Your Facebook page can easily be one of the most valuable tools in your marketing arsenal, so long as you set it up properly. It’s not just about making sure that you fill out all of the fields correctly and get a profile photo set up, though this certainly helps. Here are the key steps that you need to take in order to make Facebook a powerful marketing tool which drives sales.
Start with Friends and Family
An empty page with no likes can give off the wrong impression, even scaring off potential customers. To fix this, you need to get your first fans on board. Up to 50 will be a good start to get your page looking more populated. So where do these first people come from? Use your own friends list to start inviting people. Ask family members and close friends to add their likes. Not only are they the most likely people to accept your invitation, but they will also feel duty-bound to do so. They owe you their support! This is a good way to get that page looking busier from the start. You can even ask one or two people – such as your partner, sibling, or parent – to start liking and sharing your posts. Each time someone engages with your post, your reach will go up, allowing more people to see it.
Invite Clients
The next step is to start inviting people that you know will have an interest in your professional work. Who are the most likely candidates? Your past clients, of course! If you only have a few at this stage, it doesn’t matter – invite them all. If you have been in business for a long while, this may take some time. Just remember that it’s all worth it. The more eyes you have on your posts, the more effective each one becomes. It’s also very important to know that some of your audience are really interested in what you have to say. You may even encourage an old client to rebook a new session with you as a result of seeing your page.
Tag, Share, and Engage
You have to start filling in your photo albums to show people what you get up to. Don’t post everything at once – spread it out so that you can get more exposure out of every post. Try posting one photoshoot a day until you get through your backlog of the images you would like to share. Now it’s time to make them work a little better.
With each set of images, your first step is to start tagging. Find your clients on Facebook and tag their faces. This brings their attention to the fact that you have added their photos. It also shares the photos to all of their friends, which gives you a wider audience right away. Next up, try sharing the images. You can either share them on your own Facebook wall, or in a group. You could even share them to the wall of the client featured in them. It’s down to what you feel is best, as each of these options will give you exposure to a different group of Facebook users. Finally, make sure to monitor the comments on your photos and albums. Always try to reply to these and engage with the people who are engaging with you. The more you make this into a conversation, the more brand loyalty the client will feel to you. Not only that, but Facebook rewards high engagement by sharing your posts further. It’s a win-win action.
Maintain Professionalism
Remember that what you post on your Facebook page represents you in a professional light. This means that you should always try to maintain a level of professionalism which is appropriate to your business. Don’t start posting irrelevent memes or funny cartoons – it’s just not something that your clients are interested in seeing. They want to know about your photography, not your political views or sense of humour.
Make sure that you keep your comments polite at all times, too. You might have a funny ongoing joke with a client who you are friendly enough with to insult playfully, for example. But that isn’t going to come across on your Facebook page when strangers who are thinking of using your services see the post. Instead, they will see you being rude to a client. Things like this need to be thought out very carefully.
If you happen to get any negative comments on your page, it’s important to deal with these calmly too. Take a deep breath and walk away if you don’t think that you can write a polite and measured response just yet. If there is no way that you can respond at all, just hide the comment. If you have a repeated issue with the same person, you are also able to block them from your page. Never rise to them and start spewing angry words across your own page. It simply doesn’t reflect well on you, even if you were in the right.
Cross-Promote
You can use any other form of marketing channel to cross-promote your Facebook page, just as you can use it to promote other channels. This is called cross-promotion and it can be very effective. You can direct people on Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok and your website to your Facebook page. Even just installing a button or link to Facebook will help with this. You can also set up automation so that new Facebook posts automatically update to Instagram, Pinterest, and so on. It’s a very effective way to get the most out of every piece of content.
It’s not a waste of time to have people following you on lots of different channels, either. The more they see your work and become familiar with it, the more likely they are to think of you when they need to book a photoshoot. Keep at it, and your Facebook page will be primed perfectly for when you want to launch that big push campaign for seasonal shoots or special offers!
What are your best tips for using your Facebook page as a marketing tool? Share with us in the comments!