Increase Local Business Social Media Engagement and Traffic

Facebook post engagement and organic traffic continue to be a challenge. Local companies looking for a social media marketing plan for Facebook and social media in general could benefit from a unique technique.

Part 1: Opportunities for Social Media Engagement and Organic Traffic

Due to recent changes in “privacy” concerns, social media and mobile phone services are tightening their data privacy.

“With the upcoming iOS changes and Google Privacy Sandbox, off-platform actions are going to be harder for Facebook to track. Because they’ll be more limited in the data they can collect, content on the Facebook platform will become even more important” (1)* Source: Social Media Examiner).

Take Facebook for example.  With their restrictions on collecting data on what users do outside of FB what users do inside FB matters even more.

That is now the primary source of data FB collects to be able to serve targeted ads to users.

Here is an overview of how Facebook is communicating recent changes;

“We’re Making Our Terms and Data Policy Clearer, Without New Rights to Use Your Data on Facebook.

 

Advertising: You have control over the ads you see, and we don’t share your information with advertisers. Our data policy explains more about how we decide which ads to show you.

 

Now every time you post content FB is tracking all user actions to collect more Ad data.”  Source: Facebook (2)*

 

Much of this was brought about by the feud with Apple over their iOS Privacy initiatives. Here is how Apple factors in with their iOS privacy update and how it affected Facebook

“Why the iOS 14 Update Matters to Marketers
There has been a lot of excitement among consumers about Apple’s upcoming iOS 14 update. For business owners and marketers, however, this update is causing apprehension because it impacts data tracking permissions and therefore the efficacy of Facebook ads.

 

Facebook has responded to the planned update with as much apprehension and frustration as marketers. Businesses use Facebook ads as a key piece of their marketing plans for audience targeting, lead generation, and more.”
Source: Facebook (3)*

The Opportunity Created For Your Facebook Posting

Facebook is now a bit more of your friend and is highly motivated to “share your organic” content (your posts) to capture who is viewing your post and taking any kind of action from your content.  This allows FB to drive targeted ads to those users later. It may also provide your local business and opportunity to get Facebook to pay more attention to your posts.

More Facebook and social media content, in general, will get you organic traffic. 

That said, you have to be prepared and take action to create engaging and valuable Facebook posts in order to take advantage of Facebook’s desire to find data within Facebook for their ad targeting. This is a key element of our strategies for social media marketing today.

Part 2 – Researching Your Target Audience for Interest Focus

You can use your Facebook Page and Audience Insights functionality to research your best audience for interests and activity that can guide your Facebook Posts content. Remember we want to engage our target audience by focusing on their interests and life style to create interest and engagement with your Posts. This research is a key element of a local business social media marketing plan.

Note: Currently you can use Facebook Audience Insights but starting July 1, 2021 you will need to move to Facebook Business Suite Insights.

The following example of Facebook Insight research using “Chiropractor” as our target market niche.

Taking the example of a Chiropractor  and adding Age, Gender and Interests – Fitness & Welness and sub-interests Physical exercise and Physical fitness.

Sorting through the results in Audience Insights data and categories I find the following information:

• Gender: Women 60% & Men 40%
• Top 3 Age Groups combine [25 – 54] 63% for women and  69% men
• Relationship Status: 54% Married and 27% Singel
• Education: 62% College
• Top 4 Job Titles: Health Care and Medical, Sales, Administrative, Management
• Page Likes Top 5 Categories: Womens Clothing, Gym/Phisical Fitness Center, Travel Agency, Furniture & Arts and Entertainment
• Page Likes (pick your top 5 relevant to your services): Planet Fitness, Ulta Beauty, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Old Navy , The Mint Julep Boutique
• Activity – Devices Used 68% Mobile, Ads Clicked (last 30 days) 31

How to Use Facebook Audience Insights to Guide Post Content and Promote Your Connection to the Audience

Selecting Content Topics

You can use the Facebook Audience Insights you pinpointed from your research to develop a list of general or specific subject topics. In our Chiropractor research above, we might see that our audience has an interest in clothing (e.g. Women’s Clothing, The Mint Julep Boutique).  As an example, you could consider creating Post content on gym, fitness or Yoga clothes and tie into your recommendations for fitness exercises and routines.

Leverage Related Facebook Pages

Your audience research will show a list of the most visited Facebook Pages by your selected audience. Consider checking out these pages.  If they are getting engagement themselves, (Likes, Comments & Shares) and their post topics relate to your general topics they can help you get Facebooks attention.

Go to the relevant pages and make constructive comments  and share selected content from their page (giving credit of course).  This helps in getting Facebook to notice your Page is similar to the most popular pages for your target audience. This step alone will help increase your Facebook reach.

