What does a content strategist at Facebook say when asked about content strategy on Facebook?
3 things:
Know your Voice!
Know your Voice!
Know your Voice!
Knowing your company's voice is one of the most important things you can do for your Facebook content plan.
Let’s talk about why your voice is so essential, how to find it, and how to use it to perfect your Facebook content plan!
16 Facebook Content Strategies to Profit From Facebook
This guide will cover:
- 4 Steps to finding your voice for your Facebook content plan
- What content does best on Facebook?
- 16 strategies to perfect your Facebook content plan
4 Steps to finding your voice for your Facebook content plan
What does it mean to “know your voice” on Facebook?
Essentially, your voice defines how your audience perceives your content plan.
Is your content:
- Aesthetic?
- Moody?
- Funny?
- Thoughtful?
- Philosophical?
If your voice is unclear, it’s hard for customers to feel like they can relate to your business.
Since this is such an important step for businesses, let’s figure out how to find your voice on Facebook.
1. Identify your ‘always’ and ‘nevers’
Try filling in these blanks for your company:
Our company's voice is always __________ and never __________.
Listing 5-8 words for each blank can lead you to a firm understanding of the TYPE of content you should be posting.
When we talk about content strategies below, you should be taking those ideas and changing them to fit your company’s specific voice.
In other words, you can’t just post whatever comes to your head willy-nilly. It needs to be consistent with the things your company ALWAYS does and the things it NEVER does
For example:
- Always thoughtful, never rude
- Always entertaining, never demeaning
- Always helpful, never patronizing
Before you can deliver effective messaging on Facebook, you need to understand what's consistent about your brand.
2. Identify your top 3 attributes
Defining your brand attributes is key to cementing a powerful, genuine, original voice that resonates in your community.
This isn't rocket science. So keep it simple!
So, what are brand attributes?
Brand attributes determine the message that your company ALWAYS wants to express to its audience — no matter where they encounter you.
One clear example of this is PayPal, which has defined its brand attributes as:
- Simple
- Safe
- Secure
Your company’s voice & personality will emerge as you use your brand attributes and list of always & nevers to guide the creation of your content.
Can you think of the 3 main messages you want your customers to receive when they interact with your content?
If you can't think of anything, try to define the 3 most important things you'd like to communicate to customers.
3. Identify your target audience
Your content will do your company exactly zero good if you don’t know who your target audience is.
Consider 4 questions when trying to understand your audience:
- What do they want?
- What do they need?
- What are their questions?
- What are their concerns?
If you can answer these 4 questions, you should be able to identify the areas where you should target your content.
For example, if you have a company that produces planners, you might find that your audience wants a simpler way to manage their college coursework. Use that knowledge to write Facebook content that sympathizes with them and communicates your solution to their problems.
You need to identify & understand your target audience so you can choose the most crucial brand attributes to emphasize.
4. Change your tone to match your audience
What is the difference between voice & tone?
Simple: Your voice doesn't change. Your tone does.
The voice of your company is constant.
And every piece of content you create, whether a blog post, tweet, ebook, or Facebook status update, should reflect that voice.
Your tone, on the other hand, should change in different situations and for different audiences.
For example, let’s say your audience is mostly college students.
You probably don’t want to use highly formal language. Your audience will most likely relate better to an informal and personal content tone.
Elements of tone include:
- Your style of enunciation
- Your choice of words
- Length of sentences
Remember, your tone changes to suit the audience you're trying to reach.
What content does best on Facebook?
I wish I could tell you that there’s a hack to post the perfect piece of content every time, but there isn’t.
You need to mix and match content types until you find what’s best for your audience.
However, starting with these 3 types of content should get you off to a great start.
Remember: You should adapt all types of content to your company’s voice if you want it to be as successful as possible!
Visual content
Here’s a simple fact:
Plain text Facebook posts are BORING!
Here’s another simple fact:
Visual Facebook posts average 2.3 times MORE engagement than plain text posts.
What does that mean for your Facebook content plan?
It means you should be using visual content as much as possible! Visual content doesn’t just mean memes and random pictures. It can also mean:
- Infographics
- Images of quotes or motivational sayings
- Graphs, charts, or other educational images
Visual content works, so make sure you incorporate it often.
