15 Best Practises On Facebook

Top 15 Best Practices on
Facebook
How to optimize Facebook for Business
In this guide we provide you with industries best practices adopted by
the most successful brands on Facebook along with some illustrative
examples to show you how you can use them for your own business.

Top 15 Best Practises on Facebook : How-To eBook - Simplify360

For more information about Simplify360 please visit:
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Introduction
About this report

Social media marketing has been a buzz word for quite some time now. Amongst all the
available networking sites, Facebook has been the most popular with over 1 billion active
users from around the world who comment, like and share their experiences and
information about products and services that they liked and those they dont like.

Its an evolving field and even though businesses today have recognized it as a great
opportunity to interact with their customers, they have not been able to dive into
actionand benefit out of it completely. There are no set rules on how to successfully
establish and implement a plan yet. However, there are many organizations that have
tried and been successful; there are also those organizations that have burnt their fingers
during this process.

Businesses today are still exploring it as an opportunity. But they have realized that
social networking sites are the easiest, most cost efficient and powerful tools for
identifying, connecting and engaging with their target customers from across the world.

Facebook allows you to engage with people from across the globe using innovative apps
and content that generates word-of-mouth and a viral effect allowing you to reach and
engage more people and drive more business.

So, if your business is not yet social, then you have a reason to worry!

Lets check your Business Facebook Quotient!

! Do you have a Facebook Page for your business?
! Do you have your customers talking on this page?
! Do you have a large number of likes?
! Do you listen to the feedback given by your customers?

If the answer to most of the questions is a NO then your Facebook Quotient is very poor
and you need to worry. But if you have at least a few YES as your answer then it means
that by this time, you have either tried setting up a page or seen your competitors use it.
But you are still wondering how you can maximize Facebooks potential to build brand
loyalty and take customer relationship to the next level.

In this guide, we will provide you with industry best practices that have been used by the
most successful brands on Facebook along with some illustrative examples to show you
how you can adapt them for your own business.


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About Simplify360

Simplify360 is a social intelligence firm, which owns an enterprise grade platform; our
latest offerings are Social Marketing Suite for agencies, Social Contact Center for
BPOs and Social Command Center for Enterprises.

It enables businesses to perform Online Reputation Management, Customer Service,
Community Management, Social Media Research & Brand Auditing; Online Sales Lead
Generation, and Consumer Sentiment Analysis.

To know more about simplify360 visit www.simplify360.com

Author of this Ebook
Niketa Chauhan, IIMT
Marketing Intern, Simplify360


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Why Facebook?

So lets start by answering this question: Why Facebook?

With so many free platforms to choose from today, Facebook represents a huge potential
market for your social media efforts. Here are some facts on Facebook that can help you
better align your marketing strategy with social media strategy. Also, ensuring you why
you should not miss out on using Facebook for your business.

Quicksprouts explains the difference between Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest, the three
most widely used networking sites in the world. They have illustrated the social media
landscape through a comparative study of some key statistics of Facebook with twitter
and Pinterest. Lets look at some of the key takeaways that can also be used for your
business.

Pinterest Twitter Facebook
No. of users 10.4 million 500 million 1 billion
Unique
visitors
12 million
per month
39 million
per month
167 million
per month
User
Activity
(per day)
340 million
tweets
500+ likes

11.3% of Pinterest shoppers got to 4 pages per visit
2.9% of Twitter shoppers got to 3 pages per visit
85.8% of Facebook shoppers go to 7 pages per visit

Pinterest: 0.9% made purchases
Facebook: 2.6% made purchases
Twitter: 1.1 % made purchases

Breakup
by Gender
Pinterest Twitter Facebook
Male 21% 40% 42%
Female 79% 60% 58%
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Here are some quick facts on Facebook and what they imply for your business:
1. There are more than a billion monthly active users globally.(Facebook Insights, stats
as on December 31, 2012)
Takeaway:This only goes to show that Facebook is too big to be ignored in your
marketing plan.

2. There are on an average 618 million daily active users on Facebook.(Facebook
Insights, stats as on December 31, 2012)
Takeaway:DAU (daily active users) is an important metric to measure user
engagement and the number of readers who return to Facebook each day. Hence
DAU can be defined asFacebook pageviews per day (not unique). It means, if
your Facebook strategy is well worked out then your page can attract over 600
million eye balls each day.

3. About 82% of Facebooks MAU(monthly active users) are outside the U.S. and
Canada. Over 223 million people are from Europe.(Source: Facebook Insights and
Search Engine Journal)
Takeaway: Facebook is no more just an American phenomenon; it offers a
worldwide market.

