New Facebook Content Strategy Basics
Facebook recently announced new constraints to Business Pages. Posts that sound too 'promotional' will no longer be organically featured in the News Feed. This appears to be another step towards zero organic reach for business users. Post strategies change as Facebook rules change. Create a Facebook content strategy, make a calendar, and avoid these 3 kinds of Facebook posts:
- Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app
- Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context
- Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads
There is a real need for Facebook-specific original content. We wrote about content marketing last month and how it can be used to build your business. Facebook marketing is different. Here is what you need to know to create a sensational Facebook content strategy.
Fan Specific Content
In Facebook insights, you can find fan demographics -- segmented by gender, country, city and language. Posting about local events and news is a great way to interact if you are building a local customer base. Next, find your Post insights. Look at previous posts that had the greatest reach or the greatest engagement. Analyze what made these posts successful. The tone, the type of image, and even time of day can effect the success of a Facebook post.
Determine what general categories you want to post about. For example, a restaurant may want to post 80% food photos and 20% about local food events. Make your posts more conversational and less promotional with tricks like: Fill in the blank, Quote of the day, Trending topics and Infographics.
Source your content
Now that you have an idea of what topics to post about, you need to find quality content. Some of the easiest ways to uncover content is through RSS feeds. Use a content reader like Feedly or Flipboard to add sources. A feature of Flipboard is the ability to subscribe to topics. The top stories are served to you without having to scroll through endless search results! Set aside some time during the week to read these news aggregate apps and share relevant stories with your audience.
Schedule your content
Now that you have topics and sources, you need to create a Facebook content schedule. Decide how often you want to post and stick with it. People are habitual. If you start every Monday with a quote for #MotivationalMonday, make sure you continue to do so. Your core fans will begin to expect this post.
Try posting at 'off times' like evenings and weekends. Weekend posts get the most engagement according to a study by TrackMaven. They also noted that posts between 5pm & 1am get 11% more interaction than daytime posts. You don't have to be awake, schedule your posts down to the minute! Monitor the results to see if this trick works for your business.
Consistency and quality are keys to create a successful Facebook content strategy. There are many more ideas for content calendars out there, use this foundation to boost your Business Page on Facebook.