Facebook Marketing: What is working on Facebook right now?

Wondering what is really working for marketing on Facebook right now?

I’ve reached out to 6 experts that are making Facebook work for themselves and their clients. These leaders are always looking for ways to give their clients an advantage over their competitors. I asked them “What is working on Facebook right now?”

I got some interesting answers that are sure to give you an edge over your competition!

Ravi Shukle – RaviShukle.com
About Ravi
@ravishukle

It’s important to realize that Facebook forever evolving and in order to obtain success on the network your business must be willing to adapt. Here are some proven techniques I’ve used myself and for my clients to get results on Facebook:

• Spending as little as $10 promoting your blog posts to your target audience (Using Power Editor)
• Creating Facebook offers to help drive awareness of a recent launch or promotional offer in your business
• Creating stories – When launching competitions be sure to ask open ended questions on why they would like to win your product or who would they gift the product to. This had helped one of my clients receive hundreds of comments as fans opened up with more personal entries
• Video content – Experiment with teaser trailers as well as personal face to face videos when uploading these directly to Facebook the reach and engagement had dramatically increased.

 

Scott Ayres – PostPlanner.com
About Scott
@scottayres

What “works well” on Facebook changes often in the minds of many people — especially those chasing the algorithm.

While I admit I focus on the algorithm more than I should I also don’t let it fully control what I post on my pages. I simply let it be a guide.

There are a few key principles that every page should adhere to and have been “working” for years and will continue to work — even if Facebook changes the algorithm another 15 times the next year!

• Post Consistently — Brands that have planned out their posts and don’t let their page go dead are always clear winners. The worst thing you can do is forgot to post anything for days/weeks/months at a time. Doing so will kill your page.
• Post Often — Along with being consistent I believe that the pages that do best post more than just once per day. In fact I think only posting once per day will kill your page long term. On our Post Planner page we post at minimum 8 times per day, and on most days over 10 times. Some might say this is too much but I’ll let our Reach statistics speak for themselves:

• Photos are Hot — Social media is very image driven and will become even more so as the majority of users are now surfing on their phones. This means images that are viral and pop will always get more engagement than just a text update from a page. We post at least 3-4 photos per day to our page.
• Drive Traffic with Links — Mix in properly optimized and formatted link posts in between your viral photo posts in order to drive traffic. Do NOT use photos to drive traffic and do NOT expect to get lots of engagement on link posts. Link posts are purely for traffic, I don’t care if a single person clicks Like on it, what I care about is traffic to my website.
• Videos with a Personal Touch — I’ll admit at Post Planner we don’t ever post videos, but we probably should. With the new “auto-play” feature on the Newsfeed people are consuming and interacting with videos at a rapid pace. Keep your videos short, and make them personal. Show a “behind the scenes” view of your workplace or activities. It’s a great way for people to connect and a great way to show off your product.

Sure there is lots more that goes into a successful page, but I believe if you apply these 5 things you’re off to a great start and WAY ahead of your competition!

 

Keri Jaehnig – IdeaGirlMedia.com
About Keri
@ideagirlmedia

From the Facebook user’s perspective, people are still loving the humorous videos, inspirational graphic quotes, and really exciting personal news. That doesn’t change.

As a marketer, it is definitely getting tougher to get Facebook Page posts seen in the news feed, so engagement is more and more a challenge without ads or promoting content. When not paying to play, as they say, I find the Facebook Page needs a digital buddy….or companion. Said another way, tools you may have forgotten…

• Entrepreneurs can share from their Facebook Page to their profile.  Wait at least 30 minutes, but optimally at least a half-day. Be sure the phrasings on your post are not overly promotional, and your reach will be improved.
• Instagram is a fast Facebook friend! Syndicating delicious photos from Instagram to a Facebook Page is more effective than simply posting a photo to a Page. Be sure to tag your page on the photo and add the location for amplified effect and FEO (Facebook SEO).
• The real Facebook Companion these days are Facebook Groups. Cultivating communities around the brand brings more super-fans. But you can also share messages from Pages to Groups to get more attention to posts and ideas. Plus, people are more apt to keep up with groups they enjoy, and those posts do appear in the news feed. It takes consistent effort in driving that funnel, but it works.

 

Jessika Phillips – NowMarketingGroup.com
About Jessika
@JessikaPhillips

My favorite things on Facebook working right now are are mixture or organic drivers and Facebook Ads.

