How to Use Facebook to Grow Your Brand

Every single social media platform, including Facebook, has its own unique benefits and requirements. In order to get the most out of each one, you need to learn the special tricks that make it work. Facebook is definitely unique and requires some important adaptations to your strategy. Check out these 5 tips for how to use Facebook below to get started.

#1 Schedule Your Posts

You can use social media automation tools to schedule your Facebook posts. While you don’t need to post on Facebook nearly as often as you do on Twitter, it’s still a good idea to schedule posts. That’s because there are specific times of day when your post is more likely to get seen.

By scheduling your posts, you can make sure your account is posting at the optimal time without you having to drop what you’re doing at the moment to race over to post something to Facebook. It also means you can take your time to think about the posts you want to create for the week. Brainstorm, rewrite, reformulate. Get all of them done in one session and then just let you social media tools handle it from there.

#2 Remember that Facebook is not Twitter

On Twitter, you’ve got a strict limit on characters. This has created a culture of sending out short thoughts and ideas more frequently. Facebook, on the other hand, doesn’t have that limit. So the culture on this website is uniquely its own. You need to remember to adapt your overall social media strategy to the specific platforms.

Facebook is a place for longer thoughts. That doesn’t mean write out an essay. If you’re going that long, you’re writing a blog, not a Facebook post. But each post on Facebook should at least be a couple of sentences.

It should also be a little more purposeful. Ask questions. Invite discussions on a topic. Promote a special offer or giveaway. On Facebook, you can more directly invite and create engagement. We’ll talk about that more in the next section.

Not only can followers easily talk to your brand but they can more easily talk with each other, creating discussions with multiple participants on comment chains. Take advantage of this possibility for deeper connection and more sustained engagement by providing posts with more substance.

#3 Include Direct Calls for Engagements

Above, we talked about how to use Facebook as a place for fostering deeper connections with your audience. Here, we’re talking about what you can do to help foster and encourage that engagement. Wherever possible, you want to try and directly call your audience up to participate.

For example, end your post with a question or invitation like “What do you guys think?” or “Tell us your thoughts!” This shows your audience that you are not just there to shout your message at them and leave. You really do want to hear what they have to say.

You can also do this by sending out email blasts that provide a concrete suggestion for engagement. For example, you could send out an email asking people to post a picture of them using your product to your page.

Get creative with how you ask your audience to engage. But above all, make sure the calls for engagement are concrete and clear.

#4 Understand & Cater to a Facebook Audience

This actually applies to every social media account you have. Not all social media platforms are used by all members of your market segment. For example, Facebook tends to cater to an older demographic than Snapchat.

You can learn how to use Facebook insights to gain more information about who is following you on this platform. Compare the demographics of your Facebook followers to your other social media accounts. Identify their differences and their similarities. Then, formulate different versions of your same message to appeal uniquely to each separate audience.

#5 Use Facebook Advertising

Facebook ads are really cheap and allow you to target highly specific audiences. Facebook uses its massive amounts of data to pinpoint exactly which of its users will respond best to your message. So this will actually bring you stronger leads than other social media platforms.

To get the most out of your Facebook ads, make sure you invest some time into crafting the perfectly optimized advertisements you need to really grab your target audience. Remember that these highly targeted ads so you should focus more on crafting a message that specifically appeals to that targeted audience rather than one that is more generalized.

Facebook ads are not television ads. You don’t need to appeal to a broader audience. You need to appeal to your audience. And you need to make them feel like you are speaking personally to them. Check out these tips specifically for using the ads as effectively as possible.

A Final Word on How to Use Facebook

Facebook is similar to LinkedIn in that it thrives on somewhat longer, richer content. Unlike LinkedIn, however, you want to use more emotional and personalized language. Use Facebook to develop personalized relationships with a highly targeted audience.

Once you know how to use Facebook to build and maintain relationships, you will have optimized that channel for your overall strategy!