.1. Set your TikTok goals
If you’re a social media manager who has worked in this field for a while, you should know that setting clear goals from the beginning is the first step of every marketing process.
If you want to conduct a TikTok audit, you should start by asking yourself a few questions, such as:
-
Do I want to increase brand awareness through TikTok?
-
Do I want to grow my audience on TikTok?
-
Do I want to be perceived as an expert on my niche on TikTok?
-
Do I want to sell my products/services on TikTok?
You probably already have set some specific business and marketing goals, and your objectives for being on TikTok should align with those.
The reason for establishing clear goals from the very start of your TikTok audit is that all your marketing efforts (budgets, resources, time, etc.) need to be motivated by what you want to achieve.
If by the end of your TikTok audit, you’ll conclude that your TikTok marketing efforts are not sustainable, you should probably change your focus elsewhere.
3.2. Audit your TikTok profile
As a highly visual social media platform, first impressions matter more than you think on TikTok.
The second step in your TikTok audit process should be to examine your TikTok profile.
This includes checking your profile picture, bio, CTA, and the overall look of your account.
Let’s take one of them at a time.
- Profile picture
Start by looking at your profile picture. If your photo is old and no longer matches your visual identity, you should probably update it.
Your profile picture should showcase what your brand does, according to Rachel Pederson, social media strategist and TikTok expert.
It needs to be clear, of high quality and related to your domain of activity.
If you run a TikTok business account, a good profile picture idea is to add your logo.
- Bio
Like any other social media profile details, you can and should add a bio to your TikTok business account.
TikTok bios are your first and best chance to introduce your business to potential new users.
If a user likes one of your TikTok videos and goes to your profile to watch more of your content, your bio is the first thing they see.
Updating your bio as part of your TikTok audit is crucial as it’s your chance to convince users to follow and engage with your account.
You have an 80-character limit to complete your TikTok bio, but you can still create a compelling one by adding emojis and including as many relevant keywords as possible.
- CTA
Another critical step of auditing your TikTok profile is to include a strong call-to-action (also known as the CTA).
A well-put-together CTA will tell your visitors what to do next if they want to engage with your account.
For example, you could direct your visitors to a blog page, your website, other social media channels, or the podcast you’re hosting.
- Resources
TikTok allows users to add only one link to their bios, so you only have one chance to add the most helpful resources.
Adding a link to your TikTok bio will increase your chances of driving traffic outside the platform to your website.
There are many tools available to help you optimize the TikTok URL from the bio, such as Linkin.bio for TikTok.
3.3. Do a TikTok content audit
Once you’ve updated your profile details, it’s time to perform a thorough TikTok content audit to determine your top-performing videos and if they align with the goals you’ve set previously.
One thing you should do is to look at the overall aspect of your TikTok videos.
The content you create should convey specific imagery in-line with your business’s visual identity.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you should only film videos from the same angle or with the same background. But keeping a particular aesthetic denotes professionalism.
Then, analyze the frequency of your posting. Remember that consistency is vital.
If you haven’t posted in a while, it’s time to step up your game. If you don’t have a regular schedule and only upload content once in a bit, you should create a content calendar and stick with it.
After you’ve audited the more general aspects of your TikTok content, you need to get into more nitty-gritty aspects and analyze your TikTok strategy.
You can do this phase of your TikTok audit by accessing basic metrics from the analytics dashboard, or if you want to get more in-depth, you can use a third-party TikTok analytics tool.
By analyzing TikTok metrics, you’ll get insights into your engagement rates, impressions, audience, and much more.
📌 FYI: You can improve your content performance and measure the success of your TikTok campaigns with Socialinsider! Sign up today to get a 14-day free trial!
And last but not least, take a look at your top-performing TikTok videos. You’ll know what kind of content works best for your audience and what content needs improvement.
3.4. Check your TikTok engagement stats
I’ve already mentioned the importance of analyzing your TikTok content performance. And what better way to do so than by looking at your engagement stats?
Engagement metrics are probably social media managers’ go-to stats when determining the success of their social media efforts.
TikTok engagement rates help you measure how people are interacting with your content.
You can access engagement metrics from the native app, but you’ll only have access to stats for the last seven, 28, or 60 days.
