3 Ways How Your Firm Can Use Facebook To Grow and Succeed

By Olivier Derbesy

Student of Brighton University – Digital Marketing Blog Post #2

Introduction

Facebook has been around for over 15 years now, and it has changed drastically! For a few years now, Facebook has become a platform used by not only consumers, but all types of businesses (Muk and Chung, 2014). Facebook itself, has adapted to better implement business pages and have provided many opportunities through their platform. Thus, it is important for any business, but especially small businesses, to utilise the Facebook platform to its best of its ability by growing its following, reaching more consumers/customers and all basically for free (Augar and Zeleznikov, 2014). Kang, Tang and Fiore, (2014) state that Facebook has even become a popular tool for marketing by small businesses. The following blog post will discuss the following of a facebook page. It is important for a page to have a following and not only likes on the page. Engagement is the key to having a following rather than just likes. Then, I will discuss a widely expressed tip for business or anyone trying to create a popping social media page. If you communicate and connect closely, on a regular basis, then Facebook can grow your community size,  customer reach, network and so much more!                           (Image source)

 

Customer Engagement                                                                                             

There are so many ways of engaging people on a Facebook page but it is important to consider who your target market is, and what will attract them the most to not just like a post or picture but to also comment and even re-share on their page.

Unfortunately, Facebook engagement can also be negative, for example, the most common problems seen from business on facebook are complaints of the product and service quality, money issues, and social/environmental issues (Yang, Ren and Adomavicius, 2019). Feedback is the most effective way to make a customer or consumer on your facebook page engage with you (Kraus et al., 2019).

A very significant part to getting engagement on your businesses Facebook page is being able to display your businesses personality. This means showing what you are doing, why, and how, as well as what you want to do and how you plan to achieve it. By showing the consumers on facebook your mission, the people you attract will want to follow you and interact with your posts in the long-term. Another easy way of creating engagement is by asking questions and using pictures. Questions are great for getting your reader or consumer to think and get that idea into their heads. Similarly, pictures are also a powerful tool to attract attention and tell a story, or experience.

(Image source)

“Content is King” (Bill Gates, 1996) 

Bill Gates said in 1996, that “content is king.” This was said at the time that this internet was rising, after TVs and broadcasts were being played. He said this because even at that time, he knew that the internet will be an entertainment platform just like TVs which content will be the king of. This is trying to say that if you have new, relevant, and interesting posts, pictures, videos, activities, etc. then post it on Facebook and grow your community. By focusing on building customer relationships through the Facebook page can result in high sales which would not have been achieved by just focusing on sales (Kraus et al., 2019).

Importance of a Facebook Community

Through your business’s Facebook page, the people that are following you are your community. Some will be customers, some will be followers and some will be just ‘likers’, but the bigger your Facebook community is, the bigger and faster it will get. This is due to many reasons such as your page’s reach and UGC (user generated content). The reach of a page is how many people are mutually connected. A Facebook page can be mutually connected through the friends of the people who follow the page, as well as hashtags and geolocations. Hashtags and geolocations allows consumers to search for your business through key words or through a location, this in term expands the reach of your Facebook page even more. Click here for information on how to insert hashtags and geolocations, as well as what it does. UGC is probably the most used social media page tool used by business in the world today (Yang, Ren and Adomavicius, 2019). UGC is essentially encouraging your followers to post content of themselves or their experience with your company and posting with it while tagging them. This creates posts on your own business page which shows your other customers peopler are enjoy their experience with you.

Conclusion

Overall, Facebook can be a great tool for business to grow their brand awareness, community, and business in general. Do not forget that a Facebook page needs to be up to date and requires regular maintenance. Although there are many benefits to a Facebook page for your business, problems will always arise so make sure to deal this them quickly and transparently. keep entertaining and informational content and people will be engaged and inclined to become a loyal customer.

 

References

Augar, N. and Zeleznikov, J. (2014). ‘I just saw this on Facebook, I need it now’: Exploring Small Business use of Facebook. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 18(3).

Kang, J., Tang, L. and Fiore, A. (2014). Enhancing consumer–brand relationships on restaurant Facebook fan pages: Maximizing consumer benefits and increasing active participation. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 36, pp.145-155.

Kraus, S., Gast, J., Schleich, M., Jones, P. and Ritter, M. (2019). Content is King: How SMEs Create Content for Social Media Marketing Under Limited Resources. Journal of Macromarketing, 39(4), pp.415-430.

Muk, A. and Chung, C. (2014). Driving Consumers to Become Fans of Brand Pages: A Theoretical Framework. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 14(1), pp.1-10.

