Social media does have some SEO benefits, and the role social media plays in enhancing SEO may grow in the future.  We’ll see what Google decides to do with that.  But, there’s no doubt that right now, social media can be used to add more long-term customers for your business.  Today, we’ll talk about Facebook, and how you can create an effective marketing campaign that grows user engagement and more long-term sales.  Here’s what you do:

• Know who your audience is.  If you don’t already know basically everything you need to know about your ideal customer, then now’s the time to find out!  Certain customers will appreciate certain kinds of posts more than others, so it’s important to know exactly who you are talking to.  How do you reach your current customers?  Use that medium to ask them to fill out a brief survey with some basic demographic information, and incentivize filling out the survey with a gift card towards another purchase at your company.
• Develop an editorial calendar.  At the beginning of any Facebook campaign, you’re just guessing at what types of content your users will like.  Be sure to develop an editorial calendar so you know what to post and when.  Research has shown people like approximately 1-4 posts per week, and they are most likely to read the posts on Sunday and Wednesday at 7:00 p.m.  Any more than 4 posts per week, and people tend to think you’re spamming their feeds, which causes them to leave.
• Messaging.  The temptation many businesses succumb to early on is to make all their posts about what’s happening at their place of business, and all the deals, specials, and products available.  This is a huge mistake.  People do want to know about your business, but making every post about your business is overkill and scares them away.  The golden rule of Facebook posting is to make sure 80% of your posts provide value, while 20% of your posts promote your business.  ”Value” can be useful information that solves people’s questions and concerns, questions that encourage to people interact, or contests.
• Content development.  You can post questions and text-based offers, but your page will be incredibly bland and disinteresting.  Online users want diverse forms of content.  Post pictures, blog articles, videos, infographics, motivating quotes, and just about any other form of online content you can imagine.  Some forms of content will be more appealing than others, and Facebook’s Insights will help you understand how people prefer to engage with your page.
• Revise, revise, revise.  Once you’ve put out a few posts for about a month or so, make sure to revise your messaging based on what Insights tells you.  Further, people’s whims can shift at any moment.  You might suddenly find after six months of running your campaign that people suddenly don’t interact in the same way they used to.  Who ever said social media was easy?  It’s not!

Follow These Steps and You’ll Find More Sales

The point with this is that by creating an engaging fan page for your business, you’ll drive more long-term sales.  The key is making sure people have a reason to go to your fan page.  Offer specials/contests exclusively to people who use Facebook.  Make sure the page is relaxed, fun, and personable.  Your customers and your bottom line will thank you for it!