Rebecca Corliss is the leader of HubSpot’s social media team and contributor to the HubSpot Inbound Marketing Blog. Follow Rebecca @repcor.
In a recent study, Facebook was hailed as the most used social networking site around the world, specifically as the most-frequented site in 126 of the 137 countries studied. With this in mind, marketers should consider how they can utilize their own market’s Facebook usage to support company’s goals.
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For B2B companies who are naturally focused on lead generation, this data suggests that an increased emphasis on Facebook as a traffic source is important. But how might B2B marketers take advantage of this opportunity, specifically when considering Facebook’s migration to the timeline layout? Here are a few tips.
1. Focus on Visual Content
The new Timeline design is all about being visual, which might require a slight change in your content strategy. Is your marketing team producing enough visual content to post to Facebook on a regular basis? If not, consider spending less time on long-form blog articles to free yourself up to create an infographic. Also, if you’re not adding images to each of your blog posts, now’s the time!
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2. Stay Natural to Facebook
This may seem obvious, but a lot of businesses are starting to “use Facebook like Twitter” by either auto-publishing what they say on Twitter to Facebook or only posting in short, 140-character messages. This is a lost opportunity to use some of Facebook’s beneficial features such as images and videos. Use Facebook to show off your business’ personality by posting photos of employees, asking discussion questions, and encouraging comments. Don’t let efficiency negatively affect your strategy.
3. Include Links to Your Website in all Posts
This is key, B2B people! If lead generation is your goal, make sure you’re driving traffic directly to your website. Bonus points if the link leads a person to a landing page relevant to the Facebook post. Make it easy for your leads to raise their hand to do business with you if they’re ready.
4. Use the Facebook Views & Apps Feature
Remember the days of “tabs?” Well, now we have “Views & Apps” to play with! Apps are those little square icons to the right of your business page’s name. They are much more prominent and visual than tabs, and you can even use the icon feature to create a miniature call-to-action image. That call-to-action can lead someone to a custom Facebook page, event signup, or whatever you like. Create and upload an image that business page visitors can’t help but click.
5. Play With Memes
Businesses can be hip, too. The next time you’re using Facebook for fun at work (we all do it), keep your eyes peeled for any memes that might be receiving an exceptional amount of comments or shares. Then, consider taking a spin at creating your own version of that meme for your industry; just be sure it’s still relevant and on-brand. Sometimes giving yourself a little leeway to experiment can pay off in increased traffic and engagement.
6. Remember Conversion
Measuring Facebook page engagement is important to analyze whether people are paying attention to your content or not, but don’t forget to measure traffic and leads, too. Also, what is the conversion rate of the traffic coming to your website from Facebook? If it’s low, perhaps you’re not attracting the highest quality people.
What other tips would you offer for taking advantage of Facbook as a B2B traffic generator?
This story originally published on Mashable here.
