Written by ContentPowered.com
There are hundreds of incredibly talented marketing pros out there, and most of them are more than happy to share their advice and expertise. While you might be well advised to contract one for a consulting session, you can also get a lot of direction from the advice they publish freely online. Here’s some advice from the pros specifically on the topic of Facebook engagement. You know you need it; we don’t need to tell you why.
1. Neal Schaffer
Neal Schaffer, president of Maximize Your Social, suggests using BuzzSumo to perform some research before you even write new posts. Learn what’s trending, what’s working and what isn’t, and tailor your posts to what’s happening in the past 24 hours. You’ll always be on the cutting edge!
2. Syed Balkhi
Founder of List25, Syed Balkhi recommends mixing up the type of content you publish each week. Turn blog posts into videos or podcasts and promote them with links back to your Facebook page. Convert posts into infographics, use images instead of text posts and generally augment your content with other forms of content. As an added bonus, you can use that content on other sites, like Pinterest and Instagram, for even more referral traffic.
3. Joe Pulizzi
Founder of the Content Marketing Institute, Joe has some great advice about setting a content plan. Determine what your persona will be, what your goal is, what type of content you use primarily, what your tone is and what your editorial calendar will be, among other things. It’s a lot of prep work, but like a good meal, the prep work makes the final result that much better.
4. John Lee Dumas
Dumas, founder of EntrepreneurOnFire, is one of a legion of marketers recommending a constant content schedule. Keeping a content calendar is one thing, but the phenomenal tool he recommends is Edgar. Not only does Edgar allow you to keep track of a content calendar, but it also allows you to see what you share and what you need to share more or less of, going forward. You might not even realize how often you’ve shared one particular image, but your users certainly do; stop flooding them with repeat content and disperse your old value accordingly.
5. Ted Rubin
CMO of Brand Innovators, Rubin turns typical strategies on their heads. Normally, you write a blog post and then create Facebook posts to use to share it. Rubin suggests looking at your most popular Facebook posts and converting them into larger, more detailed blog posts. This only works when your Facebook posts aren’t already blog links, but when it works, you have a ready source of engagement.
6. Holly Homer
Co-founder of Kids Activities Blog, Holly suggests making your Facebook page into a stand-alone resource, useful for all of your followers. Don’t just share your own content; post content that stands alone and doesn’t refer people away to other sites. Produce value, unique value that only your Facebook users can see.
7. Lynette Young
Marketing manager for AWeber, Young recognizes that too many people spend too much time every day on frivolous tasks. She recommends a time tracking app like RescueTime to show you what you’re doing all day, and whether you’re putting more work into certain tasks than you need to be.
8. Rich Brooks
President of Flyte New Media, Rich is big on two things; scheduling content, and curating content. Curated content can be a great way to bring value to your audience, but it’s easy to flood out your own content by sharing curated content when you find it. Instead, schedule your curated content to appear alongside your own content, in a content scheduler app.
9. Mari Smith
Author of The New Relationship Marketing, Smith has the brilliant idea of hosting special events centered around specific social profiles. Making a Facebook Friday event, as her example, draws people in to one specific date and time. When you hype up the event, you give them additional reasons interact with your fans and be part of something bigger. Once you have a large enough audience, you can go the other direction and make the event more exclusive, even monetizing it if you’re confident enough.
10. Rick Mulready
Creator of the Inside Social Media podcast, Rick eschews the common advice of spreading your presence around through multiple social networks. Instead, he recommends that most small businesses focus on the one or two platforms where most of their customers are found. Facebook is typically the given answer, but some businesses might perform far better on Pinterest than they ever would on Twitter, just to use an example.
11. Jon Loomer
Ultimate Facebook ads guru Jon Loomer of course recommends using the Facebook Power Editor to optimize your ads and posts for specific actions, rather than the normal actions of a click or like. There are nine different actions Facebook can tracks and optimize for, and you should carefully pick the right one for each post.
12. Stephanie Frasco
VP of Social Media Marketing for Convert with Content, Frasco recommends you ask your readers to click the “get notifications” button on your Facebook page. When they do, they’re essentially subscribing to a Facebook RSS for your page; when you post a new update, it shows up in their notifications with a special icon. This helps make your updates stand out from the pack.
13. Darren Rowse
Founder of ProBlogger, Rowse has discovered that collage images – rather than single pictures – perform very well on Facebook. Whenever possible, consider joining four or more pictures into one for the purposes of a Facebook preview. You can even share multiple pictures in a single post on Twitter, for a similar effect.
14. Simply Measured
Okay, so no one person is responsible for this one; don’t use hashtags on Facebook. Several studies have been performed to show that your EdgeRank rating and your post reach drops when you use hashtags on Facebook. If you’re crossposting from Twitter, strip out the tags first.
15. Andrea Vahl
Co-Author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies, Andrea reminds you that you really should be split-testing your Facebook ads. If you’re not, you’re missing out on a wealth of possible optimization opportunities.