4. Facebook mobile products were used by 680 million monthly active
users.(Source: Facebook Insights, stats as on December 31, 2012)Also, 45% of businesses
have made mobile marketing, an integrated part of their marketing strategy. (Source:
Zephoria, an internet marketing consulting firm)
Takeaway: Track the changing market trends and adapt your marketing strategy
accordingly to gain maximum ROI.

5. Every second, five new profiles are created on Facebook. (Source: ALLFacebook
2012)
Takeaway:Your potential customer database is growing exponentially.

6. It is known that the best days to engage your audiences on Facebook are
Thursdays and Fridays and the best time is between 1-3 PM (Source: Bit.ly blog)
Takeaway:Drive traffic during peak usage hours and optimize your content by
posting most important updates, offers and other posts during this time.

7. 300 million photos are uploaded daily (Source: Gizmodo)
Takeaway:A lot of information out there is competing for readers attention, target
and strategize wisely.

8. Average time spent per Facebook visit is 20 minutes. (Source: Infodocket)
Takeaway:You have a short time to get your readers interested in what you have
to say.Get it right in the first attempt!


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9. In 1 minute, 510 comments are posted, 293,000 statuses are updated, and
136,000 photos are uploaded. (Source: The Social Skinny)
Takeaway:Again, there is a lot of information out there already, competing for
readers attention. The key differentiating factor between those brands who have
been successful in capturing reader attention has been quality and content
strategy.

10. 50% of 18-24 year olds visit Facebook when they wake up. (Source: The Social
Skinny)
Takeaway: What this means for you: Facebook is important to these users, and if
done correctly, so is the content you post on it.

11. 38% of readers have recommended a brand they like or follow on social media.
(Source: Zephoria.com)
Takeaway: With Facebooks features such as news feeds and status updates,
when a user likes your page (or becomes your fan) the word spreads to his
network (if he/she has chosen to keep it public). Increase your brand awareness
exponentially or see your content go viral through key influencers (users with large
number of followers and friends) on Facebook.

12. 77% of users interact with brands on Facebook through posts and
updates.(Source: B2B Social Media Guide)
Takeaway: For top-of-mind recall, update your page regularly. Engage your
audience through creative content and listen to customer feedback.

13. Less than 60% of the Fortune 500 are on Facebook. (Source: B2B Social Media Guide)
Takeaway: Many organizations are still not aware of the right ways of using social
media for their business and benefitting from it. It is still an untapped market and a
right opportunity for your business to get started on it.

14. 73% of todays consumers can be reached through Facebook. (Source: B2B Social
Media Guide)
Takeaway:Facebook is too big to be ignored in your marketing plan.

15. 2.5 million Websites have integrated with Facebook.(Source: B2B Social Media Guide)
Takeaway: Today more and more businesses are realizing that Social media
strategy must be used in tandem with your traditional marketing plan. Integrate
your social media plan to optimizes results and increase your ROI.


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Getting Started!
Setting your social media marketing goal

As more and more organizations are entering into this space to explore and benefit, it
has become very important for organizations to understand what they want to achieve
out of their social media marketing plan and how they can achieve it.

Goal setting in social media marketing is as important as it is for any other activity. An
organization must clearly define their goals. It is required that these goals are addressed
as the organizations goals in social media. Goals help clearly define the methodology for
adopting the best social media strategy.

An organization can set one of the four types of goals as mentioned below. Lets look at
them individually and see howFacebook can be put to use in achieving them:

Brand Awareness

Here the organizations aim is to reach out to a large target audience and increase
their brand awareness. Such a goal for Facebook means attracting more fans to
the brand page.

To achieve this, organizations adopt various content sharing strategies. Driving
more fans to view, comment, like and post on the page through the content shared
and providing value to the customers (special offers, contests, games and free
giveaways). Some of the best examples of brands that have successfully
increased their fan base by more than three times are discussed in detail later in
this report.

However, one most important factors for the success of these brands on
Facebook has been their ability to successfully integrate their social media
strategy with their overall marketing plan.


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Customer Service/Retention Marketing

When your organization already has a large customer base offline, what you need
to do is to engage with them and focus on retaining your customers.

Starbucks is one of the best examples on how customer retention can be used
effectively online and how it can affect your bottom line. Starbucks saw customers
leaving their brand and their sales dropping due to the companys perception
amongst the customers. To overcome this issue they created a campaign called
mystarbucksidea.com, a marketing plan where they listen and respond to their
customer concerns. Goal: Customer Retention.

Through this they were able to build a strong community. They asked their
customers for their ideas and what they wanted on the Starbucks menu. The best
submissions were then implemented. This activity connected the customers with
the brand instantaneously; it created a sense of belonging to the brand.