In Socialinsider, you’ll be provided with average engagement rates per profile or post, and you’ll also see your engagement evolution over a customized date range.
3.5. Perform a TikTok hashtag audit
Hashtags are key to every successful TikTok account.
Users regularly search for topics of interest in the search bar, so it’s essential to use hashtags as part of your TikTok strategy, but use them effectively.
Many trends and challenges are created around specific TikTok hashtags, so you can even create a customized hashtag for your business, making it easier to group all your campaigns.
However, using hashtags just for their sake won’t benefit you greatly.
By doing a TikTok hashtag audit, you’ll see which hashtags have potential and which haven’t, and you can also find inspiration for future hashtags by analyzing your competitors.
3.6. Audit your TikTok followers
Auditing your followers is one of the most important pillars of your TikTok audit.
By analyzing your following base, you’ll get information about their main interests, demographic, and education, and suddenly, your content creator job will be much easier.
The Follower tab from the TikTok analytics dashboard provides insights about your audience’s gender, geographical distribution, and when they’re most active online.
The next thing to do is to assess the quality of your followers and make sure they’re not fake.
While big numbers look great on paper, it’s no point in having an extensive following base if most of them aren’t real people who can engage with the content you publish.
There are a lot of TikTok audit tools on the market to help you out.
HypeAuditor, for instance, offers free TikTok audit reports. All you have to do is enter your account name in the toolbar, and you’ll receive a score.
The higher the score, the more chances are your followers are real.
Final thoughts
Conducting a TikTok audit may sound complicated at first, but you must do it at least once per quarter if you want your marketing efforts to be worth it.
Hopefully, this step-by-step guide gave you all the reasons to start doing your TikTok audits and amaze your audience with optimized content.
Remember to save your results and track them over time because a TikTok audit is not a one-time-only process.
Are you ready to see which pillars of your TikTok page need improvement?
Related articles:
* This article was originally published here
Wednesday, April 27, 2022
Social Media Suites Solution Market to See Major Growth by 2026 | Agora Pulse, Sprout, Buffer – Ripon College Days - Ripon College Days
Tuesday, April 26, 2022
Monday, April 25, 2022
Sunday, April 24, 2022
How to 10X Your Facebook Sales (11 Strategies for Brands)
Standing out in a sea of organic and paid Facebook content is tough. And even if you manage to catch peoples’ attention as they scroll through your products, it’s hard to turn browsing into purchasing.
Even if you’re an experienced retailer with a keen eye for Facebook advertising and selling — what happens if you’re not selling as many products as you’d like? How do you take your Facebook sales up a level?
There’s always room for improvement, no matter where you are on the Facebook selling journey. That’s why we’re sharing 11 ways to optimize your Facebook sales strategy and 4 tools to help you make more sales.
Bonus: Download a free guide that teaches you how to turn Facebook traffic into sales in four simple steps using Hootsuite.
Is Facebook a good place to sell products and services?
With around 2.9 billion active users, Facebook is the most visited social media site worldwide. Its users also spend a lot of time on the platform — an average of 19.6 hours each month.
And while the social network is known for encouraging interactions between family and friends, people (especially Generation Z) are increasingly using Facebook to interact with brands and make purchases.
In fact, 76% of internet users aged 16 to 64 use social media platforms for brand research. And 23% of users follow companies and brands they purchase from on social media.
With new features like Meta Pixel and Facebook Shops making it even easier for brands to optimize campaigns and for shoppers to purchase from you, it makes a ton of sense to be selling your goods and services on the OG social network.
11 ways to optimize your strategy for Facebook sales
With millions of businesses to compete with, competition to stand out from the pack is fierce. Knowing how to maximize your paid and organic Facebook campaigns is key to making more sales.
Here are our top 11 ways to boost your strategy for making more Facebook sales.
1. Listen in on conversations about your brand
Social listening is the process of scanning social media platforms for mentions and conversations related to your brand — and then analyzing them to drive actionable insights. This action might be thanking a satisfied customer or modifying your returns policy following a negative customer comment.
Constantly monitoring what customers are saying about your brand will help you understand more about what people want from you. It’s also a chance to engage with customers and show your brand’s human side.
