Meeting someone without at least one social media account is a super rare occurrence nowadays. Everyone seems to have one. Grandmothers and grandfathers, and even kids have their own.
Among these platforms, Facebook is the reigning champ. It is the most popular social media network – beating even YouTube, the second-largest search engine in the world. Perhaps, the number of things one can do on Facebook positions it at a higher ground.
Facebook used to be only a place where friends could connect and share online. But over the years, it has grown to be more than that. Now, you can use the platform to search for potential partners. You can also use it to become a “gaming celebrity.” Furthermore, you can shop directly from the platform. And yes, that means you can also use Facebook as a marketing tool.
According to a September 2021 report by Statista, Facebook has 2.98 billion monthly active users. Each one of them is a potential customer whom you can attract using Facebook’s variety of tools.
It does not matter if you own a mega-corporation or a small local business. Regardless of your business’ size, you will benefit from being on the biggest social media platform. The platform will give you a great space to connect with your consumers and keep them informed. Furthermore, Facebook as a marketing tool will help develop your brand identity and expand your reach.
As you can see, Facebook offers plenty of positive things for your business. Your competitors are already enjoying these benefits. Would you let them be the only ones?
Unsure of what to do? Then let this be your guide. Here are the top five things you can do to use the social media giant as a marketing tool.
Utilizing Your Facebook Business Page To Its Fullest
The most obvious way to use Facebook as a marketing tool is by using Facebook pages. It is an excellent tool that does not cost anything – making one and managing one is entirely free!
What do these pages do? First and foremost, they let businesses identify themselves. It is customizable, meaning you can edit it to represent your brand better. By sharing links, photos, and posts, you can introduce what your brand is all about to the people on Facebook. It will give a better sense of your brand’s personality and character.
Speaking of character, you can utilize Facebook pages to humanize your brand. One way to do that is by adding splashes of humor. You can sell products on Facebook, but it is not Amazon. There’s no need to be so formal—people on social media platforms like Facebook like being entertained. And a good marketer knows showing customers what they want to see gives the most positive results. Just keep the content related to your brand, and you will be fine.
While scrolling through your News Feed, you might have noticed some brands using memes or funny videos for advertising. Don’t be afraid to take a leaf out of their book. They are doing it because it is effective.
But keep it balanced. Hilarious posts and serious adverts should be mixed equally so none will feel out of place.
Facebook Marketplace Ads Buy Followers For Your Brand
Of course, when it comes to advertising, you can always count on classic ads. They are natively called Marketplace Ads on Facebook. These appear in the side columns of the Facebook site. They are the more expensive, but a risk-free way to buy yourself Facebook followers or likes.
Marketplace Ads consist of a headline, a copy, an image, and a click-through link. The link can take a user to your Facebook page or your website. Needless to say, it is an excellent tool for driving traffic to your website or gaining more likes for your page.
You can set your ads to target specific demographics – by age, location, or interests. Facebook’s algorithms will look at user data and send your ads to people that belong to the group you set.
You can also test ads by running multiple versions at once. This will help you identify what approach works best with your target audience. You can see how the ads are performing through the built-in performance measurement tool.
Facebook Promoted Posts
Not because people follow your page means they always see your posts. If they have liked many pages and have many friends, your content will be competing with those pages and people’s posts. Sadly, that means your posts may not always appear on their feeds.
To ensure that your followers will see your content, you can pay Facebook to promote your posts. The platform will make sure a certain number of people who follow you will see your posts for a flat rate.
Sponsored Stories
A person will be more inclined to use a specific product if he knows a friend who uses it. That is the concept of Facebook’s Sponsored Stories. The feature will recommend your page to a friend of your liker, saying that his friend has liked the page. If you are giving out an offer, you can change it, so friends of those who claimed the request will see what they did.
These stories of interaction appear naturally on Facebook, yes. But they are often overlooked. You can position them better by paying for this feature in the News Feed or the side columns.
Facebook claims that Sponsored Stories have CTRs 46% higher than CPCs 20% lower than regular Facebook ads. So if you want to save resources, it would be better to opt for this.
Hold Facebook Contests
To create a stronger bond with your followers, increasing brand awareness, you can hold competitions. These will challenge your customers to do something, which would make your brand more visible. For instance, you can ask your followers to take a video of them using your product. The one with the best submission will, of course, be the winner. You can use the number of reactions in their post as the metric.
Just keep in mind that Facebook does not have a feature that will streamline this process. You have to rely on your resourcefulness to make it work. Nevertheless, this will increase engagement on your page. Consequently, that will increase your sales.
Changes In The Social Media Scene
What determines which social media platforms will succeed? There are two theories about this.
