One of the biggest keys to success on Facebook, as well as any social media site, is Consistency. Posting consistently, responding to Fans on a consistent basis, monitoring results consistently…a Page that is updated regularly makes a much better impression than one that resembles a ghost town.
With Facebook’s launch of the new Place Tips feature, local businesses may soon find that consistency is even more important when standing out from the competition.
Facebook’s Place Tips will automatically show updates of businesses or places that are near you if you’ve turned on your location settings (this is an opt-in feature). These posts will appear in your mobile News Feed (only for iOS at this time), so users can explore Pages and Places on-the-spot.
As Mark Traphagen points out (on a post by Glenn Gabe that he shared),
“This could prove to be the most disruptive change for local online marketing in a long time.”
Here is more insight from Mark on building a community of happy customers: “…if your business has an active fan base who are posting about your business, their content could get automatically surfaced to their friends when those friends are nearby your business.”
You can read his entire Google Plus post, as well as the article by Kurt Wagner referenced below:
So what does this mean for your Page?
Pages that update their sites with consistent, useful information have the potential to:
- show up in users’ News Feeds (for free) and
- build a bigger community if the content posted and shared is helpful to their target audience and their friends
While consistency is very important to Facebook success, you may find it to be one of your biggest hurdles as a small business owner if your schedule is already super busy.
If you are struggling with posting consistently to your Facebook Page, here are three quick tips:
Tip 1: Remember your goals
What is the purpose of your Facebook Page? – Put it in writing and review it regularly.
Who are you posting content for? – Define your target audience and your ideal customer.
Where does your Facebook marketing fit into your overall marketing strategy? – Make sure your Facebook goals align with the rest of your marketing goals.
Tip 2: Be realistic about available resources
Don’t take on too much or set too lofty of a goal (like posting 10 times a day if you are the only one who handles it). Consider:
- The time it takes – creating content, posting content, monitoring the Page, responding to questions or comments, networking on Facebook, etc…it all adds up quickly, so make sure you stay organized.
- Your budget – Money spent on staff or outsourcing the management of your Page, and/or on paid tools to find content, post and schedule, monitor and analyze results.
- The learning curve and continuing education – For you/your staff for Facebook features and updates, as well as training on free or paid tools you use to manage your Page.
Tip 3: Think like your Fans
- How does the content on your Page help your Fans?
- Why would your Fans want to come back to your Page or share/like your posts?
- Do you know what types of content your Fans like the most?
Spend time asking your community, researching bigger brands and competitors to understand more of what appeals most to your current Fans and target audience.
This new Place Tips feature should prove to be interesting, and no matter what type of business you have…make sure you are posting consistently to your Page.
We’ll make updates to this post (or start a series of posts) as we learn more about Facebook’s Place Tips, so save this article and visit our Facebook Page to stay in the loop!
You can read Facebook’s official announcement on Place Tips here.
Top image courtesy of (and derived from) Pixabay
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