Dog toy subscription company, BarkBox is known for consistently engaging with customers on social media. They take the time to compliment customers’ four-legged friends:
Image source: Facebook
They’re also quick to thank customers and show their appreciation:
Image source: Facebook
Listening to customer conversations helps you better understand what your audience expects from your brand. Armed with this knowledge you can amend your social media strategy and your product or service offering to better suit your customers.
2. Build a community
Creating Facebook Groups is a great way of bringing together like-minded customers and building a sense of community around your brand.
You could use a Facebook Group to share information about events, tutorials, UGC (with permission and credit), or customer success stories. Encourage members to share their own content too. The key is to use Facebook groups as an authentic way of connecting with customers and not being outright salesy.
For example, workout clothing brand Lululemon has a public Facebook Group, lululemon sweatlife, with over 12K members. The brand uses the group to share at-home workouts, keep members connected, and help them make friends along the way:
Image source: Facebook
Many of the group’s members share their own home workouts and upcoming fitness events with each other too:
Image source: Facebook
Facebook groups are a chance to build a community around your brand and interact with visitors in a helpful and positive way. The aim is to build connections and encourage people to spend time with your brand in an authentic way without an explicit end goal of making sales. (But the loyalty built along the way will pay off in purchases in the long run.)
3. Post engaging (but not overly salesy) content
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to creating engaging Facebook content. Before you start posting, think about your brand’s personality and what’s most relatable to your audience.
Is your brand voice funny or educational? Do your customers come to you looking for a solution to a complex problem or do they want to be entertained? Knowing the answers to these questions will help you post content that’s most likely to be relevant and engaging to your followers.
Chris Grayson, the founder of InfluencerMade.com, suggests creating relatable content that has the potential to generate social shares and go viral.
“I encourage brands to focus on making content that has the potential to go viral. Creating memes surrounding a popular trend is a great way to connect with Gen Z users in a way that is relatable and fun. It generates social shares and is the most effective way to maximize your reach and make the most of a smaller budget.”
For example, Chipotle has a knack for creating relatable and shareable memes on their Facebook page that generate a conversation with their customers:
Image source: Facebook
When it comes to creating engaging content, don’t be afraid to mix it up — variety keeps things interesting for your followers. Consider creating posts that ask followers questions, share quirky facts about your industry, or publish Reels showing how to use your product.
4. Respond to customer service inquiries
Quick and helpful responses to customer service inquiries create a positive reputation for your business and build trust among existing and potential customers.
One more reason to maintain high response rates is that Facebook displays how responsive your business is right at the top of your Facebook Page:
Image source: Facebook
To be awarded the Very Responsive badge, your page must have a response rate of 90% or more and a response time of fewer than 15 minutes, according to Facebook.
Bonus: Download a free guide that teaches you how to turn Facebook traffic into sales in four simple steps using Hootsuite.
Get the free guide right now!Responding quickly to customers is part of offering high-quality customer service. And since 93% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases with companies that offer excellent customer service, quick replies will only help your Facebook sales.
To help you respond to customer inquiries quickly try setting up AI chatbots that will automate part or all of the conversation for you (more on this later).
Learn more about customer support on Facebook in our complete guide to social media customer service.
5. Enable reviews
Customer reviews are an important factor in helping customers decide where to purchase. In fact, 89% of customers read reviews before making a purchase.
Customers use reviews to get insight from previous buyers to help them decide whether to purchase a product or service.
Enabling reviews on your Facebook page can help encourage future customers to purchase from your brand.
How do I enable reviews on Facebook?
- Log into your Facebook account and go to your business’s Facebook Page.
- In the left-hand menu, navigate to Settings.
- Select Templates and Tabs.
- Find the Reviews tab and toggle it to be on.
That’s it! Now past customers can leave reviews on your products and help future customers make informed purchasing decisions.
6. Engage with customers live
30.4% of internet users aged 16 to 64 watch video live streams every week. Live streaming is completely free and offers an interactive way of engaging with Facebook users.
Don’t be afraid to get creative with Facebook Live streaming and see how you can interact with customers in new and innovative ways. Consider holding product tutorials, demos, expert interviews, and Q&A sessions to showcase your offering to customers. Use them as a chance to engage, educate, and entertain your followers.