In an extension to the campaign hosted on their website, they also integrated their
Facebook page to promote and expand their campaign. Facebook is one of the
best platforms that is used to build a community and interact with customers
through various interactive applications. Engage your audience and track your
performance through Facebook analytics to attain further insights and refine your
strategy.

Relationship Target Marketing (Electronic PR and Creative Contacting)

This is perhaps the most difficult goal to build a strategy around. Here organizations must
spend their time, resources and energy to reach out to target customers. They must have
compelling messages that talk about their products and services. They must listen and
build a mutually beneficial relationship over time.

Facebook helps in supporting activities of this strategy. It acts as a publishing platform
where you release your brand stories and content relating to your product and services or
your employees (information that is used for PR activities), in an effort to establish your
organization as a thought leader and increase brand awareness among customers.

Transactional Marketing

This goal defines a strategy where all your efforts are directed towards generating leads
and converting your marketing efforts into direct sales.

It is observed that many organizations today have started to learn how to generate leads
through social media activity. Facebook is the platform through which the highest number
of customer purchases are made. Though there are no hard and fast rules on Facebook,
however, there are a set of best practices that are followed by the most successful brands
to achieve their goals. Read our special report on Selling without spending to learn how
to generate leads through various social media platforms.


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Understand the Current Scenario
Learn from others

Search for some complementary businesses (including competitors)on Facebook and
find out if you can learn something from them. Search for some brands that you admire
or some of the brands that your customers have told you that they admire.

Make some key notes on what is working for them and also what is not working for them.
Gather information on how often they post, when they post, what they post generally text,
photos, videos, links, polls, questions etc? What is working for them? That is, what kind
of posts receive the most likes, comments and replies? Note how many people post on
the wall. How many comments on a post? How many new likes are received each week?

You may also want to make a note if they have special tabs, Apps, custom tabs etc. See
if you can do better on things that are not working for them.

On Facebook, to know your competitors status go to About Us section and select likes.
This page will give the total number of likes on the page, number of people who are
talking about the page and a few page insights worth knowing.

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Industry Best Practices

By now you would have noticed that allsuccessful brands on Facebook follow a few
unsaid rules. While there is no single proven road to success on social media there
are general best practices that are followed. You can start with these best practices but
going ahead, it would be upto you to sustain your marketing plan.

It is very common that brands do not preach or sell to their fans but they engage them.
Customers know when a salesperson is trying to push a product and that turns them off.
They also know when a salesperson is genuinely trying to solve their problem in the best
manner possible. Facebook Marketing is no different.
Notice how Oreo engages their audience with questions; fill in the blanks and opinions.

Zappos isa great example of how posts can be fun and yet linked backed to their website
each time.


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Best Practises
Top 15 Best Practices for Your Business on Facebook

Keep it Short
Keep your post length between 100-200 characters. Users do not spend more than
12 minutes a day on Facebook. The trick here is to engage your reader with very few
words.
Disney uses its characters to share its philosophy each time.

Keep it Precise
Some apps are useful and productive, however too many apps can distract attention
from the brand. Try and keep the number of apps to the minimum.

Disney promotes all its brands (movies
and famous characters) through different
pages.

They have integrated all their pages into
one custom tab called Disney Pages.
This ensures users can move from one
Disney page to another easily without
actually having to search for them.

Another Smart Marketing Tactic!


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Keep it Consistent
Post regularly, every day. If you do not continuously update your page, you are not giving
your fans a reason to come back often. This would generate few social stories and attract
few fans.

Keep it Focused
Your page should focus on your business.
Add Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds and other dynamic content, but you need to
keep it relevant to the business and your fans. Else, they will lose their interest in your
brand.


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Keep it fresh
300 million photos are uploaded daily on Facebook. Posts with images have received
maximum number of likes and comments.
Share your product or your story through images.

Keep your fans in mind
Keep your customers in mind while designing your page or posting on your wall. If any
element on the page is irrelevant to the customer then it should not be on the page.

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Keep it Innovative
Share something new about your product, delight your fans. After all its your product.
Just because you are passionate about it;dont expect others to like it!
Starbucks posts are mostly relating to its new recipes, asking their customers for their
opinion on it.


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Be Creative
Engage your audience with amusing facts and trivia to keep them hooked to your page.
As a marketer, your job is to keep them addicted to your content that will keep them
coming back to this page. Drive the audience pull through interesting and engaging
posts.

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Keep a call for action
Not only will it engage your target audience through liking, commenting and linking to the
posts but this also will help you improve your search engine rankings.