Interactive content
Compare these 2 Facebook post ideas:
“Our company’s logo is a dog because my dog Fido inspired me to start this business.”
Vs.
“Our company’s logo is a dog because my dog Fido inspired me to start this business. Share a picture of your pet in the comments and let us know why you love your furry friends!”
Which post do you think will get more engagement? The second one!
People like to interact with posts, but you have to give them a REASON to first. Try:
- Asking questions
- Starting a discussion
- Running a competition (more on that later)
Get creative while asking your audience for interaction!
Video posts
Video content performs better than any other content on the platform, boasting a 13.9% engagement rate.
In other words, you should post video content to your Facebook page if you haven’t already!
A word of caution: People will click away from low-quality videos extremely quickly. Make sure your videos have production value if you want to capture their attention and their engagement.
16 strategies to perfect your Facebook content plan
Once you’ve established your voice, how do you rise above all the internet noise so your customers hear what you say?
Make a Google search for almost anything, and you’ll see an almost unthinkable number of pages as results.
Don’t believe me? One of my recent Google searches for “dog ate moldy meat” (long story) returned 529,000 results! More common searches often return in the millions or tens of millions!
With so much online content & so many channels to distribute the content, creating entertaining, engaging, shareable stuff that stands out is becoming increasingly difficult.
In this section, we’ll look at 16 strategies to perfect your Facebook content plan and ensure your audience pays attention when your content crosses their feed.
1. Facebook contests
Hosting a Facebook contest is one of the best ways to get the attention of existing fans while recruiting new Likes for your page.
And there's no shortage of Facebook contest ideas.
Just make sure yours is built to stimulate as much fan response as possible.
Ask your fans to:
- Submit a picture
- Tag a friend
- Share a funny story
Remember that INTERACTIVE content gets engagement, so get your audience to interact with your contest!
Every business is different, and each must test different Facebook marketing techniques to see which works best for their business. Contests are a great place to start!
2. Determine the best post type for your audience
If you want to succeed on Facebook, you'll need to experiment to identify the best post types for your particular fan base.
How do you do that?
First, consider the type of audience you have. Are they young or old? Male or female? Students or workforce? What are their buying habits like?
Answering these questions will give you a great start, but you can get even more information by using Facebook Insights.
Insights will show you what engagement has been on your previous posts, giving you the data you need to post the right content in the future.
3. Use visual posts
Think about your own news feed & what attracts you.
Do you like plain text posts, or do really awesome images catch your eye?
If you’re like most people, you prefer images.
That’s why you should combine audience-specific language with visuals.
Then, you should make them look beautiful.
Don’t limit yourself to one type of visual content! You can use:
- Memes
- Photos that illustrate your point
- Infographics and other educational visuals
- User-generated images
4. Add photos
Speaking of visuals, photos are a great way to improve your text-based Facebook content.
For example, let’s say you want to ask your audience the question, “What does your normal Monday look like?”
Instead of posting that question as a plain text status update, try turning it into an engaging photo like this one:
Bring things to life! Try posting pictures of employees, recent things you've made, your work environment, and other images that might catch your audience’s eye!
5. Post the content your followers want to see
There’s a lot of good content out there, but most of it won’t work for YOUR audience.
If you’re running your hypothetical business that sells planners to college students, you probably don’t want to post articles about the rising cost of gas.
It just isn’t what your audience wants to see!
On the other hand, they’re probably very interested in:
- Motivational techniques for staying focused in school
- Time management strategies
- Organization techniques
- Infographics about how planners help students get higher grades
Use trial and error and careful consideration to figure out what your audience wants, then post it!
6. Post at the right times
Not all posting times are created equal. Every audience is different when it comes to the best posting time.
So how can you figure out what’s best for your audience?
Facebook used to tell you exactly when your audience was most active. Unfortunately, they don’t provide that data anymore.
The next best option is to look back at your previous posts.
What posting times got the most engagement?
Use those times as a starting point and continue to experiment until you find your best days and times.
7. Done is better than perfect
Not every post is going to go viral.
And guess what?
That’s OK.
Stick to your posting schedule and continue to crank out content. Learn from your mistakes by looking at each post’s engagement numbers.
Over time, your content will get better and your following will grow!
