Facebook for Business Marketing – Scroll down for video and podcast
As part of our commitment to providing valuable resources to business professionals, I interviewed Stacey Murray from Alfalfa Social Media.
Stacey trained me in how to use social media more effectively. I noticed a big difference after implementing the strategies I learned with her. I’m thrilled that she was happy to share her wisdom in this interview for the SEMBA South East Melbourne Business Associates Facebook group.
Olivia:
Hello. Welcome. So here we are. Hello Stacey.
Stacey:
Hello Olivia.
Olivia:
So Stacey is the owner of Alfalfa Social Media which is a social media company based in Bayside Melbourne. And Stacey helps people mainly from small and medium sized businesses and also some community groups with their social media strategy. So her search services include social media strategy and set up, content creation and management, social media training, one on one and in groups, actually that you’re heading off to group training after this, aren’t you?
Stacey:
Yeah I am yeah.
Olivia:
That’s why we’ve made it at this time, so you’ve got time to fit that. Newsletter design and delivery, blog post writing and social media audits. So myself I’ve had one on one training with with Stacey and straight away I’ve got lots of ideas of that made some changes and I have, very quickly actually, noticed an improved engagement in the groups that I could manage so, so thank you for that! And thank you for agreeing to chat with us today.
Stacey:
Thank you. Good to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
Olivia:
So let’s just jump straight into it. I think there’s a lot of interest in this because. Well, Facebook is so widely used. How about I hand over to you to explain to us why we should use Facebook in our social media strategy.
Stacey:
So we really if you’re looking to do anything on social face Facebook is a good starting point, purely because there’s so many people using it. There’s something like 17 million active Facebook accounts in Australia. We think we’ve got a population of 25 million. That’s something like 25 percent of 75 percent of all Australians are using Facebook. So regardless of what your business is there might be other platforms that are also applicable. But Facebook is usually the best starting point for most businesses. The other reason is that it’s used really widely across most age groups. Now the way that age group different age groups use it is quite different so the way perhaps teens use Facebook is really different to the way that older people use Facebook. But it’s hard to get away from that fact that it’s just it’s ubiquitous everyone. Most people are using Facebook if they’re using social media at all.
Olivia:
I actually found that interesting when you told me about the young people using Facebook you know they’ll do it within groups. So you never know….So you can’t see what they’re up to!
Stacey:
Yeah, they are using the messenger function or the group function that young people have. And when I say young people I mean teenagers and they very rarely post on their personal pages. But they’ll use the messenger function or they’ll use group function for their sporting groups or class groups and so forth. Whereas it tends to be the older people. By that I mean my age group and beyond that tend to use it in its more traditional function in that posting stuff on pages and personal profiles and so forth. Okay.
Olivia:
So you basically answered it, that all, it’s suitable for all businesses. And so in that case it wouldn’t matter if your business to business or business to customer or whatever like that. Because if you wanted to reach people are all there aren’t they.
Stacey:
Yeah they then there are other platforms that if you’ve got a really niche business like if you’re selling a really visual product let’s say you’re a cafe or you sell shoes or something like that or your hair salon and Instagram and be a good choice. If your professional services you might want to look more LinkedIn. But in general terms yeah Facebook it’s pretty much if you’re going to have it you’ve got to choose one platform that that’s what I choose.
Olivia:
Yep that’s it’s just my favourite. That’s why is that you can interact with people, I find.
Stacey:
Yeah and that’s why the functionality is so much greater than with other platforms. I mean different options from pages to personal profiles to groups and messenger. There there’s quite a lot of functionality.
Olivia:
There definitely is. Alright! So if anyone’s got questions let us know and also let us know and actually you can hear us and everything’s working. But hopefully it is we’ll just keep going. So what kinds of content what types of content should people be posting?
