Facebook has been at the forefront of social media marketing for many years and the strength of influence created in good Facebook marketing can be very rewarding; it’s a great place to showcase your products, services and websites as well as tap into the resources of the masses. There is of course, much more to marketing on Facebook than just creating a profile; keeping your fans engaged is key. The difficulty comes in finding the right balance; having thousands of followers might look great, but is it really going to make a difference?  Having fewer fans who are more interested in your content, who identify with your brand, who share the page among their networks and who are active in promoting your product, are far more valuable than having higher numbers of fans who are less actively involved. Having a presence, quite simply, isn’t enough.

All businesses hoping to reach out to a wider audience need to do exactly that; reach out, have conversations, pay attention to individuals and groups and keep their profile as up to date as possible. With so many companies using Facebook as a marketing tool, how can your business compete for customers attention and, more importantly, how can you set up enough of a presence to engage fans in a meaningful way.

Depending on the size of your company, there are options available which might make this easier and more efficient; some companies employ entire teams of social media marketers to manage this function, however, the cheaper and far simpler option is to outsource this work if it too much of a task to handle alone. We offer comprehensive social media marketing packages for clients in various industries and have proven a success rate with engaging and retaining a solid fan base for our client companies.

Planet Hollywood’s Facebook Page is a great example; here is a company who definitely require a good social following and it is our aim to get people talking about it. Events such as multi Olympic medalist, Ryan Lochte’s birthday, certainly allow us to reach out and interact with a large audience, which then allows us to promote events and special offers to them.

In order to attract and retain a loyal Facebook following, there are certain rules and guidelines which will help in the decision making process. Firstly, you might want to consider the reasons behind wanting to use Facebook as a marketing tool and how relevant this is to your business. Set goals and try to ask relevant questions and then go about answering them; why do you want to use Facebook and what will attract people to your page? Answering these questions will help give your idea more structure and ultimately help to ensure a higher potential for success. As an additional prerequisite, we always try to offer the customer something through Facebook which is not advertised on the website, such as promotional offers and ‘insider information’. You will also need to think about the kind of brand image you are trying to portray, as it is likely that over time the page will attract a large amount of traffic. Carefully select the right cover photographs, information and background; think of it as a virtual store front and therefore something which you should take pride in. Uploading good imagery, video and information regarding your company, products and services is essential in ensuring that people will want to engage with your company and with each other.

Keep the posts on your timeline relevant and constructive and well as up to date; people will expect fresh content and will be more likely to revisit if they are constantly being offered new information, customer stories, reviews, promotions and pictures to relate to. Creating a calendar will help you organise what you want to post and when you are thinking of uploading it – stick to this and your page will stay relevant and up to date. Anther helpful tactic is to look for similar brands and pages which directly relate to your brand, review them, comment on them and link everything back to your own page to help ensure that readers of similar pages will find yours too.

In addition to using other Facebook pages to attract fans, it is also advisable to market your Facebook page through alternative social media avenues such as twitter, and also through your own website by adding a Facebook link which will lead directly to your page. If you already have a database of clientele, perhaps it might be worthwhile notifying them through emails or newsletters about the Facebook presence of your company and any updates. Using your own Facebook page and those of your clients and customers is also an advantageous marketing strategy.

Think carefully about your target audience, make sure you are attracting and engaging the right kind of people for your brand and purpose. Once you have established a page, stay in touch with everything that is going on, engage in conversations, write back when people write to you, comment on posts people leave on your wall, create polls and questions on a regular basis for people to answer and interact with the brand. Inform people of events and changes to your company, brand or products. This sounds like a lot of work, and sometimes it is, but to keep people wanting more, you need to keep feeding them as much information and activity as possible. Sometimes this is simpler than you think. Perhaps all you need is a little guidance and help getting started; in which case, look no further.