Matt Weidle, the business development manager for Buyer’s Guide has found live streaming on Facebook an effective way of engaging with potential customers.
“We have found that engagement is really strong, and we have seen an increase in sales through our website and retail location during these live videos, as well as in the days that follow.”
He’s also found live streaming events are a great way of answering customer questions and improving traffic levels.
“By cooperating with similar businesses, we can use Q&As as a feasible content format. And by conducting a series of live events on our Facebook Page, we can improve the amount of traffic to our page and potentially attract new followers.”
When using Facebook Live, make sure to have someone dedicated to replying to comments while the stream runs and after it’s finished. That way you won’t miss out on any customer questions or feedback.
7. Use Facebook ads
Facebook ads have the potential to reach 26.7% of the world’s population. To get the most out of your campaigns though, it’s important to know your audience and create ads most suited to your product type.
Start by creating a digital window shopping experience for visitors. Facebook has multiple ad types for displaying your products. Choose between:
- Image ads
- Video ads
- Carousel ads
- Slideshow ads
- Instant Experience ads
- Collection ads
- Stories ads
Think about which ad type is best for displaying your products. The Carousel Ad enables you to showcase multiple products in one ad through several cards that users can click through:
Image source: Facebook
You can include up to 10 images and videos which all have a CTA button at the bottom. When users click on the CTA or the image, they’ll reach a landing page where they can buy your product.
The Instant Experience Ads is a mobile-only interactive full-screen ad that lets users swipe through a carousel of images, zoom in and out of images and tilt the screen in different directions.
When running paid ad campaigns, always use Audience Insights to better define your target audience. Then target your paid ad campaigns to users with relevant interests, lifestyles, locations, and demographics. By honing in on your target audience you’ll maximize your ad budget and get more ROI.
8. Explore Facebook’s native shopping features
Facebook’s native shopping features enable you to create digital storefronts across Facebook and Instagram. You can create product catalogs, set up checkout so customers don’t need to leave the platform, and link your ad campaigns to the storefront.
Fashion brand Feroldi’s uses Facebook’s native shopping features to create a digital storefront experience complete with a checkout:
Image source: Facebook
Learn more about Facebook Shops.
9. Set up an affiliate program
Affiliate marketing is a way of getting your products in front of larger or more niche audiences via content creators or influencers. Content creators will earn a commission from referring customers to your brand, and you’ll tap into their engaged audiences.
Affiliate creators tag affiliate products on their branded content posts and can add you as their brand partner in Instagram posts.
Using a Facebook affiliate program, you can:
- Review affiliate performance of participating creators through Insights.
- See content using the creator content tab to see how creators are promoting your products.
- Set commission rates for products in your shop and run campaigns for specific creators or products.
Working with affiliate creators within your industry is a great way of getting your product in front of more people who may end up purchasing from you.
10. Upsell with an AI chatbot
AI chatbots don’t just help you respond more quickly to customer inquiries — they’re also an opportunity for upselling products to buyers.
When a customer starts a conversation about a certain product with your chatbot, the AI can suggest similar and complementary products, and guide the customer to purchase.
If customers remain undecided, your chatbot could recommend alternatives or promote other suitable products. In practice, this might look like a chatbot helping a customer complete their outfit or adding tech accessories to their purchase.
Source: Heyday
11. Set up conversion tracking
Conversion tracking enables you to see how many purchases happened as a result of your Facebook ads. Knowing that number is essential for refining and optimizing future campaigns so you can maximize your sales.
How do I set up conversion tracking?
- Go to Ads Manager.
- Select Campaigns, Ad Sets, or Ads depending on what you want to measure.
- Choose the Columns dropdown menu.
- Select Customize Columns and choose the boxes next to the actions that are most important to you
- Click Apply and you’ll see these columns in the table.
Once set up, you can measure and track the conversions most important to each of your campaigns.
4 tools that will help you make more Facebook sales
Now you know the top strategies for increasing Facebook sales, it’s time to look at the tools that will help you implement them.
1. Facebook Shops
Facebook Shops is a social commerce feature that enables businesses to create a free online store on Facebook and Instagram. You can choose to feature different products, create collections, and tell your brand’s story within Shops.