Stacey:
This is one of the big things that I always tell people and you’ll remember that we spoke about this out when we met. There is a general rule of thumb the 30 30 30 10 rule. And the idea is that 30 percent of your content should be what a lot of businesses post most of the time which is that overtly directly promotional content the buy my stuff, go to my website and buy my shoes, come to my cafe, whatever it might be, that overtly sales message stuff. That should really only be about 50 percent of your content. The next 30 is still stuff that’s about your business and would still click through to your website ideally and that would be stuff that provides people with a bit more roundedness understanding about your business. So it might be things about key staff members, it might be your opening hours, it might be your returns policy it might be the philosophy behind your business that that kind of stuff. So still very much about the business but just not with not hammering home that sales message. The third 30 percent this is the value add segment. So this is where you’re sharing content that doesn’t relate to your business directly but does relate to your audience. So it’s where you’re showing them that you understand what pains them. You understand what their interests are and you’re providing them information that shows that if you understand what they’re all about and by doing that you’re you’re building trust with your audience. And so when they when they do come to look for a service or a product they’ve developed this understanding of your business as one that understands them and is knowledgeable in their field and so you’ve built up that trust for them so therefore, hopefully, they’re going to buy from you because you’re seen as a trusted supplier or trusted vendor. And that’s the last segment, and I always call this the cat video segment, but it’s not literally a cat video, although in my case it probably would be. That’s the segment that’s really about personalising it and humanising your business. So it might be a cat video, and look who doesn’t like a cat riding on a vacuum cleaner. It might also be just a pretty picture of a sunset it might be something funny you’ve seen it might be an inspirational quote. It might be a meme. So it’s not stuff that is directly tied to your business but it does a couple of things. First of all humanises your business. It shows that there’s real people behind this page. There’s real people by this business that…they like a laugh like everybody else. They like sunsets, they like funny things. But it also often that content that generates engagement because people will like or comment on that or they will share it for they will take their friends. And so, because that’s getting a degree of engagement, when you do then come post next time, which might be that sales message or it might be that message that’s a bit more about your business. More people are going to see that because of the engagement level generated by that 10 percent.
Olivia:
So it is that in terms of also about the algorithm and all that kind of thing is that because you’ve created some engagement then other things you post to actually come up on those people or more people’s feeds.
Stacey:
Yeah that’s exactly right and you’re engaged when it’s absolutely the name of the game. That’s what’s going to make sure that people firstly see your content, but then also build an understanding of you and your business through that content that you’re sharing. So, if I can touch a bit on the 2018 update that is such a big issue in Facebook land. That changed the way the algorithm works to give a lot more prominence to engagement. So the things that people are commenting on and commenting primarily as opposed to liking or tagging people or sharing. Commenting is really what we’re wanting. The algorithm changed to give much more prominence to that. So the idea is that Facebook wants to reward people that are providing content that people really that resonates with people that is meaningful to people, and that’s the word that they use “is meaningful”. So they want people to post content that’s going to be really meaningful to their audience. So not all, not every piece of content saying that you’ve got new couches that have just come into the store is going to be meaningful to everybody. So look, it would be great if you’re selling those catches that it is meaningful and people are going to like and comment and share that and buy you couches. But often it needs to be that other content that actually drives that engagement. So that’s where you need to be really creative and find ways to encourage people to interact with you or with the stuff that you’re posting.
Olivia:
Okay and what about what form of content. Like I hear a lot about videos a lot of people do lives. There’s the text or photos…
Stacey:
Video is absolutely King and the King of Kings is exactly what we’re doing now, live. Look live’s not everybody’s cup of tea, as we spoke about. But if you’re willing to do it, and you’re willing to put yourself out there then, the algorithm really rewards live video. It rewards also non-line video but not to the degree that that life is given. So hopefully there’s lots of people out there seeing this now as a result of the algorithm but also, secondary to live is just static video. And beyond that, look I in my experience I don’t see a huge amount of difference between whether you post linked content or photo content. I think the nature of the content and the quality of the content and the engagement that it generates will always take prominence over whether it’s a link to a website or whether it’s a photo or whether it’s just a static text is the same.
Olivia:
It’s the actual content and so whether something whether it appeals.
Stacey:
Yeah whether it appeals and whether it actually generates engagement. Yeah.
Olivia:
All right. Okay. So and one of the things people try to do on their pages or groups is to get more more followers and more engagement. Are there any tips that you’ve got on how to do that?
