GUEST BLOG: Are your Facebook posts getting ‘liked’ or left behind?

By Ella Mason, freelance writer

For businesses, Facebook presents a range of e-commerce options – but what’s the best way to engage customers through the platform?

It’s one thing to have a virtually endless array of powerful marketing and customer experience tools at your fingertips. But it can be quite another thing to turn all of that vast potential into actual profits, as businesses have learned time and again since the dawn of the technology age.

With every new development, there also come new questions about how to put them to work in the most effective and cost-effective ways. The good news is that social media experts have been watching out for you, evaluating results and recommending winning strategies.

BRIEFER IS BETTER

Take your cues from Twitter, no matter what social media platforms you’re using to reach your customers and potential customers. Briefer really is better. Facebook statistics show that shorter posts get 23% more interaction than long ones.

It’s great to have compelling content, unless you can’t compel your target audience to wade into it in the first place. Keep your posts below 250 characters and you can boost engagement by 60%. That’s a statistic to keep in mind if you want to engage customers on a continual basis.

HOW MUCH IS A PICTURE WORTH?

It’s a well-documented fact: a Facebook post that includes an image (or that relies solely on a picture to convey its message) is going to draw more interest, attention, and engagement than a block of text ever could all by itself.

The difference is dramatic, with a picture attracting as much as 120% more ‘likes’ as a text post, and many more shares, according to a study cited on Shopify.

It’s great to have compelling content, unless you can’t compel your target audience to wade into it in the first place

But all you have to do is scroll quickly down your own Facebook page to see that not every image does the trick. As with so much of life, the key is to keep it simple. Give people an image that they can take in at a glance and are more inclined to stop, look, and listen to your message, so to speak.

If you choose an image that is hard to ‘read’ at first sight, chances are people will scroll right by it. Put another way, if a picture is worth a thousand words, it shouldn’t take another thousand words to explain it.

BRING YOUR CUSTOMERS INTO THE CONVERSATION

Thanks to emerging technologies like chatbots – essentially robots that can carry on an intelligent conversation – your customers now have easy access to top-shelf customer service at the click of a mouse or the swipe of a finger.

And with Facebook Messenger and other leading instant messaging platforms now making it easy for businesses of any size and in any industry to incorporate chatbots into their Messenger activity, you can now spare your customers the hassle of navigating sometimes confusing websites or apps to place an order or get answers to their questions.

If you’re not already familiar with chatbots and what they can do for your business, chatbots are the wave of the very near future when it comes to customer service and engagement, according to Nanorep, a leading provider of customer support tools.

THE POWER OF A SMILE

It’s a surprising fact and it may not have made its way into the curriculum at top business schools yet. But research is showing that a wink, a nod, a smile, or any well-chosen emoticon in your Facebook post will boost your metrics across the board, as an Amex Open Forum graphic made clear.

And they weren’t talking about getting greater reach for a teen dance or a ‘sweet sixteen’ party. Businesses, too, see a big jump in likes, comments and shares when they humanise their communications with the little images, the numbers show.

Posts get 33% more shares and the same increase in comments when they incorporate an emoticon, and an impressive 57% more likes. Since all of that activity factors into the Facebook algorithm, it increases the chances of your posts being seen and broadens your reach.

BUT WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?

Our great-grandfathers knew it 100 years ago when they ran a penny candy store or a dancehall or any one of 1,000 other businesses. There’s no better way to attract interest than to give a person the chance to win a prize.

Ella Mason

The venues have changed today, but human nature still hasn’t and isn’t likely to. In a study published in Marketing Land, researchers found that 42% of survey respondents said that the number one reason they become a ‘fan’ of a business is to get a coupon or discount.

There’s no better way to attract interest than to give a person the chance to win a prize

And once they do become a fan, of course, you have an opportunity to bring them fully into the fold. A time-sensitive coupon, a caption contest for a relevant photo, or a chance to win a prize by liking and sharing a post are just a few of the ways a contest can.

Whichever one you choose, you can be sure you will reach far more potential customers that the ‘Guess how many jellybeans are in the jar’ competition on the counter of your great-grandfather’s store ever did.

QUESTIONS AND MORE QUESTIONS

Obviously, this list just scratches the surface when it comes to ways to tap into the possibilities Facebook presents any e-commerce merchant.

But the important point underlying all of it is that there is already a roadmap out there to help you find your way across the ever-changing landscape. You never have to make the journey alone.

Photo (main): Franco Bouly