Three quick tips to improve your Facebook page

Facebook is one of the most commonly used online marketing tools for business - and rightfully so!

It's also one of the most frustrating.

There are all kinds of things you can do to optimize your Facebook page so that it works for you. Today I'm going to share three really simple tips that will help make your Facebook presence better.

1) About page

How complete is your About page? Make sure that you have filled in as much as you can because Facebook is Google searchable. The more relevant your make your content and the more keywords you use, the better.

The other bonus is that you look professional. The more well rounded, descriptive and easy to find your content is, the more credible and professional you look.

2) Call-to-action

Have you seen the "Call to Action" button that Facebook has made available for pages? It's a great and SUPER simple way to give people the opportunity to engage with you.

To set it up go to your page and click on "Create Call to Action."

Then walk through the simple steps of choosing what you want your button to say and where you want it to go.

And that's it - you're done. I've set mine up as a sign up to my newsletter, but you can send it to any kind of page: a squeeze page, sales page, have them sign up for an appointment or watch a video.

There's also a handy report of how well the call-to-action is performing in your page side bar. Don't expect these numbers to be huge - there's very little information and most people aren't actually coming to your page when they see your content. But considering it takes 2 minutes to set up, there's no good reason not to do it even if it only converts occasionally.

3) Put a call-to-action in your cover image description

Putting a a call-to-action in your cover image description is another call-to-action improvement because that's ultimately what we're trying to achieve with using Facebook for our businesses - to get people to DO something.

When you upload a photo as your cover image on Facebook, don't just leave the description blank. This is an opportunity to ask people to do something. This will be effective if people click on the image to see more, if they see it come through their news feed (especially when you initially change your cover image) and if you put a call-to-action in the image (I don't have one, but it's a great thing to test out) that says, "click here to get a _____" and then leave the extra information in the photo description. Always remember to tell people what they're getting - demonstrate the value to them. 

There you have it. Three really fast and easy ways to improve your Facebook business page.

Have any other easy tips to share? Leave them in the comments!

How do you schedule content?

Don't get overwhelmed at the idea of posting content on social channels regularly, write it in bulk (or get someone else to do it) and then schedule it! (Here's some inspiration for finding good content to schedule too.)

How do I schedule my social content?

There are lots of different tools that can do this. I'm going to talk about scheduling straight to Facebook and two tools that will let you schedule to multiple other channels. 

Scheduling directly to Facebook

I can't help but be a bit of a pessimist when it comes to Facebook not penalizing third party apps when posting to your Facebook page. That means that I recommend that when you schedule content to Facebook, you do it right in Facebook.

The good news is that it's really simple. When you go to your Facebook page, write the post as you would if you were posting it right away. Instead of clicking post, click to the right of post and select Schedule. 

Editing or making changes is just as easy by going to the very top of your Facebook page and selecting Publishing Tools and then going in to your scheduled posts tab on the left.

Using Hootsuite for scheduling

Hootsuite is a tool that I use more for engaging and organizing my content (mostly Twitter in fact) but it has a lot of capabilities for scheduling. A free account lets you connect 3 accounts and a paid account will let you add more accounts and more users. 

Hootsuite connects to:

• Twitter
• Facebook (personal account, pages and groups)
• LinkedIn
• Google+
• Wordpress

Scheduling is easy and you can schedule the same content to multiple channels (as long as that makes sense - remember that most of the time you want to use different language and tone depending on the channel). Select the channel you want to schedule to from the dropdown on the left and select the calendar to open up the scheduling options.

There are two easy ways to find the content afterwards if you want to change anything. Either select the publisher icon on the left hand toolbar (it looks like a paper airplane)

or create a stream for scheduled content, which is my preferred way of doing it. 

Using Buffer to schedule content

The tool that I use the most for scheduling is Buffer. Like Hootsuite it has limited capability unless you have a paid account (which I have).

Buffer connects to:

• Twitter
• Facebook (personal, page or group)
• LinkedIn (personal or page)
• Google+
• Pinterest

You can schedule to multiple channels at once and easily access your scheduled content by selecting your channel on the left hand side and viewing the queue tab.

Buffer also has a plugin you can install to Chrome that makes it easy for you to schedule content as you're browsing the web. It even has an advanced schedule that lets you schedule the content to post more than once, which is handy for scheduling your own new content.

Which tool should you pick?

A lot of what you pick comes down to preference. Scheduling will take a lot of the daily pressure off of your online marketing work, so even though learning a new tool can feel like a big time commitment it will save you time in the long run - for real :) 

I find Buffer a bit easier to use because everything is bigger and there is more white space. Hootsuite has the ability to see more at once which can make it a more useful dashboard for some. I recommend you give both a try with the free version and see if you have a preference.

Leave me a comment and let me know what tool you have been using for scheduling and what you like about it. I know there are some I didn't mention too!

Create Facebook content by theming your days

We talk a lot about the value of having a plan when you’re creating content. Today I thought I’d talk a bit about how having themes for every day of the week for your Facebook page (or any of your social networks) can help you come up with content quickly.

What do you want people to know about?

