How To Get The Most Out of Your Company Page on Facebook

Social networks are no longer a fleeting trend. Facebook, Twitter and Co. have become mass media and are changing our communication and information behavior. As of July 2020, more than half of all the people on Earth use social media. Our latest data show that 3.96 billion people across the planet use social media today, equating to almost 51 percent of the total global population. That is why it is no longer an insider tip for modern companies that they can use these platforms to establish contact with their target groups as quickly as possible. According to a study by the Federal Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media. We will show you how you can successfully represent your company on Facebook with your own resources and without a large marketing department.

Why Facebook?

The Social Media Examiner surveyed 2,800 marketers as part of the “Social Media Marketing Industry Report”. 97% of the interviewees stated that they use social networks as a marketing method. Twitter and LinkedIn were in the forefront. However, Facebook is clearly taking the lead.No wonder! Because from year to year the number of users of this network is growing. With over 2.7 billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2020, Facebook is the biggest social network worldwide. In the third quarter of 2012, the number of active Facebook users surpassed one billion, making it the first social network ever to do so. Facebook is therefore the most important social media channel for business-to-consumer companies (B2C), where transactions between private individuals and providers take place. Facebook offers the best ways your company’s image and to contact existing and potential customers and maintain a relationship with them.

The immense success is due to the portal’s viral effect. The American mathematician Stephen Wolfram found through a large census that every Facebook user has an average of 342 friends. The likes, comments and shares that your fans make on your company page are also visible to their friends. So you have the chance to generate 342 potential fans and future customers.

*In addition to acquiring new customers , Facebook is now also often used for employee acquisition .

In 5 steps to an attractive Facebook presence

The basic goal of a Facebook presence is to build a base of followers. The more followers you have, the more people you will reach with your updates. And the following applies: You can reach these people for free , so you don’t have to pay for every impression or interaction as with other forms of advertising . You also have the option of increasing your reach with money, but this article focuses on the creation of so-called “organic” reach. Essentially, they pursue these goals on Facebook:

• To create a positive association with your product – and thereby directly or indirectly increase sales
• You create a positive association with your company as an employer – and want to be perceived as an attractive employer for applicants and their workforce

Before you can register your first successes, you should take care of the representative look of your Facebook page. This process is far from over after the company page has been created. Because maintaining your web presence is the most important factor to benefit from social media tools.

To drive traffic to your company’s Facebook page, you can simply follow these 5 steps . This way your company website will not degenerate into a bleak fan desert.

Step 1: Define your Identity

Essentially, their Facebook page can pursue these goals:

1. To create a positive association with your product – and thereby directly or indirectly increase sales
2. You create a positive association with your company as an employer – and want to be perceived as an attractive employer for applicants and their workforce

It is quite common practice to establish different Facebook presences for these areas, as the requirements and content differ greatly. If you only want to run one side, you should focus on one identity. Better to address a relevant target group holistically than only half of two target groups.

Step 2: Package facts about your company “crisp”

In order to attract attention and convey a positive and, above all, serious impression, you should describe your company in more concrete terms in the “Information” section. A legally secure imprint should also be inserted at this point. In addition to the contact details of the website operator, those responsible for text and images should also be listed with their names and addresses. Enter the legal form of your company. If an AG, KGaA or GmbH with limited liability is in the process of being wound up or liquidated, this must also be mentioned! Your register numbers (e.g. commercial register/cooperative register etc.) and tax identification numbers also belong in the imprint. You can now find free generators for creating an imprint on the Internet.

*However, you can also add a link to the imprint of your company’s website and a route map.

Not only facts but also an appealing text can arouse interest in your company. In the information text, Sennheiser describes itself not only as a producer of microphones and headphones but as a transmitter of pure emotion and sound enjoyment. The reader of the text finds personal access and gets an impression of the passion with which the processing of the product is implemented.

Step 3: Give your Facebook page an appealing look

Before a user shows any real interest in your company website, the first impression must be inviting and recognizable even at a quick glance. As a company, it is generally advisable to use the logo as a profile picture. It must be at least 180 × 180 pixels and should have a plain background. For the time being, the profile picture is more important than the cover picture because it is displayed to the user in the stream as a thumbnail (square preview picture ).

The cover picture should have a size of at least 399 x 150 pixels (width x height). Quick loading time is achieved by using sRGB-JPG files with dimensions of 851 x 315 pixels and a file size of less than 100 KB. The quality of a logo or text could be improved by using PNG files. Make sure your pictures follow the guidelines or your photos will be deleted from Facebook.

The chocolate maker Halloren uses its logo as your profile picture and has a title picture even a recent advertising campaign with the slogan “Why? How cute are you? ”Inserted. In doing so, they combine an advertising campaign with their Facebook presence and generate synergies.

In contrast to the logo, the cover image on Facebook is not a constant that should always remain the same. If you have a good reason, you can and should share your cover photo on Facebook. The look & feel should always be based on your corporate design. Don’t forget to test the appearance of your page on different smartphones. The majority of people now use Facebook mobile, there are always small things that are displayed differently in the mobile view than on the PC.

Step 4: Give your company a face

Not just words, but above all photos and videos enable you to present your company to the user. In particular, the managers and employees who stand for a company arouse the curiosity of visitors to a company website.

The stationery manufacturer Faber Castel organized a very unusual campaign to prove the non-toxicity of its children’s felt pens. In a video posted on Facebook, CEO Anton Wolfgang Graf von Faber-Castel drinks the ink in the presence of the press. The audience can see who is behind the name “Faber Castel” and combine the rather traditional image of the company with daring action and a sense of sustainable production.