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Keep it Exclusive
Share exclusive information which may not be available on other platforms such as back
stage footage, exclusive events in office with team mates and other colleagues.
You could also run exclusive campaigns for Facebook; this will keep them coming back
to this page.


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Position your company as an expert.
Your Facebook Page is a billboard of your business to the world. It gives you an
opportunity to showcase your brand and you people as experts in this space.
Emphasise your core values. Show that your products are of superior quality and worth
the price. It is the best platform to present to a potential customer the value proposition of
your product


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Do not forget your Brand Message
Your page must reflect your brand personality. Your posts must maintain and
communicate your company voice in a fun and a professional manner.

Get the timing Right
Saturdays, Sundays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the most active days on Facebook,
for sharing information. Most B2B and B2C marketing occurs during the week and it is
important to note that weekend posts might be more effective!


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Bring your partners to speak for you
Testimonials have always been a strong marketing tool used across the world for
branding; why not let your partners testify about your brand on Facebook?
Recognize your suppliers, clients, partners and loyal members and let them speak about
you. This helps in positioning your brand and builds trust amongst customers.
McDonalds features their suppliers in a unique way that portrays them as their brand
ambassadors.


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Showcase your achievements
Fans love it too when you win an award, or when your brand is recognized as the best
brand.


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Give it that personal touch.

Congratulate your creative
team on their
achievement.

Welcome a new team member or
share something interesting about
them.
HUL updates an entry of every
new member even interns on its
page Unilever Dairies, India. This
adds to the exclusivity of content
by updating on the latest internal
changes.


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Pitfalls: Some of the worst practices on Facebook

There are 83 million fake profiles on Facebook. This shows that if you do not work out
your plan thoughtfully and strategically your efforts could be a waste.

Many of the brands today are on Facebook for testing or researching purposes which are
included in these 83 million profiles. There are many brands that are struggling to capture
value and optimize on Facebooks potential. So where are they going wrong?

Here are some of the reasons why brands have failed on Facebook:

1. Brands create a Facebook page and then do not use it. Multiple pages or a page
with no content/conversation turns off the fans of the page. Most of the readers
will not try to find the brand the next time, if they do not see any activity on the
page.

2. They will not invite anyone to like your page. Facebook allows you to invite your
existing contacts from your mail box to your new Facebook page to kick start your
fan community building activity. If you do not invite your friends your page will not
be listed at the top of the search results.

3. Facebook pages which are not promoted and are not linked back to their website
or any other place. Fill in details about your company and include your company
website to allow readers to go to your website, ensuring its an official brand page.
There are over 83 million fake profiles and readers are looking for genuine content
and connecting with the real brands on Facebook.

4. Using Facebook solely to sell products and post ads. Facebook is a networking
site and it is best used to engage with your audience. Do not try to hard-sell your
products on Facebook.

5. Using poor quality graphics or no images in posts and updates. When your posts
are not clear and the message is not communicated clearly, it turns off your
audience. They would stop coming back to your page and hence your number of
fans decreases with time.

6. Not creating a header image or a cover image. Facebook provides this creative
feature of uploading a large cover image to showcase your brand. Many
organizations upload an image with a direct sales pitch which turns off the
audience. Use this space wisely, showcasing your brand/product in such a way
that highlights your most important products, while at the same time customers
can relate to it more easily. Do not use a sales pitch as your cover image.

7. Business details such as address, hours of operation, mission, etc. are not
mentioned on the about us section in the page. Facebook provides an opportunity
of linking your website and other platforms with Facebook, use it to increase your
traffic and divert your readers who are looking for more information.


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Summary

Facebook is the most popular social networking site today with more than 1 billion active
users. It is too big to be ignored in your marketing plan. Use the best practices on
Facebook to promote your business and find out if you can improve on what did not work
for others. Remember there are no set rules; nothing can be done better unless you want
to. So get out there have some fun yourself and get exploring!

References
Facebook Insights
SearchEngineJournal
Zephoria.com
AllFacebook2012
Bit.ly blog
Gizmodo
Infodocket
The Social Skinny
B2b Social Media Guide
Image Source: Official Facebook Brand Pages


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Simplify360 has one of the most comprehensive Facebook Analytics module which
allows social media marketers to monitor, analyse and optimize your Facebook Page.

Contact us for DEMO
Phone (US): 347-468-7251
Phone (India): +91 80 40971130
Phone (Malaysia): 03-8992 3000
Phone (Nederlands): +31(0)20 8200373
Phone (South Korea): +82-10-5245-8962

Email: contact@simplify360.com
Web: www.simplify360.com

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