First come up with some messages that you want to share with your audience: 

• Do you want people to know that using your product will save them time?
• Do you want people to know that you cook amazing meals that are healthy? 
• Do you want people to know that you’re an expert in renovating kitchens? 
• Do you want people to know that hiring a realtor is better than trying to sell their house on their own?

Create a list of broad categories of things you want people to know about you – just 2 or 3. This is going to help make sure that what you’re sharing is helping you achieve your goals.

Assign a certain kind of content to each day of the week.

For example:

Sundays you can share an article from someone else. There are all kinds of people writing incredible content that back up what you want people to know – that healthy food made from scratch is good for you, that exercising every day is important, that selling your home independently won’t always save you money. Spend a bit of time right now finding four articles that talk about something you believe in that would be of interest to your audience.

Mondays you can share a tip. Spend some time writing down four tips that would help your audience i.e., cooking tips, marketing tips, productivity tips, etc. 

Tuesdays you’re going to feature something from your website.  Go and browse around your website - what are some interesting things you want people to know about? Is there a page that tells me why I should buy something? Is there a testimonials page? Is there a free tool I could download? Find four interesting things and save the URLs for those pages and explain why people should be interested in having a look.

Wednesday ask a question from your community. Maybe it’s something about their favourite products or tools, or maybe it’s something about how they overcome certain challenges. Jot down four.

Thursday we’re going to play with Throwback Thursday (#TBT). Do you have old photos in the archives? Pull up four and quickly tell the story about a great event, about your first year in business, or about how much technology has changed since you opened.

Friday share an article from your website. You probably have all kinds of great content on your blog. Go find it and share it again – it’s still relevant. Pick four now.

Saturday we’ll go with something lighter because people like light on the weekend. Are there any jokes or comics you could share? I’m a fan of going to Pinterest and typing in key words to find stuff like that to share. Find four of these.

Do you see what I did there? If you find four of each of those things, you have a month of Facebook content already written and ready to schedule. It will take an hour or two most likely, but once completed you will have great content ready for the entire month!

Leave me a comment and tell me what your daily categories would be and if you think this would work well for you and your content creation! 

How to find quality content for social media scheduling

It’s okay to schedule your social media updates. We all lead busy lives and unless you are a larger business who can afford to hire someone full-time to engage and monitor your social networks 24/7, scheduling is the simplest way to provide your audience with consistent content. Luckily, scheduling tools such as Hootsuite and Buffer make scheduling content relatively painless.

They key is to find quality content that you can schedule to be shared throughout the day and across various social networks. The question then remains of how to find quality content that can be scheduled and shared.

Link back to your website 

Don’t be afraid to link back to previously published (but still relevant) blog posts. Preface the link in the update by telling people why they should read the post, what they may have missed if they hadn’t read it before (that's what the ICYMI you may often see on social media is all about it "in case you missed it") or why it’s a great resource for them. You could also pull a quote from the blog post and use that as the text of your scheduled update and also include the link to the post so people can read more.

You should also schedule and share the services you provide, any workshops you are hosting or any other product or event that you want your audience to know about. Just make sure to schedule it within a relevant timeframe and link back to where they can learn more and purchase or register.

Share third party articles

Sharing articles from like-minded blogs and websites is a great way to show your expertise to your audience. You can find these articles or blog posts by doing a quick Google search on your industry, or just look to see what other people are sharing on your social networks. If you link back to the author's site or source in your tweet or Facebook status the person or company responsible for the article will also be notified that you shared their content, which may in turn result in a new “like” or follower.  Just remember not to share any third party links until you have fully read and understood the content.

Create shareable images 

Research and compile quotes from industry experts or even from your own website and create shareable images using tools such as Canva or PicMonkey. You can easily schedule these images and can encourage audience engagement by accompanying the image with a question such as, “Do you agree?”

Scheduled or not it is important that your social media updates are relevant and inline with your business’ goals and objectives. Remember that if you don’t have time for engaging with your audience to not ask difficult or controversial questions or share content that might start a discussion you don’t have the time for. 

Do you schedule your content? How do you find your content?

What are Facebook Tags?

Have you ever seen a person or a business page in a Facebook post that is highlighted and links through to the person or page in question? That's called tagging and this post is all about how to do that, and why you might want to do it.

How do you tag a person or page?

To tag a person or page on Facebook you simply type an @ symbol and then start typing the name of the person or page you want to tag.  You can type the spaces between words and it will continue to search for the right person or page for you to tag.

Once you've selected what you want to tag it will become clickable.

It works exactly the same way to tag a person with a fairly big exception. A person can tag a person, but a page cannot. Why? Facebook wants to prevent the risk of pages spamming people, therefore a page can only tag another page.

Why should you tag?

Now that you know how to tag (it's pretty simple once you know how, right?) the question becomes why SHOULD you tag a page or person?

There are a couple of reasons:

1) To help your audience find something. If you're sharing information about a page or person because you think the people you're sharing that information with will want take action, tagging the page or person in question makes it a lot easier for people to figure out how to get where they're trying to go. 

2) To let someone know you're talking about them. If you tag a person or page they are going to be notified that you did so. This is great if you're sharing information they're going to appreciate you sharing and promotes reciprocity and the building of your relationship.

So there you have it, the basics of tagging on Facebook. Leave a comment and let me know if you found that useful and if you have any questions!