Over the years, Facebook has extensively changed. It has grown bigger and better, so it is no wonder that it remains the top social media platform used so frequently. It remains the most favored platform for marketers to promote their brands and engage with audience.

According to market research, thousands of traffic generated on websites is the result of loyal following companies and brands have on Facebook. This makes Facebook a vital platform to market products and increase reach, so the unique visits of website can grow indefinitely.

To pull off an effective marketing campaign on social media, you need a brilliant marketing strategy. You also need to follow some fundamental rules that are central to your campaign.

1. Relevant and High Quality Content

While you are preparing a marketing strategy for Facebook, just use the content that really depicts the value of your brand. Be very very specific and know what you are writing about. Do not just write content for the purpose of writing content. Research it, understand it and give it your full, so when people read it, they can feel your presence in it.

Relevant content rule does not just apply to the brand promotions. It also means you have to be personal with your audience. Allow them to get to know you. Putting a face value to your brand by showing the employees can get users to trust you more. People want to know you so they can relate to you, and using this can be crucial in launching a successful social media marketing campaign.

Similarly, the content that is quantitative in nature works best for marketing your brand. Facebook recently changed its algorithm and made a machine learning system that has ability to detect posts falling under the category of quality content. There are tons of factors involved in determining this such as “how frequently content from a certain Page is reported as low quality (e.g., hiding a Page post), how complete the Page profile is, and whether the fan base for a particular Page overlaps with the fan base of other known high quality Pages”.

When content that met these criteria was promoted by Facebook in audiences’ newsfeed, more interaction and engagement in the form of likes, comments and shares was seen.

2. Graphics and Visuals

Images, pictures and visuals, in particular, tend to attract the most engagements hence increasing your reach. It is more likely that while scrolling through the newsfeed, a user will like an image compared to a text posts.

All an image takes is one second to see and understand it, if there is no text involved. So, people who do not like to read their newsfeed attend to images better.

Minimalistic images with minimalist text brings more likes, shares and comments. According to Facebook, around 75% of the content posted on Facebook by brands consists of images.

It is important to remember that you do not takes images from Google and use them as yours. Create your own using designing softwares, or you take pictures of the tangible things if designing does not get the job done. Your brand values are critical in marketing so make sure you do not damage your reputation on social media by getting in copyright troubles.

3. Audience Optimization

Facebook has introduced the new audience optimization feature that allow you to target niche audience according to your requirements. You can reach people based on their age, gender, location, interests, income, and so much more.

How it works: Audience optimization works with three correlated features.

• Preferred Audience: The audience you would like to approach and reach directly in the newsfeed. When the ad is targeted towards these people, it is highly likely that will see the post.

The tags are used to describe interests of users based on their likelihood to enjoy the post. For example, for a food ad you can use tags like foodie, meals, dessert, and so on.

• Audience Restrictions: If you do not want a certain audience to view your posts, you can use audience restriction and limit them from seeing the post anywhere on Facebook. The tool works side by side to the preferred audience and together they reach the exact audience you are targeting.
• Audience Insights: Understand the way your audience responds to your posts and ads. You can see the analytics based on link-click rates and percentage of total clicks.

Audience insight also tells you about the tags that made the most impact and were defining factor in the reach of post. You can see how particular tags perform and use them in future campaigns, if they help in increasing the reach of post.

Audience optimization is available for any page on Facebook and if you have more than 5k followers, the feature will be turned on automatically.

4. Do not ‘thumbs-up” your own posts

Liking a post after sometime of posting it might make it appear again in the eyes of its killers but at least the content will be accessible to more people. This appears as if liking your own updates is not a big deal, but it is.

The reason is that when can see you have liked your own post, which makes you look not only unprofessional but also desperate. Users stop engaging with your posts because the element of trust is now removed.

5. Ask users before tagging them

Companies and brands on Facebook usually tend to post content by tagging followers and other pages that might be irrelevant. Even if they are relevant, refrain from tagging any of these people or users.

If you want to tag important celebrities and influencers, write them an email beforehand and get permission. You also must have permission to post and tag pictures of influencers if you are going to use them in the promotion of product.

If you are not careful, many valid privacy concerns might arise and sometimes companies are dragged into legal battles. Hence, be careful and although these tactics might work, they are not worthy to lose the reputation of whole company.

6. Call for action

Facebook promotes the content less if you are asking followers for likes, comments and shares. It not only makes you look anxious but also lowers your visibility of the content, since Facebook algorithm can detect it.

On the other hand, call for action is a good way to increase reach and bring in engagements. It might look like it is the same thing but it is not. In call for action posts, you would upload a picture of a couple on vacation and put in the caption as “Like and share if you wish this was you”.

These posts bring out the more views, increase you EdgeRank and result in more revenue.

You can also ask questions in call to actions posts, since people are more likely to comment on such posts.

It is crucial for marketers that they keep track of their performance with the campaign. Constantly read analytics and see if you are achieving the goals you set in initial strategy. Measure everything and look into audience insights to see whom your followers are and how they like to connect with you. Use ads manager to keep track of posts, edit previous one and schedule new updates to be posted according to decided timeline.

It is cardinal that you have complete understanding of your audience and whatever you are doing. Always be available to people and engage with them, whenever possible. It is good to loosen up and interact with followers informally, so they can see you as a human as well.