Stacey:
Oh that’s a that’s a really one, isn’t it? I think one of my favourite things to do with respect to try to generate a bit of engagement is actually frame a post as a question. So rather than make a statement like “New shoes in the store come and check them out”, It might be something like “We’ve got a great new range of shoes. Tell us which one is your favourite?” Or “Tell us what colour you’re looking for this summer” or something like that. It’s a bit of human nature that if you ask a question people are more likely to respond rather than if you just make a statement. So one of the things I like to do to really encourage engagement is try and frame posts as questions.
Olivia:
I love that, actually. It makes sense.
Stacey:
It does make sense, doesn’t it? I understand that often people are reluctant to be the first person to to comment and say that can be a little bit tricky but if you have a band of followers or a few people that you work with or your friends you lean on them you can get them to be the first person to comment, often the other ones will follow on from that. Another thing I like to do is actually leverage networks in terms of your pages. Look you can only lean on your friends so much but if you can encourage them to perhaps share your content share your page. Most of us have friends that operate in a similar demographic and geographic areas so often their friends are going to be the people that are perhaps your potential customers depending on the nature of your business and your audience. Another thing I like to do with this….
Olivia:
I was just thinking, can I quickly say, well we’ve got a group right here so why don’t we do that and help each other out? We could share each other’s posts. And you know that’s what we do. We can say, “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” type of thing.
Stacey:
Yeah, the business networks are doing that really effectively, where they do. They make it part of their the way they operate is that they do. They do try and encourage sharing of each other’s content and I suppose you need to be mindful of what’s relevant and appropriate to you and your friends and your your page and your personal profile. That’s how you do it. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a good way to. It is a good way to do it.
Olivia:
And going back to the question thing, that, when you think about is common sense. Often when you think of, when you hear a good idea you think,”Oh gosh! That’s obvious! I should have realised that all along!”, because it’s a conversation. And what do you do when you start a conversation? You ask questions.
Stacey:
Yes. Absolutely. So I think, on that, if someone does comment and says “I am hoping to buy some yellow shoes this summer”. Respond to that comment. I mean, it’s a it is a two way conversation. If someone if you ask someone a question and they answer that you wouldn’t just turn and walk away and, or you’d be a bit rude if you did. So comment on their comment and try and keep that conversation going because the longer a post is live in the algorithm the more it’s going to be seen. And one of the one of the things Facebook did do was part of that 2018 update was, actually not just look at the amount of engagement that any particular post receives, but actually how long people interact with it. So whether they just comment once and go away or whether they come they come back and comment again and again and that all all feeds into how long something stays quite high in the news feed.
Olivia:
So what should the end game be? Why are we doing all this? What are we trying to get out of Facebook? It sounds like engagement.
Stacey:
Absolutely and engagement absolutely is.
Olivia:
We all want sales in the end, don’t we?
Stacey:
And. Look I always tell people that the end game is, it is Facebook is, and any form of social media is not your end game in itself. The idea is to take people into the asset that you own. So, you don’t own your Facebook page, you don’t own your Twitter profile, Instagram profile. They are all owned by the platform themselves. So, I think it’s important that you try and bring people back to the assets that you own. So that might be your web site. It might be your physical store front. So, I think if you can be encouraging people to come…so let’s say you’re posting, whenever you post content that is directly relevant to your business, make sure that it links through to your website. Encourage people to actually come into your store, which I mean, that’s a no brainer if you’re advertising a store, you want people to come in. But social media is not, it’s a marketing channel like any other, and it really should not be considered the end game. I see a lot of people who get really hung up on how many page lights they have. And look it can be a bit of a vanity metric it’s lovely to look at your page and say look I’ve got 50000 likers on that. That’s right you if you do. But you’re really, I always think you’re better off to have a smaller body of genuine customers and potential customers. And really the thing you should be looking at is how many of those people that are seeing content are then acting on it. How many of them are either engaging with it or how many of them are coming into our store or visiting our website. So it really should be seen as a vehicle to drive people through to those assets that you own.
Olivia:
What about, let’s talk about paid advertising. Because, alright that’s all a strategy on and how to make your Face.book very interesting and engaging, and that’s probably what I focus on mostly. Hi Nicola. But how how important is it spending money? And how to do it best?
