Facebook remains the most used and engaged with social media platform. While it is not entirely true that younger people have stopped using Facebook, evidence does suggest that its users are getting older. However, Facebook remains the preferred platform of young adults. So, if you are looking for mass appeal, Facebook is your friend.
What is Facebook used for?
Facebook is used to connect with friends, organise and discover new events and social spaces, and as a regular source of information and news. Groups can use Facebook to share content, photos, conduct surveys, set up events, create community groups, and even fundraise. If you are needing to write a long post, Facebook is the easiest platform to do this on. You can use your other social media platforms to hook people into the post, e.g., uploading a photo on Instagram with a link to the Facebook post.
Setting up Facebook right
Create a Facebook Page; do not use your personal profile… Using a personal profile means missing out on great features, but more importantly, blurs the line between professional and personal life. It is easy to pick a Page that is right for your group and free to set up.
Avoid accidental publishing with Page roles… Assign Page roles only to those who absolutely need to publish content to reduce the chance of accidental publishing from personal profiles.
On your Facebook page, click “Settings”, then click “Page Roles”.
Provide training to those with publishing privileges to reduce the likelihood of accidental publishing further.
When sharing content on behalf of your group, make sure you are not posting as yourself… You can check that by going into your settings and clicking “Page Attribution”.
Add an engaging profile picture… An appealing and memorable profile picture is key to getting found and liked, especially in Facebook Search, where it shows up in the results next to your group name. The most common choice is your logo, if you have one, but make sure it is the right size and cropped to fit.
Choose a high quality and engaging cover photo… Your cover photo takes up the most space at the top of your Page so this needs to appeal to visitors. The recommended dimensions of both Facebook pictures and cover photos can change, so have a look at the current Facebook guidelines.
Fill out your ‘About’ section and add group milestones… This is where new visitors tend to go when deciding whether to engage with you and/or Like your Page. You might add a general description of your group, your mission statement, or your story – with brief, yet descriptive wording. You might also want to record milestones and awards – like when you launched a specific project or service – as well as the day/year your group was founded, or when you hosted major events.
When to post
Decide how often to post… If you do not post frequently enough, you will not look as reliable, but post too often and people might feel bombarded. Try to find what works for your group. You can do this by increasing the frequency of posts and seeing whether engagement grows or starts to drop off. If it is dropping off, this might be a sign that your audience is over-saturated. You could also conduct a Facebook poll and ask your audience directly!
Decide when to post for maximum impact… Getting the timing of your posts right is key to increasing your reach. According to Hootsuite, “The best time to post on Facebook is between 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday and on Saturday and Sunday between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m”. Experiment and see what works best for your group.
Schedule your posts… If you cannot be around to post at the most popular times, or if you have something that you would like to go out at a specific date and time, then the Facebook Page interface can help. Create your post as normal, then click the arrow next to the “Publish” button and click “Schedule Post”.
How Often to Post
- Minimum: Once a week
- Better: 3 times a week
- Optimal: Once a day
- Avoid: Sharing a bunch of posts in quick succession. Allow at least three hours between posts. “Too many updates” is the no.1 reason people unfollow group or organisation pages.
Features of your Facebook page
Post photos and videos to your Timeline… Visual content has become a must-have for any social media presence, and it is 40 times more likely to get shared than any other type of content. Photos and graphics are a great way to capture a moment or share information in a more visually friendly way, but videos are becoming the new focus for audiences on social media.
Explore using Facebook Live… According to Facebook’s newsroom, people spend more than three times longer watching a Facebook Live video compared to a video that is no longer live. So, do not be afraid to give viewers an in-the-moment look at what your group does, but do make sure you are prepared! Ask your audience to ask questions live that you can answer in the video.
Pin important posts to the top of your Page… When you post new content to your Facebook Page, older posts get pushed farther down your Timeline. Facebook offers the ability to “pin” one post at a time to the top of your Page.
Use this function to promote things like new projects, upcoming events, or important announcements. To pin a post, click on the drop-down arrow in the top-right corner of a post on your Page, and click ‘Pin to Top’.
Add a call-to-action (CTA) button… This is a handy feature, which can be customised to direct people to your website, sign them up to your newsletter, or even book a place on an upcoming event. To add a CTA button to your Page, click the blue “Add a Button” box.
Engaging with your Facebook audience
Directly engaging with your audience… If you want your community to be able to privately message you through your Page, then you need to enable the messages feature. You can do this by going to your settings, clicking on “General” on the left-hand column, and then looking for “Messages” on the list of results. Enabling this makes it easier to reach out to you, but only do this if you will have the time to monitor and respond to people! Facebook enables users to see how responsive groups are to messages, so people can see if this is slow.
Do not forget about comments… You can monitor and respond to comments via the ‘Notifications’ tab at the very top of your Page. It may not be necessary to respond to every comment, but you should monitor the conversations happening on your Page, particularly any abuse or inflammatory comments.
Facebook Insights
Measure the success of your Facebook efforts… Your Page comes with a range of built-in tools which allow you to track engagement metrics. These can be found under the “Insights” tab at the left-hand side of your screen.
In Insights, you can analyse things like; Page views and likes, post reach and engagements, and the demographics of your Page audience (such as age, location, and gender). These tools can be used to help you modify your Facebook content strategy, to publish more of what works, and less of what does not.
Footnotes
- Facebook Inc. (2021), ‘Facebook Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2020 Results’. (Return to reference [4])
- Brent Barnhart, Sproutsocial (2021), ‘Social media demographics to inform your brand’s strategy in 2021’. (Return to reference [5])
- Maryam Mohsin, Oberlo (2021), ’10 Facebook Statistics’. (Return to reference [6])
