In a recent article, we clarified the difference between a Facebook business page and a personal profile. Because the goals of maintaining a business page differ greatly from the reasons for having a personal profile, there is little overlap between the two. You need to treat your business page as something unique in order to maximize its potential.
Over 1.65 billion people in the world have active Facebook accounts, and over 1 billion users log into Facebook each day. Yes, every FREAKING day! This represents a huge audience for businesses who are building relationships on Facebook. Because of this, it is wise for every business to review these tips for effectively marketing on the social media platform:
- You should set and monitor goals for your outreach efforts. A person much wiser than me once said “If you aim for nothing, you will most assuredly hit it.” As you amp up your efforts in running your funeral home business page, you should set at least one main goal and several subordinate goals. Do you want to triple your fan base? Is your goal to quadruple the engagement on your page? What about driving leads or implementing contests that result in pre-need leads? Record these goals, then review every month or two, through analytics, how you are doing toward meeting them. Once you achieve a goal, set a new one so you are constantly challenged to improve. Don't know where to start with setting social media goals? Click here to download our FREE social media goals worksheet.
- Your fans should find value in the content you post that is aligned to your goals. In order to attract and keep loyal fans, they should feel that they benefit personally from your content. A couple weeks ago, one potential client remarked to me that he did not find much value in what he called “puffy” content…happy images of puppy dogs and pretty trees. “Anyone can post that stuff” he said, and I agree. While there’s certainly nothing wrong in posting an inspirational image from time to time, your viewers will find more value in content that educates them on some aspect of your funeral business or that helps them get to know you, your facility, and your staff better.
- Make sure your ‘About’ section is accurate and up to date. Dated or erroneous information gives your fans the impression that you don’t really care or that you are too busy to manage details well. Frequently review your Mission Statement, the Overview information, the Short and Long Descriptions, addresses, contact information, etc. to be sure it all reflects who you are, what you do, and how you can be reached.
- Use eye-catching graphics and embedded video. Because most Facebook users’ news feeds are jam packed full of “noise,” you should try to make sure your content is visually appealing and catches their attention. Facebook has recently tweaked their algorithms to favor, even more, embedded videos in sorting what to post near the top of users’ news feeds. We encourage our clients to be liberal in their use of organic videos and photos. You do not need to have super high quality video, photo, and sound equipment to produce appealing photos and videos. A Smartphone and a reasonably good eye will suffice in producing appealing imagery. Post images and videos that help your fans get to know you, your staff, and your facilities better. Did an employee recently achieve something noteworthy? Shoot a photo or a video to highlight their accomplishment. Have you added a new vehicle to your lineup? Let the public know!
- Use Facebook Apps to add variety and sparkle. Facebook offers a number of options for running specialized apps inside of a business page…contests, surveys, menu tabs, and the like. Some of our clients, instead of posting every obituary to their page, utilize an app that makes the most current obituaries available by clicking on a tab in the menu bar at the top and also by placing a “current obituaries” post periodically in their feed. Some of the most popular apps we’ve run with our clients are contests that allow fans to click and enter to win a prize for themselves or a loved one. This makes your fans happy, and you get a lot of great leads for your promotional efforts.
- Use the paid aspects of Facebook to increase your fan base and to get more engagement on your page. Facebook ads and boosted content are amazingly inexpensive ways to get your information in front of more eyeballs. Instead of wasting several hundred dollars a month on outmoded Yellow Page ads (when is the last time YOU turned to the Yellow Pages to find a business?) put your money toward Facebook advertising through which you can target specific demographics and people who have previously expressed interest in what you are offering.
- Be smart about when you post your content. It makes no sense to go through all the work to create great content if few people are seeing it. Part of the “science” involved in making your stuff visible revolves around when you make your posts. So it is wise to review, through Facebook Insights or through some other analytic tool, the engagement you have been getting on your posts. See if you can determine a pattern in the activity, particularly the day(s) and time(s) more people are engaging. Then try to schedule your posts to correspond when more people are likely to see them.
These are just a few ideas you can easily implement to draw more attention to your business page. But you might find that you simply do not have the time or knowledge to make these ideas a reality. If so, you can turn to the experts at DISRUPT Media. We are the only full-service social media agency specifically catering to the funeral profession. We implement every one of these ideas above, and more, for our clients on a daily basis. Go to http://www.funeralsocial.com to find out more about the services we offer. Our clients who are a part of our FUNERAL Social Design Process are seeing an increase in post reach and engagement of over 300%.
Schedule a live demo with DISRUPT Media: http://www.funeralsocial.com/demo
Learn more about our FUNERAL Social Design Process: http://funeralsocial.com/social/
Download our social media goals worksheet: http://funeralsocial.com/social-media-goals-worksheet/
About Author
Ryan Thogmartin is a death care entrepreneur and the CEO of DISRUPT Media and creator of ConnectingDirectors.com. | Follower of Christ | Husband | Father | Entrepreneur | Host of #DISRUPTu! and #FUNERALnationtv | Lover of Skittles
DISRUPT Media is a social media first marketing company that focuses on social storytelling for funeral companies. DISRUPT uses insights gained through analytics to build creative campaigns that achieve actual business goals.
Schedule an online 30 minute demo to learn more about DISRUPT Media and how to reverse engineer your social media success: http://www.funeralsocial.com/demo
