Quickfire marketing – New to social media? start with Facebook

Steve Hasler fires ideas bullets in his regular ‘Try This’ column

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, Pinterest – these channels don’t exist purely to help us talk to our friends. Can they bring you new customers?

WHERE DO I START?
We recommend Facebook as being the first place to invest your time, as it is the most popular and also has the best paid advertising functionality. It also allows you to schedule posts. Spend an hour once a week scheduling content to appear automatically. You can still add items periodically or react to news or current affairs, but it will mean that if you get caught up on a stock take, your business still appears active online.

BUT I DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW FACEBOOK WORKS
If you really don’t have the first idea about how Facebook works, start with a personal profile. You’ll need one anyway to manage your business page from, and it really is the best way to get an overview of how it works. Once you’ve built your profile you see adverts delivered in a number of formats. These are paid adverts and something that you really want to consider.

WHAT NEXT?
Once your personal profile is created, you can create your business page. You’ll need a profile photo (ideally square) and a cover photo (a wide rectangle image across the top of your page); use your logo or photos of the store for these. Get as many photos as possible on your social media channels – it’s an interesting place to be and there are regular events worth attending.

WHAT ABOUT CONTENT?
Spend a bit of time looking at the profiles of similar businesses to get an idea of what works. Look at the likes, shares and comments of their content and you’ll soon see what makes a successful post.

AND ADVERTISING?
Once you have an established page with profile picture and cover photo, and have regular content sorted, consider paid advertising. Even if you work hard to build up a fan base, Facebook will only display your content on a very small percentage of your fans’ newsfeeds, unless you pay them to do so.

Read more great ideas in full from Steve Hasler at independentretailermarketing.co.uk