Facebook is a great channel to grow your audience. But getting people to ‘like’ what you do requires more than just sharing what you do; you need to know your audience and post content that engages them to react – to like, share and comment.
Social media is an ideal place to build your audience. As tools, social media enables a brand to reach people it could never have reached using traditional media. Social media for most people is a way to stay in touch, follow and engage with topics and people that interest them. It is rare that someone who has just been introduced to your brand will suddenly choose to buy from you – usually there has been a process of engagement, trust building, recommendations, and then a timely offer that meets their needs or wants.
To build your audience, your social media content needs to engage to the point where people want to share it with their friends or in other groups. This then enables more people to learn about your business, and become part of your audience.
Sharable content has the following key elements:
- It is consistent with one brand promise, and that promise solves a problem, or meets a need of your target market.
- It’s relevant, interesting, timely and about your target market, not just about you. Even a special offer from your business needs to meet the needs of your target market. Mix up your content with different formats, such as images, quotes, infographics, blogs, videos, case studies and other news.
- It’s easy to understand. The popularity of image sites such as Pinterest and Instagram, as well as analytics within Facebook, have proven time again that an engaging image with a short description, or a short video, will often engage more than posts that contain only words.
- It doesn’t consume too much time for the value it adds. Remember your audience may be time poor, so think about how much time is required to get value from your content. Content that adds a lot of value can consume more time. For many audiences, a two minute video or 300 word blog is more likely to be shared than a 30 minute video or 1,500 word blog.
- It moved them in some way – either made them laugh, cry or think in a way that they want to share that emotion.
Most social media channels have free analytics functions that enable you to see which content is providing the best engagement for your audience. To get segmented analytics (usually based on demographics), you may have to upgrade your analytics to a paid version.