8. Be transparent
The temptation on Facebook is to present the image that you never make any mistakes. Your business should be perfect, right?
In reality, people want to see your faults as much as they want to see your positive qualities. It makes you seem human and makes your business relatable.
If somebody asks you a question & you don’t know the answer, just tell them! Say you don’t know the answer & are looking into it. Then follow up with them.
Is your office space a wreck? Post a picture of it and ask them to share theirs with you!
Let your audience see your real life.
9. Ask unique questions
I’ve seen too many pages ask, "How are you today?" and expect a big response.
That’s just not going to provoke anyone to answer. Ask questions that are useful to both the audience and you.
On this blog, we're always recommending questions and fill-in-the-blank posts because they work so well for fan engagement.
One of the best ways to get inspired with unique questions is Post Planner’s Post Ideas tab. Click on the questions filter and instantly get access to hundreds of great, unique questions!
10. Vary your content
Nobody wants to see the exact same content every day. It’s boring and it rarely gets a lot of good engagement.
Instead of doing the same-old-same-old, try mixing it up with different types of content, including different tones.
Have you posted a lot of serious articles lately?
Try posting a niche-related meme.
Did you post an advertisement for a new product yesterday
Post an image from one of your customers using your product today.
Mix it up to keep your audience engaged and interested!
11. Be yourself
One area where businesses go wrong on social media is by forgetting the SOCIAL part. They start to treat Facebook like it’s a means to an end (getting people to buy stuff from them) instead of treating it like there’s a person on the other side of the screen.
And that person wants to get to know YOU!
Build a relationship with them by being yourself. Post pictures of your dog. Share your morning routine. What’s your favorite exercise to wind down when you get home from work?
Remember the SOCIAL in social media and you’ll notice that you get better engagement and more customers.
12. Curate great content
Sharing content and articles related to your industry is a great way to get more engagement and vary your day-to-day content.
However, you MUST make sure the content is useful and relevant. Otherwise, it'll seem like a nuisance instead of a helpful post.
Post Planner’s Content Streams are one of the best places to find great curated content.
You can search for your niche and instantly find pre-made Content Streams for almost any subject.
13. Integrate owned content
Your Facebook content plan should be more than just curated content. You should mix in your own content on a regular basis.
For example:
- Share a link to your most recent blog post (with a picture attached to make it visual!)
- Write an encouraging status update and pair it with a great image.
- Share pictures that you took or that were taken by your customers.
- Sales and discount codes
Owned content can be difficult to produce on a regular basis.
But it’s worth it if you can post high-quality content and keep your audience engaged!
14. Engage with your followers
One of the best ways to keep up with your audience and help them feel like they have a relationship with you is to engage with them in the comments.
After you post something, you shouldn’t just forget about it!
For example, let’s go back to the question, “What does your normal Monday look like?”
Why would I answer your question if you aren’t going to engage with me about my answer?
If I tell you that I love Mondays because we wear pajamas to the office and you never respond to me, what are the chances that I’ll answer your next question?
Probably next to none.
To avoid that scenario, just follow up with a simple, “No way! PJs in the office? Where do I send my application?”
15. Post frequently
If you aren’t posting at least once a day, your audience probably isn’t seeing your posts as much as they could.
One of the best ways to increase engagement is simply to post more frequently. Post twice a day and watch your numbers go up even more!
A great way to post more frequently is to establish a posting schedule with Post Planner, then fill it up with content that'll automatically post at the right time.
16. Recycle your best content
Finally, you should be keeping track of your best content for a couple of reasons:
- You can find similar content to post in the future
- You can repost the EXACT same thing later on
If some piece of content did really well with your audience, it'll probably do well a second time around as well!
To recycle posts with Post Planner, just click the little recycle button when creating a post. Post Planner will automatically add it back into your posting schedule at an appropriate time.
Your turn now...
With Facebook, content marketing strategies are always evolving, but these tips are sure to improve your Facebook content plan.
Your customers will feel closer to your business when you let them get to know you and the voice you’ve established for your company.
Then, the content you post to reinforce that voice will bring better engagement AND more followers!
What about you? What other tips have you used to improve your Facebook content plan and get more engagement and followers?
Let us know in the comments!
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