Whether you’re single, married, or somewhere in between, chances are you probably have a Facebook profile. Generally, in the dating scene, the first place to do a little background creeping investigating is on the potential suitors’ social profiles, right?
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your past relationships), you can’t leave reviews on personal profiles. Facebook only allows reviews to be left on business pages. But imagine if you could! You could easily check to see if the person you’re going out with picked up the ticket on their previous dates. Better yet, you could check to see how this new man or woman of your dreams has interacted with other partners in the past. No more relying on sheer instinct, which can easily lead us astray. You’d be able to get a much better idea of what you’re getting yourself into. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Luckily, as a business owner, this is the case, and many of the same rules of the social dating scene apply to customer engagement on a Facebook business profile.
When consumers first hear about your brand, what’s the first thing you think they’ll do? Just a little over a decade ago, they’d probably pick up the phone and call you to try to get a little more information about your business. As we know now, in the age of technology, consumers have everything they need to know about your business and much more right at their fingertips. A majority of consumers are likely to check out your online presence and how your business has treated its prior customers.
In fact, as of 2017, it’s been reported that 83% of shoppers do some form of online research before buying a product or booking a service. 61% of these shoppers will read online reviews to help them make that decision, and 89% of shoppers said that appealing imagery (whether product pictures, before and after pictures of a project, etc.) could sway their purchasing decision.
Needless to say, if consumers aren’t actively engaging with your Facebook business page (engaging = writing reviews; sharing, reacting to, and commenting on posts; viewing and liking images; etc.), new potential customers viewing your page will assume there is a probably a reason – either the product or service is of poor quality, or your company cannot be trusted as a reputable provider. This is often not really the case, but how else are consumers supposed to know?
To give you a leg up (and in keeping with the dating motif), we’re going to take you on a little “Facebook post speed dating session” to help you better drive consumers to engage with your social profile, and ultimately turn them into loyal customers.
First, let’s get started with the recommended rules of the game:
RULES OF FACEBOOK
- Recommended character count: 40
- Recommended video length: 2 minutes
- Shared image size: 1200px x 900px
- Shared link image size: 1200px x 628px
ROUND 1: GET TO KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
The first and most important rule in speed dating is getting to know the person sitting across from you, and what better way to do that than by asking them questions?
In this example, Grammarly encouraged consumers to engage with their post by asking them what their favorite short poem is. Also, note that they took full advantage of #PoetryMonth by incorporating it into their engagement post strategy (bonus points for incorporating relevant, trending hashtags!).
Not only did they see a surge in engagement – with 6.3k likes, 561 comments, and 835 shares – they now have a collection of user-generated content that they can utilize for future posts.
For example, this commenter’s favorite poem is “This Is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams, and 39 users agree!
Grammarly now has the ability to share this poem in the future and @mention (tag) Felicity as a way of recognizing their consumers and highlighting their specific interests. Plus, by utilizing this content down the road, it makes consumers feel like they’re actually being heard by your company.
Some other fun and engaging prompts to throw into your advertising strategy could include:
What’s on your summer bucket list?
What would the world look like with multiple clones of you?
What one word would your co-workers use to describe you?
Are you a cat person or a dog person?
What would your last meal be?
ROUND 2: SHOW YOUR PERSONALITY AND SENSE OF HUMOR
Don’t be afraid to show the real you! The reason the two of you were brought together was to see if there’s a spark, right?
Well, that “spark” can be difficult to find among the clutter of content splattered across Facebook. Your business can stand out by posting organic and entertaining content that promotes a consistent vision of your brand.
BuzzFeed is a great example of how a business effectively portrays their personality online. The frequently post funny, relatable links and images that get consumers giggling and make the brand seem more human. Remember: people want to do business with people.
Showing that your business is more than just a sales-oriented brand will drive consumers to like, share, and comment on your posts. And guess what? That’s added promotional value for you!
Additionally, incorporating humor into your social media strategy is generally always an effective tactic. The most important rule to follow is to keep it clean, consistent, and relatable. Try sharing memes, GIFs, and short videos to drive the greatest engagement.
ROUND 3: SHARE YOUR INTERESTS
If you don’t have anything in common except that you’re both on Facebook, the conversation isn’t going to go far.
Relating to your followers will promote authenticity and make the connection that you’re both looking for. Take a look at how Cosmopolitan, a massive fashion brand, shares their beliefs on a relatable, non-controversial topic:
Sharing outside content in promotion of your business’ community outreach, beliefs, etc., is a great way to relate to consumers. It also exhibits your business’ compassion towards whatever cause you’re talking about – in this case, the adoption of puppies!
Good job, Cosmo. We love puppies!
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Thinking about engagement and planning your organic social strategy is definitely a marathon, not a sprint. Just like in the dating world, it takes time to find that spark we were talking about and to turn an initial interaction into a long-term engagement (<– see what we did there?). Don’t be discouraged by a few failed dates or misconstrued posts!
And remember, here at iFocus, we get that creating and maintaining strong social engagement can be both tricky and time-consuming. That’s why we have an expert team of social whizzes to help you up your dating game content engagement strategy. Give us a shout if you’re ready to take your organic social game to the next level.
