Did you know that Facebook currently has over 1.79 billion monthly active users?
And with the global population of just over 7.4 Billion people, it clearly shows that 24% of the people in the world currently have an account with Facebook and they log into Facebook at least once a month!
Now, if that’s not a good enough reason for any business to capitalise with its own ‘Facebook Business Page’, then I can’t think of any other.
There was a time, say until a few years ago, when Facebook was used strictly as a social networking platform. A place where you hung out with friends and relatives, shared personal pics and stories and wished the best to each other on birthdays and anniversaries.
It’s not that we don’t use it for those reasons anymore, in fact we're even more active than before, especially when it comes to social media…
Given the advent of Inbound Marketing and the staggering volume of people logging into Facebook - the opportunities generated for businesses around the world, in the pursuit to harness this massive traffic - has gone through the roof!
Having said that, you cannot just open up a new Facebook account, put up some pictures, create some posts and expect to generate ‘Likes’, Leads and Customers. A Business Facebook page has to be armed with ‘content’ that exhibits the potential to stand out, get liked, and engage the visitors.
Let’s explore a few fundamentals that are needed to create an engaging Facebook Page:
1. Using a Magnetic ‘Cover Photo’
The Cover Photo is the most visible part of any Facebook page. You can’t miss it,as it's positioned at the top of the page and takes almost quarter of the space of any desktop browsers.
The dimensions of the cover photo space is 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels high for desktop and 640 pixels wide and 340 pixels high for mobile. This will ensure your photo is fitted just right and not stretched or squeezed to look out of place.
The above picture is the ‘Cover Photo’ of Element 7 Digital which immediately stands out to engage the visitors with its design elements.
A good practice is to strike the right balance with the text and image in the frame. It's recommended to adopt a ‘right-aligned’ focus with the ‘cover photo’ (i.e. placing the image on the right), to bring out a more aesthetically pleasing photo.
A note of caution for Designers – please make sure you keep mobile users in mind while designing the cover photo. It needs to be optimized for smaller screens because you don’t want your important messages or crucial design elements to get cut off while viewing on mobile phones.
2. A ‘Recognisable’ Profile Picture.
Profile pictures are the ones found on the top of your Facebook Page, next to the Cover Page. It's also the most frequently used image, as it's used as the ‘thumbnail image’ to be displayed with your brand name in all updates and comments. It's crucial the profile picture - be it your company logo or a picture – be designed to be attractive and catchy to the visitors’ eyes, because it represents your brand alongside your every updates or posts in the timeline.
Facebook has designated the Profile picture dimensions to be 180 pixels wide by 180 pixels high, though the image will display as 160 pixels high by 160 pixels high on Desktops.
The above image clearly shows an instantly recognisable Profile picture (marked by double sided red arrows) of HubSpot from its Facebook Business page.
3. Adding Call-To-Action (CTA) Buttons to Cover Photos.
CTA buttons are crucial in driving any inbound traffic to our websites and to help nurture new leads. Facebook gives us the feature to add CTA buttons to the Cover Photo.
We can choose from one of the following 7 button options;
"Sign Up"
"Shop Now"
"Contact Us"
"Book Now"
"Use App"
"Watch Video"
"Play Game"
These buttons can be customised to be directed to any Landing Pages we’d like the visitors to be on.
The above example clearly shows the ‘Shop Now’ CTA button within the Cover Photo. If we go ahead and click that button, it will immediately take us to Zappos Ecommerce site as displayed below:
4. Engaging with ‘Balanced’ Content.
It's essential we post our updates, comments, CTAs and campaigns regularly to primarily ‘Engage’ with the visitors of our Facebook page.
However, we should be wary of posting too much ‘lead-generating’ and promotional content – which could act as a deterrent to the visitors. A healthy dose of content (pictures, videos, gifs, links, comments, CTAs, etc.), meant purely for engagement and to help with visitors’ queries, will go a long way in displaying the authenticity of your brand, thus generating more interactions and building your Facebook fan base.
Such ‘engaged’ and ‘nurtured’ fans are more inclined to look into and take up your lead-generating offers, like webinars, eBooks, trial offers, etc.
Always be mindful that quality overcomes quantity. Posting more frequently does not guarantee engagement and visibility. The algorithms are always bent on filtering out poor quality posts, they make sure high-quality posts get through and are shown to the users.
5. Integrating your ‘BLOG’ content.
One of the most effective ways to engage visitors is to populate your Facebook Page Timeline with the content and links of your blogposts.
As seen in the image above, Element 7 Digital’s Facebook Timeline post is a link to its latest blogpost ‘5 Secrets To Creating Headlines That Convert!!!”. Such fresh, quality blogpost content immediately resonates with visitors, as it always seeks to be interesting, helpful and entertaining.
Blogpost links like the above have been instrumental in driving social traffic to the websites, which can be further nurtured into the sales funnel through lead magnets.
Finally…
In recent times, the Facebook page has drastically grown to perform as an important marketing tool for businesses around the globe, with it owning over a whopping 77% share of all social logins. To increase one’s exposure in the marketplace, attract and gather more leads, and to engage and interact with your customers – it's vital to build a Facebook presence for every business and brand, in the world of Digital Marketing!
If you'd like more assistance with social media or want to discuss anything covered today, we'd love to hear from you.
Call Andy Fox (me) on (03) 5249 5570 or email andy@element7digital.com.au
Our Website is element7digital.com.au