The Sennheiser Executive Board members also appear in the news feed on their Facebook page and at the same time post a link to an interview in which they talk about Sennheiser’s history and culture of innovation.

Step 5: Systematically increase your reach

You can constantly increase your range with little effort. Orientate yourself to your competition and find out what results you can expect! First of all, the central question: What increases the range?

• New likes on your site: Only if someone is a fan of your site is there a chance that one of your updates will appear in the user’s timeline. The number of your fans corresponds to the number of possible recipients of your updates, but keep in mind that each of your updates will only reach a fraction of your fans. Facebook’s top-secret algorithm decides who gets to see which update. But one thing is clear: the more interactions an update has, the more people it reaches
• Likes: An update that generates a lot of likes has to be interesting. Therefore, posts with many likes are directed to more fans
• Shares: Shares are more valuable than likes because they have a viral character. When a fan shares one of their updates, the number of potential recipients increases with the friends of the person who shared the update. Updates that are shared a lot can go “viral”. This refers to updates whose reach increases exponentially through extensive sharing.
  The inhibition threshold to share an update and higher than to like it, since the sharing person represents it with his share on his own timeline. It can, therefore, be seen that updates with an advertising message are less shared because users cannot be misused as advertising messengers. In general, content is shared that meets with great approval but is also not too trite. The divider wants to feel like he’s showing his friends something new.
• Comments on their updates: Comments are rated by the Facebook algorithm as the greatest form of user appreciation. What is commented on has to be interesting and therefore directed to more people. Comments can be generated through quiz questions, getting feedback or stimulating controversial discussions

If your updates are perceived as interesting on average and generate a lot of interactions, the number of your followers will automatically increase. The basic rule for posting on Facebook remains: only post when you have something to say. Give your fans a reason to share your information. It’s best to think visually and keep the messages short and sweet. Melitta also addresses the everyday world of its fans. To point out their latest type of coffee, they posted instructions for frothing milk. The video was shared over 90 times and garnered nearly 600 likes.

*The education portal Lecturio posted quotes from famous people on the subject of education and wisdom. This Einstein quote has been shared more than 11,000 times and reached more than 500,000 users. Please note, however, that you usually keep the incentives moderate. You only want to offer potential participants a small incentive to overcome sluggishness and not systematically bribe users. It is better to leave large-scale competitions with high winnings to the marketing department.

But how often should you post?

The basic rule is: Don’t post too much – no more than 2-3 updates per day. However, daily updates are not essential. With good quality updates, you can also be successful with an update every 2-3 days. The time and day of the week are also decisive for a successful posting. How to reach Posts a 14% higher interaction as posts that between 7 and 20 watches between 20 pm and 7 am will be published. In contrast, on Wednesdays after lunch, most people are online on Facebook, which has a positive effect on reach. Also, think about who your target group is. Would you rather reach people in the office after the lunch break or would you prefer people who still surf on Facebook on the couch in the evening?

However, a study by Salesforce Buddy Media shows that there are also serious differences between the target groups of the respective industries. On Mondays, for example, there is 19% more interaction on the retail Facebook pages than on the other days of the week. In contrast, automakers get a 15% higher interaction rate on the weekends. However, only 14% of them are posting at this time. Financial industry posts are only 4% on Sundays, although engagement rates on that day are 29% higher than usual. On the weekends, posts generally have 14.5% higher engagement rates and yet only 14% of all postings are published during this p period. If you want to be absolutely sure, there is now Service Insights, which analyzes the most successful posts and your fan development for you.

Bonus Tip : Tag other Business and Pages for Wider Reach of Audience

We recently called on our Facebook page to send us your questions about social media via Facebook post or private message. Some questions reached us. One that we were asked several times was how to tag another Facebook page in your own Facebook post. Let’s elaborate that :

How do I mark another Facebook page in my post that I want to publish as a page?

It’s actually quite simple, in case you’ve never used this feature before, here’s how to tag other businesses on Facebook:

You just write your Facebook post and put an @ sign in front of the page you want to link. A dropdown menu opens with Facebook Pages to choose from. Ideally, the page you want to link appears in this selection list.

• Go to your business page and click “Write a post”
• Start typing your post
• To tag another business page, start by typing the @ symbol and the business Page’s name
• Scroll through the options Facebook gives you and select the correct Page
• Post your status!

Why should you link other Facebook pages in your post?

There can be very different reasons. The following occur to us:

1. You want to make your Facebook fans aware of this page. So that they don’t have to search for a long time using the Facebook search, one click is enough to land on the corresponding page.
2. You want to identify the origin of the report, i.e. who is the source of the information you are sharing on your own page.
3. Show appreciation: You say thank you because you have found an interesting article that you think is worth sharing and you want to simply show how you learned about this article.
4. The corresponding page receives a notification (but even this does not always work in our own experience) that the page has been marked in a post. So you make other Facebook pages aware of yourself and thus possibly generate new fans and new contacts for yourself.

There are a few reasons to tag other business Pages on Facebook:

• When you tag another business, your post should show up on that business’s Page
• Your post will be visible to the followers of the Page you tagged, expanding your reach
• This could help you get more followers and engagement
• People who may not be familiar with your business will see your post

But, that doesn’t mean you should be tagging other businesses in every single Facebook post. You should only do so when you have a good reason.

Conclusion

A company page on Facebook can be a helpful and profitable marketing tool. However, this strategy only works if you actively represent yourself on social media and thereby manage to mobilize your fans and their friends. As you can see from our tips and examples, you don’t necessarily need a large marketing department or agency to carry out this mission. Every company can liven up its Facebook page with creativity and brains.

Hitcaliber is your contact for online marketing with a local focus. We would be happy to support you in building your digital presence. We look forward to your questions, ideas and concerns!