The first theory says newer and cooler platforms will eventually usurp their predecessors. That theory is supported by the idea that the young ones do not want to be on the same media their parents are on.
Meanwhile, the other theory states that people prefer platforms where their friends are already on because of FOMO (fear of missing out). That means already established platforms with lots of users, a.k.a the giants such as Facebook, will continue to dominate smaller ones.
For many years, the second theory proved to be more accurate than the first one. However, things have been shaken, causing a shift in the momentum. Many new platforms are starting to thrive, threatening to replace the old ones as the primary social networks.
What Is Happening to people who buy Facebook Followers?
Facebook owns the four most popular social media platforms. That made it the king of social media. When there’s an upstart gaining some momentum, it kills it by introducing a feature similar to what that platform offers. Take the case of Snapchat Stories, for example. Facebook has unashamedly stolen the concept of ephemeral content and added it to both Facebook and Instagram.
The thing is, Facebook can’t do that anymore, thanks to regulators spooking it by stepping up antitrust enforcement. Facebook, now threatened and wary of negative attention, has eased up on doing its usual play. As a result, newcomers now have time to develop on their own.
On top of that, the social media giants have been steadily losing the users’ trust. Executives have been summoned to trials for the proliferation of fake news. There are also controversies revolving around snooping of users’ data and questionable content moderation standards. As such, people have become more inclined to try out other networking options.
Moreover, people are bored and want to find new ways to connect with friends and family via social media. The giants are putting out new features, but people have realized the weakness of these “platform-of-all-trades.” They can’t do everything well. So, it would be better to join a platform focusing on a specific type of content if you enjoy consuming those.
TikTok, for example, centers around short-form video content. Before TikTok became a thing, this niche was unserved. Since people have an appetite for this, TikTok quickly shot up. Now. Instagram launched Reels, a feature in direct competition with TikTok. Still, the newcomer remained the more popular choice.
The game has changed. Contrary to what was the norm in the past, the staying power of these upstarts is unpredictable. They continue to grow, proliferate, and thrive. The question is – could this be the era when they can surpass the reigning giants? Or can the goliaths keep their crowns?
Experiment Time
Now is the perfect time to experiment with new content that may appeal to the public’s taste. And that is indeed what the social media startups are doing.
For example, the French social media app Yubo, which targets teens, combines live streams with elements of dating apps.
Then there’s Poparazzi – an out-of-the-box photo-sharing app. In Poparazzi, you can’t add pictures to your profile. Your friends, and only your friends, are the ones with that capability. Pictures posted by people you do not follow will go through an approval process before they appear on your profile. Likewise, you can post their pictures on their profiles.
Meanwhile, Honk experiments on the way we text. In this app, you can see messages in real-time – meaning, you will see them as your friends type them. No messages will be saved, making this the perfect app for talking about confidential things.
There’s also Houseparty. Epic Games has discontinued the service, but not because it failed. It has a different plan for Houseparty’s technology. But that is a different topic. While short-lived, Houseparty introduced something new that made an impact. It offered the ability to hop on a group video call with friends spontaneously. Furthermore, Houseparty allowed users to float between rooms easily.
The Biggest Challengers
At the crest of this new social media wave are two platforms: Clubhouse and TikTok. TikTok’s success has been discussed already, so that this section will focus on Clubhouse.
Clubhouse is just a year old, and it has already generated significant buzz. This audio-only service is synchronous in nature, different from typical social media platforms, which are primarily asynchronous. In Clubhouse, one can create or join voice chat rooms where one will act as a speaker while the others wait for an opportunity to chime in. It is like podcasts and conferences combined. And like regular conversations, one can only listen to them live. Clubhouse does not store any content. Thus, if you miss joining a chat room, the only way to know what was discussed is to ask those in the room.
Based on how successful Clubhouse became, we can conclude people’s appetite for this type of content. Now, even the so-called giants want to be Clubhouse. They are developing their audio chat room features to prevent their users from migrating to the new platform. That is similar to what YouTube and Instagram did when TikTok exploded in popularity.
Conclusion
The social media platforms are saying their audio-based services are all new inventions. But, who are they fooling? At least Stewart Butterfield, Slack’s CEO, dared to announce flat-out that it would be stealing Clubehouse’s idea. That is bizarrely better.
Twitter is the one whose Clubhouse reskin showed the most promising start. Though there are still some things to iron out, Twitter Spaces is very usable now. Even still, Clubhouse holds the upper ground.
Clubhouse and TikTok’s stories of success show the shift in people’s behavior. Social media giants are not as sticky as they used to be. People are now more willing to try emerging platforms. And that is both for the novelty and because of controversies surrounding the old ones.