Image source: Facebook
Using Facebook Shops, you can answer customer inquiries through Messenger, WhatsApp, or Instagram DMs. Customers can access Facebook Shops on a business’s Facebook Page or find them through ads or Stories. They can view your full collection, save products, and place orders on your website or directly on Facebook if you’ve enabled checkout.
Meta Pixel
The Meta Pixel places and activates cookies to track visitors as they interact with your business on Facebook and Instagram. It collects data that helps you track conversions from Facebook ads, optimize your campaigns, build targeted audiences for future campaigns, and remarket to people who have already taken some action on your site.
For example, a visitor might start browsing haircare products and click through to find out more details. But instead of taking action like sending a message, they get distracted and keep scrolling through their feed.
The next time they open Facebook or Instagram, an ad for these products might pop up:
Image source: @authenticbeautyconcept
This is retargeting. It’s a useful way of reminding visitors to find out more about products or to come back and buy the items they left in the shopping basket.
Retargeting isn’t the only function of the Meta Pixel. It’s also useful for tracking, analytics, and optimizing ad campaigns.
Heyday
Most growing retail businesses don’t have the time or human resources to respond to all of the customer requests they receive.
Most of your customers probably have similar questions like “When will my order arrive? What’s your return policy? How much is shipping?”
It’s easy to automate these frequently asked questions with AI chatbots like Heyday. When customers have more complex questions about product specifications or unexpected delivery delays, you can filter the chat through to a qualified team member.
Image source: Heyday
Ilija Sekulov, a digital marketer at MailButler explains how using Heyday has helped her clients improve customer experience and boost sales, “The Heyday chatbot has come to play a crucial role in improving customer experience sales. I have used the Heyday app with one of my clients, and we showcased the products that didn’t get so many sales from the site (because they were hard to find). We managed to increase these sales by more than 20%.”
Hootsuite
Composer and Planner
Scheduling Facebook posts helps busy retail business owners publish content consistently more easily. Using a content calendar will help you maximize your Facebook content efforts while also lowering the amount of time you spend on planning and posting content.
Using the Hootsuite Composer and Planner, you can create content and schedule it to be published weeks or months in advance. That way you don’t need to publish everything in real-time. Instead, you can allocate time to schedule it up and focus on community management or other pressing business tasks.
Learn more about scheduling content with Hootsuite:
Inbox
You’re probably used to receiving dozens or hundreds of customer messages a day across multiple social media platforms. Staying on top of all these incoming messages can be a challenge.
Hootsuite’s Inbox feature enables you to monitor and answer messages from multiple networks in a single view. Filter out those Facebook messages that require action, assign the right team member to address customer inquiries with simple team assignments, and spread the workload evenly.
Say goodbye to overflowing inboxes and feeling overwhelmed. Instead, never miss a message or mention again and ensure customers receive the response they need.
Streams
Our Streams feature can help you more easily listen to and engage with your community.
Instead of scheduling up your month’s Facebook posts and forgetting about them, Streams help you keep an eye on post engagement and practice social listening. Monitor and react to social activities relating to your brand and industry like mentions, tags, keywords, and hashtags.
Setting up Streams enables you to see how your audience is reacting to your paid ad and organic Facebook campaigns so you can make adjustments if you need to.
Impact
Using Hootsuite Impact, measure your campaign performance and make informed decisions about your paid and organic Facebook campaigns. You can track, analyze, and better understand audience engagement across Facebook at all points in the customer journey.
You can also get the bigger picture on how your strategy contributes to reaching business goals by adding Google or Adobe Analytics to monitor how each post leads to sales. Customized dashboards help you to see how your Facebook campaigns are increasing conversions, leads, and sales.
Boost your Facebook sales with Heyday. Engage with shoppers on Facebook and turn customer conversations into sales with our dedicated conversational AI tools for social commerce retailers. Deliver 5-star customer experiences — at scale.
Turn customer service conversations into sales with Heyday. Improve response times and sell more products. See it in action.
Free DemoThe post How to 10X Your Facebook Sales (11 Strategies for Brands) appeared first on Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard.
* This article was originally published here
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
7 Social Media Monitoring Tools SMMs Can’t Live Without
Social media monitoring tools are the best way to find out what people are saying about your brand — and your product, your competitors, you...