Customer Journey and Facebook Editorial Posting

At this point you have the Facebook Audience Insights and can formulate topics related to BOTH the insights and your product or service promotions.

First, it is important to consider treating a “weekly social media posting” campaign as if it is a Sales Funnel.

Let me explain.

The standard Customer Journey Model Marketing Funnel looks like this.

This basic marketing funnel is built to follow the typical customer journey from initial awareness to final purchase.

How Can a Marketing Funnel and Audience Insights Help Create  a Facebook Editorial Posting Schedule?

We can use the  market funnel (above) built around the customer journey to create a Facebook editorial posting schedule to create more organic traffic in an organized way.

Assume that you have studied your Facebook Insights and selected a topic that your audience will be interested in and realties directly to your products or services.

It doesn’t matter whether your Facebook post is read by existing followers or new potential followers because on a smaller scale the weekly editorial calendar built to create more organic traffic is really about the journey a customer will take leading to your offer of services.

If for example, you have a new or special offer you want to attract leads to your business or promote to existing followers, you can follow the proven customer journey steps. Thinking through the customer journey and setting up marketing funnels is a basic part of social media marketing for small business.

1. Generate Awareness of the Problem that is solved by your ultimate promotion

2. Once aware the visitor to your Facebook newsfeed needs to feel you are speaking to them and create interest.

3. Now both Aware & Interested, you have earned the right to provide value by educating them on the need and potential solution.

4. Build “purchase intent”  by presenting support for your proven solutions.

5. Motivate buyers to pursues your promotion.

You use this marketing funnel approach to create Day 1 – 5 of your weekly Facebook editorial calendar.

How to Use Facebook Audience Insights to Guide Post Content and Promote Your Connection to the Audience

Selecting Content Topics

You can use the Facebook Audience Insights you pinpointed from your research to develop a list of general or specific subject topics. This is a key step in  your strategies for social media marketing. In our Chiropractor research above, we might see that our audience has an interest in clothing (e.g. Women’s Clothing, The Mint Julep Boutique).  You could consider creating Post content on gym, fitness or Yoga clothes and tie into your recommendations for fitness exercises and routines.

Leverage Related Facebook Pages

Your audience research will show a list of the most visited Facebook Pages by your selected audience. Consider checking out these pages.  If they are getting engagement themselves,(Likes, Comments & Shares) and their post topics relate to your general topics they can help yo get Facebooks attention.

Go to the relevant pages and make constructive Comments  and share selected content from their page (giving credit of course).  This helps in getting Facebook to notice your Page is similar to the most popular pages for your target audience.

 Steps You Can Take:

1. Put together a weekly editorial calendar of what days/times to post new content and post regularly.

1. Go to Audience Insights on FB and get an updated picture of the demographic data for your current audience. Find their interests, etc, and create content that targets those interests.

1. Remember your message is about your audience. Post content that makes your target audience, “look good, feel good” and learn something to improve their life. When the audience gets these elements they will more likely want to share the content.

1. Use photos, memes, and short videos to support your content.

Part 3: The Solution – Facebook Editorial Calendar and Post Stacking Method

Part 4 –  Solution Implementation to the Post Stacking Method Campaign

In order to implement the Facebook Editorial Calendar “post stacking method” you will need several tools to simplify your steps in creating the post content:

• Social Media Posting Software
• Visual Tools

Social Media Content Creation and Auto-posting Software

There are many strategies for social media marketing posting campaigns and techniques and the “stacking method” discussed in this article can help organize a plan. The draw back for many small and mid-size local companies is the time and effort needed to post regular quality content with images, videos and graphics.

Fortunately, there are a number of online software services that will help you plan, schedule and auto post your Facebook and other social media channels. For this article I will illustrate using Buffer an auto-posting service I have used and recommended to others.

If your local business is just getting started with serious social media marketing or are on a tight budget, you can start with a service like Buffer that offers  Free level that allows 1 user  to set up 3 social media channels and post 10 scheduled posts. You can move up to various paid levels.

Here is how a service like Buffer works. See You Tube Video: Schedule social media posts for free with Buffer

There are many quality Social Media auto-posting services online.  Here is a list of 5 of popular service for you to check out some Free or free-trial levels and a variety of paid service levels.

1. Buffer
2. Hootsuite
3. ContentCal
4. CoSchedule
5. Everypost

For a comprehensive look at social media posing tools and content creation and management Influencer Marketing Lab  put together research on 22 Best Social Media Posting and Scheduling Tools.

