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You're on Facebook and now you've started your Business Page or Group but now ... what to do?
This is the part where people most often get stuck, hey I've get there myself, sometimes there's just so much going on that I forget to post or I think that my posts may not be interesting or important enough.
Stop right there!
When it comes to Facebook and most social media, more is more and as I manage a number of my own groups and pages as well as those for clients or organisations and I have absolute evidence that when you post more you're going to get more likes, comments and interaction. That's what we all want from Facebook - reach!
If you haven't yet looked at your Facebook Insights, that's something you want to do first, get really well acquainted with your page statistics and what is working with your audience and what is not. But ultimately what you want is reach when you have more reach you have more viral visibility and that means more people are seeing your posts. This comes from people liking, sharing, commenting on your posts as this then shows up on their feed and then their friends get to see it too.
Of course Facebook has put all sorts of jumps and hurdles in place that mean your posts aren't reaching as many people as you used to but that means, now more than ever, you need to be posting and getting people to interact with your posts. More is more and less is less.
But now comes the dilemma of what to post? I've coached a few clients on this and conducted numerous online media assessments and so I'm sharing here something that has been a break through for many clients.
Of course posting depends on your type of business, each business has cycles and what is important is to understand your business cycle. For gift products it is likely to be a holiday and special occasion cycle; for financial businesses, it will be an end of year, VAT/Tax return and dividend cycle; for coaches it will be time of the year, after New Year, holidays, summer; if you're in fashion, you're thinking seasons and dates to dress up (or down), etc. Hopefully you're starting to get the idea. Start with identifying what the triggers are for your cycle.
Now, I'm an old fashioned girl and I need to see everything in one place in paper (mostly so I can scribble all over it), but many of you can do this on the web, get a full year calendar. Now step by step:
- start by identifying the key dates for your business - if all of these fall into one half or quarter of the year, I can tell you already that your business has a cash flow problem (but that's another topic).
- think of the things you want to tell your customer about these key dates, what you want to advise them to do, what they should be thinking, what they need to act on and now decide how long before the key date you need to notify the customer of this. If there is a key date your client is unlikely to pick up your first notification about it so you know you can plan 3-5 (or more) times that you can tell/warn/advise/incentivise your customer to contact you or buy a product. Out of this exercise alone you should have at least 5-10 dates and 25 - 100 posts (or more)... now you just need to think about the rest of the year.
- once you have your key dates and your key posts for these dates now start to think a bit wider, are there things you would like to tell your clients about your business, certainly you should keep them updated with changes, for example staff, website, events, ranges, etc. So here you probably have at least another 25 - 50 post throughout the year.
- are there things you'd like to educate your client about your business type or industry? What questions do you get asked about the most and how can you demonstrate your expertise in your field? Educating people in an informative and interesting way is a sure way to develop your following or tribe. In a year at least another 50 posts. One of the ways I do this now is to blog about things and share this information on the social media and this also informs people and drives traffic to my website.
- so with the days that are left have some fun, share something personal, something funny, ask questions, challenge and invite.
I hope that has helped you fill your posting calendar and that it has made it easier to find content to share.
