We are continually developing authentic ways for people to connect with one another as well as with the businesses, brands and institutions they care about, both on Facebook and across the web.
Facebook allows marketers to stay connected with people throughout their day whether they are on their computers or mobile devices, at home or at work, watching TV or shopping with friends. This allows businesses to create rich social experiences, build lasting relationships and amplify the most powerful type of marketing – word of mouth.
Connecting with people is just the beginning. In the pages that follow, you will find best practices for reaching your businesses objectives on Facebook.
The Facebook ecosystem
- Build
The first step is building your presence with a Facebook Page. Pages allow you to create an identity for your business in the social graph - the map of the connections among people and the things they care about. If you have physical store locations, link your Page with a Place.
You can use Social Plugins, the Graph API and Apps on Facebook to create social experiences involving your products and online properties that are engaging and personalized.
- Engage
Creating these Facebook touch points allows you to start building your fan base and engaging with your customers. Facebook Like Ads are the quickest way to acquire fans. Publishing and engaging in conversations with your fans will allow you to deepen relationships and gain valuable insights.
- Amplify
Every time someone interacts with your business, that action gets published into the News Feed, creating word of mouth. These organic stories are extremely effective at getting others to engage and take action, and can be shared with a much larger number of potential and current customers by using Facebook Ads and Sponsored Stories. Facebook Ads include the names of friends who have already connected to your business. Sponsored Stories enable you to increase the distribution of News Feed stories about your business.
Together, these tools give you the effectiveness of earned media, at the scale and predictability of paid media. Every campaign you run has a lasting impact via the relationships you build along the way. This is the new word of mouth and research has shown it’s twice as effective at driving results.
Five guiding principles
- Build a strategy that is social by design
- Social should be baked into everything you do, not added at the end of a campaign or done on the side
- Facebook should be integrated with your broader marketing efforts and part of how you reach your business objectives
- Create an authentic brand voice
- People on Facebook are clear and open about who they are - be the same by providing straightforward information about your business
- Facebook is an ideal place to bring your brand personality to life through an authentic and consistent voice
- Make it interactive
- People spend time on Facebook communicating and sharing with others, so always engage in two-way conversations
- Think about the aspects of your brand that are inherently social and create content that people will be excited to pass along
- Nurture your relationships
- Just like in the real world, building relationships with people on Facebook takes time and requires a long-term investment
- Keep content fresh and easy to consume, use ads to stay in touch, and reward people for their loyalty through Deals and promotions
- Keep learning
- Facebook allows you to get feedback from people in real time, giving you the ability to iterate on the fly
- Use reporting tools to learn about your fans and the content and products they find most interesting
