You know how to set up a Facebook account, you have even boosted posts so really
how hard is Facebook marketing?
What sets a true social media marketer apart on Facebook? Quite a few things actually, but mostly it’s their holistic vision and appetite for information. Here are a couple of examples of things pro marketers do on Facebook that other page admins most likely don’t.
Natively Uploaded Videos
When you see a natively uploaded video from a brand page on Facebook, it’s a sign that the marketer who shared the video is a pro. Why? Pro Facebook marketers know that natively uploaded videos get more views than links to YouTube videos on Facebook — like 52 times more(!) according to a blog post from GetResponse.
To upload and share a video natively to Facebook, you will need your video’s raw file. Facebook accepts many different video file types (you can check out their list here), but .mov and .mp4 are the most commonly used. Once you have your video’s raw file, you can drag and drop it into your page’s status update box or upload it as you would a regular photo/video.
What a natively uploaded video looks like:
What a YouTube video looks like:
Videos with clear calls to actions often yield better results. So to take your natively uploaded video up a notch, add a call to action button and fill out the optional video description fields.
Staying on top of industry news — like knowing that natively uploaded content performs better on Facebook — allows pro Facebook marketers to be agile. They can quickly assess (often before the news has become widespread) whether or not they should research, test, prepare for, implement or disregard an update.
Using Graph Search to Learn More About Their Audience
When Facebook rolled out Graph Search in late September 2013, pro Facebook marketers immediately started investigating uses for the new tool. What pro marketers found was that they could use Graph Search in a lot of savvy ways to learn more about their Facebook fans and the types of people they wanted to target.
Since its release, Graph Search has been refined and updated to function as a semantic search engine, making it an even morevaluable tool for Facebook marketers. Now search results are indexed by Facebook (rather than Bing) and include people (both friends and people in a person’s extended network, i.e., friends of friends, people with similar interests and people nearby), posts, hashtags and locations, according to a post by Lior Degani on Social Media Examiner.
Pro Facebook marketers use Graph Search to research their audience, then use the insights they discover to more narrowly (and presumably more effectively) target their users via Facebook posts and/or ads. Here are a few phrases you can enter into Graph Search to start quickly learning more about your audience:
Here are a few phrases you can enter into Graph Search to start quickly learning more about your audience:
- Pages liked by people who like [insert the name of your page]
- Pages liked by people who like [insert the name of one of your biggest competitors]
- Groups joined by people who like [insert the name of your page]
- Pages liked by people who are older than [insert age] and like [insert the name of your page]
There are so many Graph Search searches you can try. Don’t believe me? Check out this post by Facebook guru Jon Loomer — he tests nearly 15 unique searches and shares his results.
Are Aware Of But Don’t Chase the Algorithm
Historically, when news breaks that a specific practice is working well on Facebook, you’ll immediately notice a trend of everyone doing the same thing — it’s usually a trick that claims to help you boost your posts’ reach and/or increase engagement. But while everyone is busy changing their posting strategies to start doing “what’s working right now,” pro Facebook marketers are letting the bandwagon go on its merry way.
What’s most important to pro Facebook marketers is consistency regarding the tone, brand image, and the type of content they share on their page. If memes are the new “it” thing to post on Facebook to drive likes, you’re definitely not going to see a company like GoPro start posting lots of memes on their page. Why? Because they’re pros and are going to stick to sharing the content that represents their brand best.
This doesn’t mean that Facebook marketing pros are against testing. Testing is always smart, as long as it doesn’t compromise or confuse your brand’s current strategy.
#4 Pros Admins Think Mobile First
The number of people logging onto Facebook via their mobile devices continues to rise. In fact, of Facebook’s 1.32 billion users, a whopping 30 percent of them use the social network only on their phone, according to The Verge.
As social mobile usage increases, so does the number of pro Facebook marketers who are implementing and testing mobile strategies. These marketers have mobile on the brain! Before they share content, they consider the experience of the users who will consume their content on a mobile device. When they invest in Facebook ads, they invest a portion of their budget into mobile ad buys and tools like ShortStack that allow them to create mobile-optimized landing pages.
Mass mobile consumption is the future, and pro-level Facebook marketers are the folks who know this best.
Facebook Is Not The Only Way They Promote Business
This is perhaps the most important point of all. Pro Facebook marketers, who are also likely pro Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, email, etc. marketers, know they can’t rely solely on Facebook to promote their business. So when Facebook decides to change their algorithm in a way that does not favor content from brands, pro Facebook marketers don’t panic. Why? Because they don’t have all their eggs in one basket, and they know that they can lean on the other social platforms and marketing channels they’ve developed.
Readers, what else do you think sets pro Facebook marketers apart from the rest? Let me know in the comment sections below.
