Say “social media” and lots of people will still think about Facebook. With all the changes to the site in the past 5 years, though, and given the explosive growth in popularity on Instagram, many brands question whether they should put much effort into Facebook these days.
But Facebook is still the primary social media platform used by the people with the biggest buying power in North America – women aged 40-60.
So if you’re reconsidering Facebook, you may not want to give up just yet, especially if this audience supports your brand.
And if so, use these hacks to make marketing on Facebook in 2019 your friend.
Kill the social media game on Facebook with these hacks
One: Use a square image in posts
You may not think about the shape of the images you post and, if you don’t, it’s time to start! That’s because, when you post a square image, it takes up more room in your followers’ news feeds, grabbing way more attention. So square off with Facebook and rack up those likes!
Two: Don’t use YouTube URLs – use the share button
When you put a YouTube link in a Facebook post, it doesn’t generate a preview of the video, which pretty much guarantees that no one will watch the video. Instead of dropping copying and pasting the YouTube link into Facebook, use the share button on YouTube. You do this by:
- Going to the video
- Clicking the share button
- Selecting to share on Facebook
- Picking the Facebook page to share it on
- Add your caption in the window that opens
Now you’re ready to post your video – with a preview – and actually get views. The one downside, though, is you can’t edit the thumbnail that appears for the preview.
Three: Include the link in the caption
Everyone’s into deleting the link for articles and websites they share, just leaving the preview of the page. But there are still some Facebook users who don’t know that if you click on that preview, it takes you to the site (remember that if people who aren’t computer savvy are on social media at all, they’re on Facebook). Capture these people by leaving the link in, making it clear how they get to the site you’re sharing.
Four: Increase Facebook page likes manually
Likes are still key with social media. But how do you get more page likes? Paid campaigns to grow page likes are incredibly expensive and ineffective, in our opinion. Instead, you can invite people who have already engaged with your page to like it – for free. To do this, click on the reaction icons on your post. A window opens to show the names of users who have reacted to your post. You’ll see a button by each user’s name to invite them to like your Facebook page if they don’t already. Just send the invite and you’re good to go! We’ve had excellent success growing Facebook pages with this method.
Five: Auto-post to Facebook Stories
We don’t think that creating content specifically for Facebook Stories will pay off for most brands, but you can easily auto-share Instagram Stories content over to Facebook Stories. When you post to Instagram Stories, just click to share on your linked Facebook page. Double check that the first few posts are going through properly. Once you have everything set up, you can focus fully on Instagram, knowing the Stories are being copied over to your Facebook page.
