Veronica Stenberg: blog

There is a pretty big possibility that your brand is already talked about on twitter or “checked in to” through Facebook. Take control of your company presence and use the medium to your advantage.

Below you will find 9 key things to consider, when creating your Facebook strategy for your brand:

1. Purpose

• Why are you doing this and what is the objective and aim?

2. How you will achieve your goal

• Possibly by creating a Facebook page for your brand, that you update on a regular basis. Look at your marketing plan and website content-schedule and incorporate your Facebook page updates into this.
• Have a think about resources in terms of any designer or developer if you want to do something more advanced.
• Set the budget it may require.

3. Content

• There is not much to play with when it comes to the layout and design of your Facebook page, therefore I suggest you take extra care when adding profile image and images to any galleries on Facebook. This together with the copy you use on any information pages and updates, is all you got to create a feeling of your company/brand on Facebook.
• You also have the option to add applications to your Facebook page. If you have a youtube channel with product videos, then add one of those. Integrate the page with twitter if you have an account, will save you time. There is a plethora of applications for everything under the sun, so have a look at anything which helps you with adding content on one platform without having to replicate it manually on your Facebook page for example.
• I suggest you add a welcome tab to your Facebook page, offering something in return for a customer or potential customer “liking” your page. Future build-ons may contain campaign tabs.
• Is there any content you can incorporate from your website on to your Facebook page? how can you create a stream between the two? (this can be done with iFrames and other solutions, hence why you should ponder upon what resources you need).

4. Define who you want to talk to

• Build a a profile based on your target audience. Should you need to create an ad to build up “likes” to your Facebook page then this will be handy to have when creating the actual ad for targeting purposes.

5. Tell customers you are on Facebook

• Can you drive visitors to become “fans”/like your Facebook page through your website, newsletter, twitter?
• There are possibly other companies which you already work with that complement your services or products which you can collaborate with?
• Create an ad to push likes to your Facebook page is another possibility to increase the “likes” from relevant people.

6. Your resources

• How much of your time or your employees times should go to maintain the Facebook page?
• Make sure everyone that you add as an administrator to your Facebook page has the right email addresses connected to Facebook so they can stay on top of any questions or feedback from customers and other relevant notifications get attention and appropriate action.
• Create a set of guidelines for the communication on Facebook to ensure quality answers, updates and so forth.

7. Why should someone like your brand and engage with it on Facebook?

• What can you offer a visitor in exchange to like your page? a discount? figure out something which is a trigger, a befit is if it’s one that you can also track and measure success from. For example a discount code.
• Other options are to create competitions around liking your page or commenting on it’s wall (that way you will get your page out there too, through the visibility comments has in friend feeds, depending on user settings).

8. Then what? aka Whats in it for me?

• What can you offer your Facebook fans that they will not get anywhere else in the communication from you online? what exclusive material or discounts can you entertain your likers/fans with?
• What can you do to keep your fans engaged and happy?

9. Evaluation and development!

• After one/three/six months using the strategy you created, evaluate what the actual results are. Make changes on any findings and develop you presence and activities.
• For example how can you take your Facebook presence a step further, can you perhaps convert your Facebook fans to newsletter subscribers? or better yet, can you work out how to convert your Facebook fans into leads or paying customers.
• Make sure to notice what worked and what didn’t.