The organic reach drivers that work is truly focusing on what your fans are wanting from you and sharing the information relevant for them. You should be the #1 source of information so share using the 10-4-1 rule.

>> Read more on the 10-4-1 Social Media Sharing Guide 

The other things that are still working is using social media as it should be meaning having conversations with other brands and people online. Share their content, tag them in your posts, share success stories and their victories. Positive and helpful info. Using the 4-E post rules work. Share engaging content by asking questions, Expert tips from other people in the industry, Educational posts from your own blog and Entertaining visual posts.

Sweepstakes and giveback style contests are working as well. The contests that require too much from the fans (time and effort) are not.

Facebook Ads must be added into big strategies as well. I think some of the free lunch ride is over so now Facebook fan engagement takes a balance of well thought out relationship strategy, consistency, creativity and also a budge for FB ads.

 

April Heavens- Woodcock – TouchingClients.com
About April
@touchingclients

With the ever changing landscape of Facebook newsfeed I am always trying new things with my clients to maximize their organic reach. I am finding “real time” video in the newsfeed is getting the most response and also posting in the off hours.

For example, one of our clients is a Yacht Charter that travels the world and we have had posts timed to go out out late in the evening and even as early as 4 am Eastern time and have had great response on those posts and conversion to calls for travel inquiries.

It’s about watching your insights, testing, and adjusting!

 

Alex Houg – Blitzmetrics.com
About Alex
@alexhoug

We see people drastically under-reporting traffic and revenue from Facebook. Cookies don’t work on mobile and 2/3rds of Facebooks traffic is mobile. This means Google Analytics can’t track what’s happening in Facebook nor what’s coming from Facebook.

In our tests with an NBA team, e-commerce company, and insurance company, we found up to a 10X difference between what Facebook reports and what Google reports.

What to do about it:

• Look at the cross-device reporting built into your Facebook ads reporting to see how many people are seeing your messages on iPhones, but are converting on desktop. You may see the number as high as 80%.
• Look at the attribution windows in your Facebook ads reporting. Kind of tricky to get there, but look at the difference between view-through conversions (where they saw the ad, didn’t click on it, but converted later) and click-based conversions. Google gives credit to the last click before conversion, so the stronger your content marketing program, ironically, the less credit you’ll see Google give it.

You may just find that you’ve been hitting a home run all along in social, while the credit goes to your other channels.

For example:

• A strong social presence means people are more likely to search your name on Google. How do you assign credit for these brand searches?
• If you’re a retailer, people are more likely to check-in on other networks, not just Facebook. So how do you account for this? The Golden State Warriors drove 155 million check-in impressions on Facebook, which then drove more ticket sales, largely because their other social activity.
• How much lift is your email channel getting from new subscribers that come from Facebook? Are you properly track these folks through to conversion so you can accurately assign a value?

BONUS! Here’s my take and addition to what is working on Facebook…

Mike Gingerich – www.DigitalHill.com/blog
About Mike
@mike_gingerich

Facebook is always making changes! It’s a fact of life, and I roll with it!

Video is Power!

One of the changes they have made in the past few months is the importance of native video. By this I mean videos loaded directly to Facebook for your Page. I’ve done a number of tests for my own videos. I load the same video to YouTube and to Facebook and share them at the same time of day, and the results are not even close!! The Facebook video reach and engagement is MASSIVE compared to the YouTube link share.

In fact, I’ve found that little videos I post to Facebook are performing from 50-400% better than text, photo, and link posts for many of the Pages I manage!

TIP:  Make a 1 minute video with your HD Smartphone, load it to your Facebook Page and use the optional “Call to Action” link” Facebook offers. They let you add a URL so that when the video ends your call to action, like “Learn More”, is a button tied to the URL you set.

This way I can promote a new blog post on my site using video and get more reach and engagement that ultimately can drive more visitors to the web page I want.

It’s a great free tool and right now it is working incredibly well!

Example:

Conclusions:

• Facebook is always changing. The best marketers are flexible, rolling with the changes and always trying new things.
• Facebook videos are golden! They give a page a much better reach.
• Facebook ads must be added into your pages marketing mix.
• Facebook groups are the new organic. Posts from pages to groups have a better reach.

Thoughts or questions? Feel free to share below!