You’re a business owner trying to take advantage of the wide world of social media. Facebook is your first choice. It’s the most popular social media platform for contractors, and it’s a slick way to get some free engagement.
Right?
Sort of. Facebook takes some real work and patience. People don’t want pictures and salesy updates from businesses filling up their News Feeds. And Facebook has spoken.
Building a Facebook business page that reaches a huge audience 100% of the time is practically impossible these days, but that doesn’t mean you should hang your head and walk away. Instead, we have a few simple hacks to make your efforts on Facebook a little easier.
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1. Be recognizable in your profile picture.
You have to pick a profile picture that will be easy for your potential fans to recognize. This can be anything from your company logo to an easily recognizable and branded piece of equipment. Whatever your profile picture is, it has to be recognizable.
Blog: Google vs. Facebook: One Ad Platform to Rule them All
Being recognizable is important to getting found and liked. This is especially true for those who are looking for you in Facebook Search. For instance, if people know you by your logo, you probably don’t want to feature a glamor shot as your main photo. Your profile picture is featured at the top of your Facebook page and is displayed next to all your updates.
Choose wisely.
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2. Optimize photo descriptions by adding links.
One of your goals for Facebook may be to drive traffic to your website. If it isn’t already, you should probably look into it. In this case, you may want to consider including links to your website or content in the descriptions of your photos.
It doesn’t matter where you’re pushing traffic to. You could drive traffic to blog posts or an about us page. It doesn’t matter. Links are a great opportunity to get interested fans to look for your business outside of social media.
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Bonus Tip:
Try utilizing tracking links in your photo descriptions. This will help you know drive traffic from your visual content and tell you which photos drive the most traffic.
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3. Adding a call-to-action button to your cover photo.
Late last year, Facebook launched a new feature for business pages. This feature allows you to add one of seven pre-determined call-to-action (CTA) buttons to your cover photo.
The buttons you can choose from are:
- Sign Up
- Shop Now
- Contact Us
- Book Now
- Use App
- Watch Video
- Play Game
While some of those options are probably not the best for your business, you have a number of options available that are particularly useful. For instance, “sign up”, “shop now”, and “contact us” can be a great opportunity to direct interested fans directly to profitable interactions.
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Fill out your About section.
The About section is one of the most important parts of your Facebook Business Page. A preview lives on the left-hand side of your page (beneath your profile picture).
It’s one of the first things people see when they visit your page.
When people search you out or find you through friends, they will probably want to know a little bit about you before you can earn a Like. Optimizing your About section with brief but descriptive copy will help them quickly get an idea of who you are.
Blog: Social Media 101: 10 Ways to Build Better Facebook Ads
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Try an ad.
Like we alluded to earlier, it’s not possible to reach 100% of your audience with every organic post. For most business pages, it’s hard to reach 5 to 10% of your audience with a post. Facebook is killing organic reach.
To really take advantage of your community — and get them to take an action from your Facebook presence — you need to use an ad.
The days of free and massive community engagement on Facebook are over.
There are a number of different ad formats that can help you accomplish a wide variety of goals. For instance, if you’re wanting to push content to fans, you can achieve that goal by using a “boosted post” ad type and simple targeting.
Blog: The Quick Guide to Content Distribution on Facebook
You’re not limited to only reaching your Facebook fans either. In fact, Facebook has a number of powerful targeting options that can help you reach contractors across the network. In particular, you can reach specific people by utilizing tagged audiences, email addresses, and phone numbers.
Facebook’s ads are powerful and versatile.
Building a Facebook page can be trying, especially when you don’t have big resources to throw into building your community. However, there are real benefits for business owners who are willing to mobilize Facebook to grow their business.
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