By Eric Taylor, freelance writer and business developer for Qwaya.
Unless you’re making a consistent effort to reach out via Facebook, your brand page is eventually going to become stagnant. Facebook brand pages need a lot of upkeep, a heaping helping of originality. And while this might sound very difficult to achieve, it’s actually quite elementary if you’re willing to follow a few principles to grow your brand organically. Allowing Facebook itself to do much of the work, you can grow your brand exponentially.
1: Stay as Current as Possible
Current means not only regularly updating your fan page with fresh content,. but also keeping up with current events. Inject current news into your brand page to be relevant. Give people a reason to visit your page so that your brand grows. Talk about and discuss topics outside of, but related to, the products and services you offer.
2: Be creative with your cover image
More often than not, a large, brand-focused cover image is going to be seen as an advertisement – like a big banner ad. Why? Because, more often than not, that’s what they’re used for. So focus on a cover image that won’t steal attention from the rest of your Facebook page. The key is to have an image that exemplifies your brand personality, not just the logo.
3: Share information about your company
Business advertising on Facebook doesn’t have to be so cold and dry. You can be quite friendly and informative in your brand promotion. Offer up a lot of information about your company, both on a personal and a professional level. Let people see inside of the brand, beyond the logo and beyond the business side.
4: Interact with your fans
The name of the game is social networking, but it may surprise you just how many people refuse to be social with their pages. You should be looking to engage fans at every opportunity. Every post you leave should ask for engagement in some fashion, and you should always take the time to interact with people when they want to engage.
5: URLs matter!
Just as they matter to SEO with websites, URLs also matter to your branding efforts on Facebook. Take your vanity URL for example. If left alone, your page is going to read facebook.com/i581k0184l48 or something similar. Setting a vanity URL allows you to change it to facebook.com/YourBrand. URLs also matter to people about to click-through on a link. Never shorten the URLs. Leave them full so that people realize where they’re going.
It isn’t going to take moving mountains to get your brand out there. It only takes some upkeep and a willingness to be as social as the format allows. Brand-building is based on developing trust between the company and the customer. This is especially true when communicating with fans on Facebook, as the platform offers a straight and direct line between both parties. Engage your target group, ask questions, gather ideas and don’t just treat your Facebook fan page as a one-way communication platform.
About Eric Taylor:
Eric Taylor works as a freelance writer and business developer for Qwaya, a Facebook ad manager tool.