Stacey:
These days you..it’s very hard to not spend money. Especially if you’re building a new page and when you’ve started off at zero likers, it is very very hard to grow without spending some money. Part of Facebook changes when they introduce paid advertising back in 2014 was the organic reach, so the reach that people get without advertising fell dramatically and continued to fall ever since. So it’s really important I think that people consider advertising as part of their strategy. A lot of people start off with boosting posts. A lot of a lot of people look down on it and say well you know boosting posts it’s too simplistic you can’t target people you can’t develop a bidding strategy, which is all correct, but you can you can pay to expand the reach of your posts through the ad manager platform rather than through just the boost post on your page. I like to pay to expand the reach of well performing posts. So a couple of things around that, I never used boost a post from at the moment that I posted. I’ll let it run for a few days and then let it exhaust that organic reach or the reach that you would get through engagement. Then I would actually boost it through the ad manager platform so you get that full functionality where you can really target your audience. You can set things like your bidding strategy and the frequency around how often people are going to see that piece of content. So I’m a big fan of actually extending the reach of well performing content. I generally, my default strategy is to spend a mixture on ads that are designed to take people to your website. So the ads you see so that when you click on them you click through to a web site. The benefit of those ads is for one they’re taking you through to the content that you own, so your website. But also, they do have a “like page” on them as well, so I can do, you can can get a bit of a double bang for your buck in that you get the option to capture the like audience but you also get the option to take people through your website. Having said that the like button on our web site click and performs really poorly. I don’t know why. If you do a page like ad, where people are actually going to like your, the objective is that we’re going to like your page, you’ll get many more likes from that than if you do a website link ad that also has a life button on it, which is very strange. So generally my strategy is to devote most of the budget through to taking people to a web site. But I’ll also devote some of the budget through to actually increasing the number of likes on the page.
Olivia:
And that has to be specific…focused ad just for that purpose.
Stacey:
Just for that purpose. That’s exactly right. These days ads have so much targeting. So, it used to be that they appeared on Facebook in the news feed or in the right hand column and that was pretty much it. Then it was expanded to include Instagram advertising and audience networks and messenger. I’m still in two minds about messenger and about ads appearing in messenger.
Olivia:
I ignore them. I’m not a fan of it appearing in messenger!
Stacey:
I don’t like it at all. Because if I get a message I think it’s a friend or.
Olivia:
It’s disappointing!
Stacey:
Yeah, I think someone wants to talk to me and then, yeah, it’s an ad, yeah I get disappointed. So, having said that I have found that they do work quite well, in that people will respond to them. So, as much as, everyone I speak to finds them annoying.
Olivia:
But they get results.
Stacey:
Yeah yeah, and the ads and Instagram stories is another one that I’m finding is working really well as well.
Olivia:
Okay. So, yes, you actually, Stacey, just so everyone knows, you do more than Facebook. I just decided we should focus on one thing yet and there’s only so much time. You can only get so much, so I thought we’d focus it. But you do. What are the other platforms you also work with?
Stacey:
I work with LinkedIn and Twitter and Instagram, primarily. Look, Facebook, most of the work I do is on Facebook. For all the reasons that we spoke about at the start of the day, But often, I do a lot of strategy work so businesses, I’ll help people actually develop a strategy, like a go to guide on what days they should be posting, the sort of content they should be posting, where that audience is hanging out. All that sort of stuff. So often that strategy leads to businesses working elsewhere other than Facebook or usually Facebook and something else rather than ignoring it entirely. Yeah.
Olivia:
So, just one more thing probably. I’m going for a little while so probably need to wrap up soon.
Stacey:
Oh, gosh!
Olivia:
But it’s gone fast! There is one question I nearly forgot and I think this might be slightly, this may not be your area. It might be a related area or you might know. And I nearly forgot about it. But Mark, one of our members here, The WorkCover Guy, he was asking about whether there is a way to get notifications for keywords. For example, if you want to be able to comment every every time someone searches “WorkCover” or every time everyone makes a post in a group on WorkCover or “who is a good social media consultant?” or “who is a great person for office furniture?”. So if you want, to get some sort of notification, is there anything? I think would be a third party… Yeah
Stacey:
Look, I think, I’m not aware of any, but yeah, I wish there was. I think that that’s fantastic. It’s almost like you need like an RSS feed for Facebook. Something that is going to tell you when there is notifications on a topic. I would love, if someone out there knows more about that than I do I’d love to hear it. I’m not aware, I know and I think this was addressed when it was discussed online, you can search, just put the term in a search in the search bar and it will bring up lots of things, like if I put in “social media consultant Melbourne” hopefully I’d come up. But all posts and pages and groups depending on the privacy setting of the group will appear in those search results.