Another “Free” method to pre-scheduling and posting to Facebook (and Twitter) is to us Google Drive and Facebooks Publishing Tools.  This does take some coordination and set up but if you are into spread sheets and organizing them this method may work.  Read more at How to Bulk Schedule Posts 

If you only want to post to Facebook you can check out Facebook’s Business Suite Mobile App.

For my part, I want a scheduler that can help post social media content on all my Channels not just Facebook or Twitter.  Today a local business has a number of social media channels available and most potential customers will have multiple channels they frequent. Plus, several the post schedulers provide valuable analytics and tracking reports.

Creating Visual Properties for Social Media Posting

Creating Images to Support Your Posts

Working with local businesses to help them implement real online digital marketing suggestions are made for both Free & Paid resources.  Those businesses just getting started with this type of marketing may want to use “Free” resources to start and then move to more comprehensive “paid” software enablers as the techniques start to take hold and generate results. Taking your own images also eliminates the need for copyright attribution when using other image sources.

Using Your Own Images for Social Media Posting

To the extent you have or can create your own original images to support your social media and website posting is always recommended where possible. This is because there is a believability in images created using a camera or in most cases a smart phone. You are taking photos that are relevant to the type of social media post and the subject matter.

If you have access to graphic software like Canva (canva.com free version) you can create the recommended size Image and add Text or Captions. Canva also provides a large library of “royalty free” images you can use (it is still important to note the image source creator for attribution).

Free Image Resources for Social Media Post Graphics

The availability of Free image resources has gotten smaller in the last few years as the royalty free online image sources are being acquired by “paid” image providers like Getty Images and

1. Pexels: Free stock photos & videos
2. Unsplash: Free stock images by search or by categories.
3. Pixabay: Stock images, videos and music by search and type )photos, illustrations, vectors)
4. Canva: This is one of my favorited graphic creator resources. They also maintain a large royalty free image library. Social media channels like Facebook and most Website builders have various “image size standards”.  You can create an image graphic blank frame in the exact size image you require and upload free images to use in your graphic.

You can search in Google for “best Free image services” and get a number of services to consider.

Paid Image Sources for Posting Graphics

There are a number of sites that offer a wide range of quality images and videos for a paid monthly subscription or purchases credits.  Here are two I have used for high-quality images and choices.

• 123rf: Offers photos, Vector images, video footage and audio with several different price packages where you purchase credits and each image/video has different price points depending on size. https://www.123rf.com/
• iStock Photos: Offers paid photos, illustrations and videos. The basic pricing plan is based on the number of images you want each month (10,25, 50, 75) starting at $29 a month. https://www.istockphoto.com/
• Getty Images: If you are looking for top quality images for important social media or website projects you might try Getty Images. Prices are based on size and number of images that start around $150 per image.
• Deposit Photos

You can search in Google for “best paid image services” and get a number of services to consider.

Important Note on Image & Video Attribution

Most image resources, both paid and royalty free are copyrighted by the creator. When using an image from the free and paid services, you need to capture the attribution information for the owner of that image and list it as the “source’ or add the source info to the image to avoid copyright issues.

Creating Short Facebook Video for Posting

You can begin creating short Videos (15 secs to 3 minutes) for use in your Facebook & Instagram Posting. You will want to research those that have templates and easy editing to avoid the complications with “video editing software”  Also note that most free video creation software will usually include their watermark unless you move to a paid version. These are exasmples 0f free video creation sources to get you started.

• Animoto
• Canva
• Biteable
• Moovly

If you are contemplating frequent and extensive video creation for social media and website promotion, there are a number of “paid” video creation tools that provide templates and editing. My favorite is Vidnami (by Market Samurai).

For GIF creation you can check out Giphy.com

To create Memes you might try imgflip.com, kapwing.com or query a Google search “meme software”.

Conclusion

Local companies wanting to be active in social media and need an organized approach can benefit from using the post stacking technique as part of the strategies for social media marketing. A consistent effort can have a positive influence on Facebook engagements and Facebook reach.

• Use Facebook Audience Insights to learn more about the behavior and interests of your target audience.
• Find other Social media accounts that are getting traffic in your niche (not direct competitors) and post content on their Facebook Pages and promote their relevant posts. This connects your Page to the audience you market to and Facebook begins to see your Page as relevant.
• Find relevant content ideas surrounding your products or services that your target audience will find engaging.
• Plan out a Facebook stacking campaign for 5 Posts in a weekly campaign. Create your images, videos, memes, and post content for each day.
• Use a social media auto posting tool to post each day’s campaign.
• Analyze the results and use that insight to plan your next campaign.

SOURCE

(1) https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-improve-your-facebook-organic-reach/

(2) https://www.facebook.com/about/terms-updates

(3) https://www.facebook.com/about/terms-updates