Yang, M., Ren, Y. and Adomavicius, G. (2019). Understanding User-Generated Content and Customer Engagement on Facebook Business Pages. Information Systems Research, 30(3), pp.839-855.

 

Search Engine Optimisation for Small/Medium Enterprises

Digital Marketing Blog Post 1 – SEO for Small Organizations

 

Do you have, or want a website, and want to boost its performance? Then SEO (search engine optimization) can be a very useful tool if done right. SEO is the act of improving many areas of your website or internet presence in general, to make your business more apparent in a wider range of searches throughout the search engine. It is the process of maximizing the number of visitors on your page. There are many aspects to SEO systems, which can take a significant amount of time and money. Therefore, many startups and SMEs (small to medium enterprises) do not feel the importance of doing even a little bit of SEO. Despite the complexity and range of the entirety of SEO, SMEs and startups do benefit from small modifications in their web domains. This blog post will guide you through 4 short, easy, and effective SEO tips that you can be used for SMEs and startups by yourself. I have to mention, there are many SEO applications nowadays. For example, Screaming Frog – SEO Spider, is a great application because it notifies you when there are broken links, title page, meta descriptions, URLs and more. Plus, it is free all small business with under 500 pages on the web! Once you have looked at the SEO tips below, Screaming Frog can be a very useful tool to keep your website running smoothly, and up to date.

Source of Image: (ScreamingFrog.co.uk)

  

SEO Tips for Small Business

1.     Domain Authority

From all the websites and journal articles about SEO, domain authority is always a significant aspect to be expressed. Google is the largest search engine by far, therefore understanding the way google search results work will allow for you to understand how to upgrade your page in the search results. Google now uses the acronym E-A-T, which stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, to evaluate the domain authority of the page (Dean, 2020). Therefore, by having reliable sources, quality content, citable and interesting authors, pictures, and videos then the page will appear more when people search.

 

2.     Website

This is because having a well-structured, easy to use, and fast website will allow for your visitors to find and use your website to the best of its ability (Miller and Miller, 2017). There are many things a website or page does that can devalue its search placement.  The most common mistake found on the internet today is duplicated content, about 50 per cent of websites face this problem (Terenteva, 2016). According to Terenteva, (2016), the second most common mistake faced by websites are meta descriptions, which are the small text that summarizes the website on the search result page of the search engine.  30 per cent are duplicated and 25 per cent are missing, so make sure to have a well thought out meta description of your website. Other issues include broken links, hashtag issues, geolocation issues.

  

3.     Knowing your Audience

 It is essential to understand who your customers are and why they potentially want to transact with your website. By knowing who your customers are and what keywords they search for will allow you to relate to those keywords in your website to optimize your search engine presence. A few words that help for SEO are the location, brand, product, etc. Nowadays, consumers start on search engines 70 per cent of the time when browsing and shopping for products and services (Decker, 2018).

 

4.     Content Quality and Quantity 

Firstly, the content quality must be unique and attractive to your target visitor on the website. Photos and videos help significantly! Keep in mind when adding photo and videos that they must be well titled and accessible from all platforms. As mention earlier, the E-A-T, expertise, worthiness and authoritativeness, will be improved by having quantity of quality content.  Additionally, it is highly important to have many new contents published on the website for it to stay relevant and fresh to visitors.

 

Overall, SEO for SMEs and startups can be done without it having to take all your time and money. Although, expert consultants on SEO will do wonders for a larger firm and maybe even a small firm, it is not necessary to hire one to do some SEO and improve your page to make it the best it can be. Although I am a student, from the extensive research of scholarly journal articles and credible online websites, I am able to present above the 4 most significant and effective parts of the SEO tool for SMEs and startups.

 

 

 

References

Dean, B. (2020). The Definitive Guide to SEO in 2020. [online] Backlinko.com. Available at: https://backlinko.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/backlinko-seo-this-year-guide.pdf [Accessed 16 Jan. 2020].

Decker, A. (2018). The DIY SEO Beginner’s Guide to Optimizing Your Startup’s Site | Foundr. [online] Foundr. Available at: https://foundr.com/seo-for-startups [Accessed 16 Jan. 2020].

Miller, M. and Miller, M. (2017). Small business SEO: Your questions answered – Search Engine Land. [online] Search Engine Land. Available at: https://searchengineland.com/small-business-seo-questions-answered-276500 [Accessed 16 Jan. 2020].

Search Engine Optimisation Starter Guide. (2018). Google.

Terenteva, E. (2016). 11 Most Common On-Site SEO Mistakes – SEMrush Study. [online] SemRush. Available at: https://www.semrush.com/blog/semrush-study-on-site-seo-issues/ [Accessed 16 Jan. 2020].