Building the Right Facebook Audience
The Sprocket Report
The number of your Facebook Likes is not nearly as important as who the people that Like you are. Once you have a goal for your Facebook business page, you’ll need to nurture the audience who will help you fulfill that goal.
Recently we’ve written a lot about how to use Facebook as a piece of your marketing plan. We talked about tools like Facebook’s Pages to Watch and we walked through the steps for optimal event sharing.
We even studied one client’s results from using Facebook ads. But all of your work on Facebook is dependent on the audience you are reaching.
How well do you know your current Facebook audience? To get started, go to your Facebook Insights and click on the People tab. You’ll see the breakdown of men to women, their age ranges and their geographic locations.
Most businesses and organizations are patronized by local customers so unless you actually have overseas customers, Likes from those places will not help you meet your social media goals. Don’t count on them to convert and don’t be tempted to buy Likes just to raise your number.
Beyond aggregated statistics, you can also see the individual people or businesses who make up your page’s Likes. While on your Facebook Business Page, click on Settings on the right hand side. The new screen will have a menu of choices along the left hand side, one of which is People and Other Pages. Clicking on that one will give you a list of people who have Liked your page. With the drop-down menu, you can also see other pages who have Liked your page and people who have followed your page.
By scrolling through this list, you will have a much better idea whether the audience you currently have is the audience you need to have. No doubt you’ll see some family members and friends who Liked you to be supportive, but are they really your customers? At the same time, you may be surprised to see a number of your competitors, also not customers, who are probably there to keep tabs on what you’re up to.
This is where having an up-to-date Ideal Customer Profile will come in handy. Compare to see how many of your Likes and Followers resemble that profile. The smaller the number, the fewer the sales opportunities. Yes, some friends-of-friends networking will happen, but building an audience of probable customers is the strategy you need.
To do that you have to nurture relationships with folks who fit that Customer Profile. Facebook business pages can’t Like individuals, but they can like other business pages. Being social with complementary businesses who have a similar customer base is a good place to start.
Sharing content that appeals more to your customers than to your colleagues is another important step. Industry news may be interesting to a fellow business owner, but is it interesting to your customer? Research and share what most interests prospective customers.
Even small improvements in fine-tuning your Facebook audience will pay good dividends. When next you run a Facebook ad, consider choosing to deliver your message to a look-alike audience. With a higher percentage of prospective customers in that audience, your ad should perform better than ever.
No one says it will be easy to improve your Facebook following, but by knowing where you stand right now, you will be light years ahead of competitors who don’t even realize they are preaching to the absolutely wrong choir. You don’t have to do all the work on your own either. Give us a call today to discuss your social media marketing. We’d be happy to help!
Kate Gingold
I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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