11 Secrets to Successful Facebooking

Are you making the best use of your facebook fan page? Used correctly, social media can shorten your sales cycle by as much as 40 percent, says Katie Wagner of Katie Wagner Social Media. Video is your best marketing vehicle, Wagner adds. “Videos are shared 12 times more often than photos and text posts combined.”

Bootcamp participants and Katie Wagner, center, wearing red

During a recent intensive Bootcamp session focused on facebook, Wagner detailed some secrets to successful facebooking.

1. Your timeline photo: Post a shot that creates an emotional link between you and your audience.
2. Come up with one sentence about your business – and include the URL to your website, because there’s nowhere else to post it. Go to www.facebook.com/username to create a short, user-friendly URL.
3. Arrange the “app” buttons under your photo in the order that works best for you. Hover over the right-hand corner and grab to switch them.
4. If you have a photo, you can add events and milestones you want to celebrate.
5. You can highlight a post by pinning it to the top of your page for seven days. Just click on the pencil at the right hand side of the post. After seven days, it will go back where it belongs.
6. Post live every day. Facebook downgrades posts scheduled through dashboards such as Hootsuite.
7. Spend 15 minutes on facebook three times a day. Five minutes for posting, five minutes for responding to anyone who has responded to your posts, and five minutes for interacting with companies that share your target market. Make sure you include photos with your posts. You’ll get more hits.
8. Ask your readers questions they can answer quickly and easily: i.e., “Here are two photos. Which one do you like?” “Tell your story in three words” or “Give me one word to describe your weekend.”
9. Can you tie your content into current events? “Here are five things about social media I learned from the presidential debates.” What questions do prospects always ask? Answer them on facebook.
10. Once you have 30 fans, you can look up metrics about your site through the administrative panel at the top of the page. Find out if your target audience is reading your posts, and which posts garnered the most readership.
11. Find other pages that share your target market. “Like” them and network with them. You want their fans to be your fans. If you tag a business you like, your post will appear on its page, too. Ideally, when you comment, choose posts that already have lots of comments. That way, all of those posters get your message, too.