KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
- How often do you go back to reviewing your social profiles to ensure they’re filled in correctly?
- Your profile is your chance to make a great impression on your target audience. You’re brilliant—show it!
- By completely filling out your business’s page information, you will get more eyes on your business and gain greater engagement.
THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…
It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day upkeep of your social media marketing efforts. But sometimes you need to step back and make a broader review of your accounts. To help you keep your pages current and accurate, set up a regular schedule to review your business information. At THW Marketing, we review our page information about once a quarter. We recommend you do the same, at a minimum.
HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS
- The best profile picture for a business profile – 01:53
- How to make the most of your cover photo – 02:48
- The 3-second rule in social media – 03:37
- Why it’s important to be thoughtful about your About section, especially when it comes to using keywords – 04:39
- The one item on your Page that will allow you to get greater engagement from your audience – 06:32
- Looking to the very near future: Facebook Messenger as a fantastic marketing tool – 07:23
Transcript below
Hello and welcome to episode number three of the Social Media Marketing Made Simple podcast, and I am your host, Teresa Heath-Wareing. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so pleased you decided to download the podcast and give it a listen.
Basically for those who don't know, I am doing a regular podcast where I am talking about social media marketing and how you can use it for your business. But for today's episode, I just want to take you back to basics for a little bit. Sometimes I think it's really important to go back to the beginning. We talk about all these amazing fancy things that all these social media profiles can now do. But when was the last time you went back to your Facebook page and looked at it as if you were new to the page, and as if you didn't know what your business did. So that's what I would like to do with you today. I'd like us to go back, have a look at the page, and I am going to talk you through some of the key areas that you may have missed when you set up your page. Because often when you first set up your page, you're more interested in getting the page up and running, and not so interested in perhaps making sure that it's all filled in correctly.
And you know, this isn't something I just do ad hoc. This is something I go back and check at least once a quarter. Just to make sure that all the information is correct and that I'm happy with what's still on there. So I am just going to talk you through Facebook today, and I'm going to go through some of the key areas that you might want to have a look at, to make sure that your page is as well-optimized as it can be.
The best profile picture for a business profile
So let's start with the real basics and start looking at your profile picture. Now, as a business page, I would suggest that your profile picture needs to be your logo. But obviously not just your logo. Take a look at your logo. Does it fit nicely into a square? If it doesn't, make sure that it's not stretched or cropped or distorted in any way. You may even want to think about having a chat with a graphic designer or whoever does your design work and make sure that your logo has a nice square format available to it. And make sure that it's as striking as it possibly can be within that square. Because obviously when people are looking down their timelines, that square is really quite small. So if you have a very detailed logo, people are going to find it difficult to see what it is. So just double-check. Is it bold, and can it be seen from a tiny avatar square?
How to make the most of your cover photo
The next area I'd like you to go and have a look at is your cover photo. This is the big image at the top of your page. Now this is an area that people do not make the most of. Obviously businesses. This is basically your biggest advert on the page. And what you will find is sometimes people come and visit your page to look at it because maybe they're doing due diligence or just checking you out. But they might not actually engage with the page, so unless you're looking at your insights, which tells you how many page views you've had, you might not think that you're getting much interaction, whereas you are. And therefore one of the key things that they are going to see, is this cover image. Like I said, it's the biggest image on the page, and it's in a real key position. So you need to think about how you can make the most of it.
The 3-second rule in social media
When I do training with people, we always talk about the Three Second Rule. So if I come to your page, and I don't know who you are or what you do, can I work it out within about three seconds? The reason I say this is because people are so impatient, that if they come to your page, and they can't work out whether you're for them or not, then you might risk them just disappearing off. So make sure that cover photo has a really good, striking image, and it has text on the image that tells them who you are, and what you do.
The cover image is also a perfect opportunity to promote something that you might have going on. So if you have a competition, a new deal, you've just launched something. Then absolutely put that in that cover photo position. And you should make sure that you're trying to update your cover photo as much as possible. We try and do ours about once a quarter, but if you can do it more, then absolutely great, please do so.
Why it’s important to be thoughtful about your About section, especially when it comes to using keywords
The next area I would like you to take a look at is the About section. The About section is something that you fill in when you first set up a page. And like I said, it's probably something that not many people go back and revisit. Now, the reason the About section's really important is because there's a couple of opportunities in that page, where you've got something called the About Information and also Story.
Now in these two areas, you're going to be able to write who you are and what you do. And it's really important to make sure that you get some keywords in there. So what I mean by key word is the word that someone would type into Google if they were looking for your service. So for instance, we are social media and marketing consultants, trainers and speakers. So those are our keywords. So when you visit our Facebook page, in our About section, that's what it says. But it actually says, “Marketing and social media consultant, social media trainer, social media speaker.”
So I'm trying to get as many keywords in there as possible. But also it's your opportunity to sell yourself. Again tell people why you're brilliant, why is it that they want to use this service. And if you can, try and include a call to action, so that the bottom of your story in your About information you encourage them to perhaps drop you a message, or go to your website.
Also while you're in that About section, make sure you have a look at some of the other bits of information that you can fill in. So have you included your contact details, your website, your email address? Have you said whether you've got a menu, if you're a restaurant? Have you made sure you've put what services you're under? Have you put your opening hours? Is there any parking? There's loads of information you can put there about your business. So just have a quick look and make sure you've answered all the questions.
The one item on your Page that will allow you to get greater engagement from your audience
And the last area I want you to go and have a look at and just make sure that you've done, is under your cover photo, there is a big button to the right hand side, that on mine says, Contact Us, and this is a call to action button. Now this call to action button is great. Because it means that people can do something directly from your page, and you can have lots of different options for this call to action button.
So for instance, you can have things like “book now”, “get in touch” by either “call now”, and actually what's great with the “call now” button is if you are on a mobile and you hit “call now”, then it's going to call them directly, it's going to literally just say “call the number” and they just have to hit okay. So that “call now” if you're a local business, can be really, really effective. You can also do things like “contact us, send a message”.
Looking to the very near future: Facebook Messenger as a fantastic marketing tool
Messenger is something that I am going to be talking more and more about as we go on, and in future podcasts, because Messenger in Facebook is what's turning out to be a fantastic marketing tool. There's been amazing stats and things around this. So actually sending people to your Messenger might be a really wise idea at this point, just so you can start interacting with people through Messenger.
But that's another option. You can have things like “sign up”, “get a quote”, “learn more”. There's loads and loads of different options. Also things like download an app, or a game, and even for charities, there's “make a donation”. So definitely have a look at that call to action button, and make sure that you put the most appropriate one there for your business. Then what you're going to see in Insights in the analytics, you're going to be able to see how many people actually clicked that button and did what you asked them to do.
I really hope you found this podcast useful. I know we've been back to basics and it might seem a bit simple. But sometimes it's really worth just revisiting these things. Now, what I've done for you, is if you have listened to this and thought, “Great, okay, but actually I'm not sure where you're talking about, or how I get to that bit.” Then I have recorded a short video for you just showing you where you can go and change all these various things that I've talked about. So head back to the podcast page, and just click on the video there to download it. I really hope you've enjoyed today's podcast, and have a fantastic week, and I will hopefully see you again soon.