Olivia:
And I use that.
Stacey:
Yeah I used that. I found that’s quite interesting. There’s no way to automate it, though. I don’t know I can’t save it or.
Olivia:
You can use filters. If you actually find the post in our group that Mark Stipic asked, you can see I put a bunch of screenshots in how and how to search, in case you’re wondering.
Stacey:
That’s really useful when out there.
Olivia:
But yeah, it would be nice to be the first one to comment on someone saying “Who do recommend for social media? or something. I have this vague recollection someone spoke to me at a networking event. So, if anyone out there, we might have people, I generally go to Dandenong Chamber of Commerce, there’s a few members here from the group from there, so if anyone knows who deals with, like a software that, I think he was saying things like, it can tell you when someone’s talking about your business…or there might be something that. I should have paid more attention to. It wasn’t my radar at the time so I didn’t think I’d need to know. But you know I’d like to find out what that was. Anyway is there anything you’d like to add before we wrap up?
Stacey:
Look, we haven’t talked about groups. Can we talk a bit about groups?
Olivia:
Yes! Let’s talk about groups.
Stacey:
Again, getting back to it 2018 update, groups have become even more important, because page reach is continuing to fall. And also, part of that update said we will give more prominence to to groups. Groups, there’s a million of them out there. I’m a member of a million different groups and there’s a group for just about every topic and every geographic area you can possibly think of. Groups are fantastic because they allow people to do just what we’re talking about ask questions and make recommendations. So look, I can sit here and say “You should use Alfalfa for social media because I offer a great service.”, but of course I’m going to say that, it’s my business. But if it’s coming from other people in a group, so if someone does say “I’m looking for someone for my social media” and you, and five other people say “Come speak to Stacey.”, it carries a lot more weight. So it offers that interaction where you can be sure that you are that knowledgeable helpful person so and also have that opportunity to have people come to you because you’re being recommended by others, and it’s also, the groups are so useful. The things like, the discussion we were just having about finding things on Facebook. Groups really allow you that opportunity to interact with with like minded people that are operating either in a similar industry or a similar geographic area and you develop a bit of a referral network through them. So I can’t speak highly enough about group interaction. I mean, we met through a group and so yeah, I would, anyone operating a business page or trying to expand the reach their business have a look at the groups that are relevant to your area, to your industry, there’s a lot of women in business groups. There’s lots of different angles you can take to determining what sort of groups are going to be most relevant. But yeah, I would definitely try and spend some time in those groups.
Olivia:
So if anyone’s listening to this later in the podcast, join SEMBA, in Facebook.
Stacey:
Seamless!
Olivia:
But definitely, actually, I know some of my friends and people that I know, or that I just observe, if you know something to share the knowledge in groups and then you become no known as a trusted person, as a knowledgeable smart person and so yes, share your knowledge and ask questions yeah.
Stacey:
It comes back to reward you.
Olivia:
Yeah. All right. So do you have any questions out there before we wrap it up? Anything else you want to add?
Stacey:
No, I don’t think so. Thank you for for having me later.
Olivia:
Pleasure! Yeah, it’s been great! Well done. Well thank you everyone for joining us. And have a great day and a great weekend. And then we’ll post…If anyone wants to contact you for more information, of course they can. Stacey Murray from Alfalfa Social Media. Google it or search it in Facebook. Okay thank you. Bye!
Stacey:
Bye!
Interview conducted by Olivia de Sousa-Ferres
You can contact Stacey Murray from Alfalfa Social Media here: Facebook Page Link or Website
You can find the SEMBA South East Melbourne Business Associates Facebook page here.
SEMBA is sponsored by Officeway. Their office furniture website is here.
