Facebook is a crucial business tool in most marketing strategies because it is the most popular social network. However, due to its longevity, you may need to work harder to offer fresh content and ideas on your business or brand's Facebook page.

Although it's tempting to write a text, add a nice image and post to the channel, you can increase your chances of conversing with your audience and customers by adopting a communication strategy on Facebook.

#1 – Choose the right timing

Choosing the right time to publish your content on Facebook is decisive. It all depends on your audience, your content and your overall goal. Observe your audience and map out the people you would like to reach. For example, if your target customer is a busy stay-at-home mom, the best time to approach her will likely be different than a single person.

To know the most opportune times, you must experiment, even if it means making mistakes. The engagement rate is 3.5% lower than average from Monday to Wednesday. The same study shows that the best time to get post shares would be 1 p.m., while the best time to get clicks would be 3 p.m.

However, it should be clarified that these times are not the most popular slots but those that offer above-average engagement. It would be better to tell you to publish your content at a time when every other business is vying for public attention. These schedules are simply the ones that deliver accurate results visit Followerspro.

#2 – Embed images in social media

You've probably been told it time and time again, but it's essential to add images to your Facebook posts. As Angie Pascale, who works at Clickz, explains, "Photos generate a 53% increase in the number of likes on Facebook compared to a post without an image, and an 84% increase in the number of clicks on links". The latter provides seven handy tips for your Facebook images:

Share images of authentic people

Focus on the faces

Use real-life images rather than product images

Be concise

Encourage short answers

Create image galleries

Use nostalgia to your advantage

#3 – Organize competitions on Facebook

If there's one thing people appreciate, it's free. It is difficult to resist the prospect of a reward... The attraction of a potential gain constitutes a significant motivation. Moreover, the cost of organizing such a competition is entirely acceptable, considering the advantages resulting from it in terms of brand awareness and social media.

As an article from Wishpond explains, "The top reasons people 'like' a brand on Facebook are promotions/discounts (34% of respondents) and promotional gifts (21% of respondents)." Although the desire to increase its "engagement rate" is laudable, Wishpond identifies seven potential benefits following the organization of competitions on Facebook:

Increased number of fans (through methods like fan-gating), Increase in traffic (the example candle brand attracted 30,000 new subscribers in 6 weeks thanks to a competition)

Production of user-generated content

Collection of opinions in the target market (by asking your target customers for their views through voting competitions)

Increased shares and virality

Ability to start conversations

Expanding your email address book (by collecting addresses from contest entrants)

#4 – Crowdsource answers

As we mentioned previously, one of the benefits of a Facebook contest is crowdsourcing :

Customers and Internet users give their opinions, which helps boost engagement. Crowdsourcing acts as social monitoring, an essential component of any digital strategy. Everyone's favourite topic of conversation is themselves: by encouraging your Facebook fans to give their opinion or ideas on a subject, you are sure to see their engagement increase.

To find out what your audience and customers want, ask your fans a simple question or use polls to get them to give their opinions on different issues. Here are some suggestions for collecting "participatory" content that will help you get the most out of your audience:

Collecting testimonials through questions, Gathering comments on your posts, Asking fans to send photos of themselves using your product, Organizing a photo competition to collect images, Organizing a competition

#5 – Highlight your publications

While this practice is sometimes criticized, highlighting a post about your business on Facebook effectively improves your reach and engagement potential. Once your target audience is identified, you can refocus even more on the audience you want to reach using a "featured post". For those who need to learn what it is, our Facebook guide explains that a Featured Post is a post from your business Page that, for a set price, appears at the top of your audience's news feeds.

The price depends on how many people you want your post sent to (payment depends on the number of visits the post generates over time). Since you probably don't want to highlight every single one of your Facebook posts, here are three main rules to determine whether your post should be featured:

The publication promotes a product or service offered by your company. Posting encourages visits to your business website. The publication ensures the notoriety of a brief campaign launched by your company

#6 – Get to know your audience

This advice goes hand in hand with crowdsourced answers, and for good reason. The activities, posts, comments, and any other type of engagement you find on your brand's Facebook page offer valuable data you need to consider. You can see what kind of content your audience reacts to, what content they ignore, and, therefore, what content you should prioritize. 

Furthermore, you can focus on the socio-demographic category that best corresponds to your typical customer. Facebook makes it easy with "Audience Insights," where you can see what content your audience is responding to. With this understanding of the data, you'll know if you should post more photos if a contest worked or what topics you should cover in your posts.

#7 – Offer unique and relevant content

Is it obvious? Yet the number of companies and brands using recycled or "reheated" content reflects many missed opportunities on Facebook. By now, you should know your audience and customer base. Therefore, think carefully about what content they should find most useful. Is a teenage girl interested in an article dedicated to "4 ways to can tomatoes"? Common sense will always help you answer questions like this. Consider whether this or that content will appeal to your audience: this will always be useful to you.

Remember that your brand or product is unique! Whether there are direct competitors or not, your product or service offers aspects that no other can. You must, therefore, take advantage of these specificities and highlight them coherently in your Facebook strategy. Thanks to your product, are your customers performing better than before? Ask the customers to send you photos showing these results or post your images to illustrate the point.