Every time I meet a new client it is always the same question: can you please tell me what are the Facebook secrets? What are the best advices you can give me for our social media? What are we doing wrong in social media? In time, I have to say we have been asked so many different questions about this. It is definitely a recurring topic. Surprisingly the answer is always the same, and one that is embarrassingly simple: If you really need to give some money to Mark Zuckerberg you should at least be aware that there is a 20% rule, where you can promote post with up to 20% text and the rest image. Also another note here is that promoting somebody else content is not a good idea. Nobody would promote somebody else posts but unfortunately this is happening daily. There is in fact a large amount of companies out there promoting post where they have not developed their own video or pics. Last but not least, do not spread your investment across a long time window. Although FB pushes you to spend little every day in order to make you feel you are spending less money, the best solution here is to choose an extremely visual compelling post and promote it for short period with a substantial amount.do you even need a social media presence?. For the vast majority of the clients we work out together that the benefits to be on-line is bigger than the associated costs. This is not a question to overlook. For a small group of companies there are for sure other digital marketing strategies that will help them before social media. Mostly because they have not got the in-house resources to take care of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or any other platforms. Secondly, because they are B2B companies, they are so focused on a small number of clients that investing in social media seems to be a long term strategy more than an immediate benefit.

If you read or hear somebody convincingly telling you they have discovered all Facebook secrets I will be well alerted. There is none! There is first the need to ask you if you need to be on social media at all. If so then what is the best way? On which platforms? Oh yes because there are so many  social evangelist that will swear the more platforms you are on the best is for your brand. I am not saying this is not true, I am just spreading our experience with motorsport clients. The less, the more. Once established where and how. Some guidelines can be quite useful.

Content

If you have the time please check the Burberry FB site. You will quickly notice that there are pretty much only pictures. They have decided that words are not needed and what really counts is the visual impact. Bingo! Advice number one: to succeed on FB you need to focus on producing your own high quality imagery. Pictures are great, video is king! Clearly Burberry is a strong brand and they can be easily perceived cool without posting any words. For more mortal brand the lesson here is that less words more visual is definitely the way to go.

Promotion

If you really need to give some money to Mark Zuckerberg you should at least be aware that there is a 20% rule, where you can promote post with up to 20% text and the rest image. Also another note here is that promoting somebody else content is not a good idea. Nobody would promote somebody else posts but unfortunately this is happening daily. There is in fact a large amount of companies out there promoting post where they have not developed their own video or pics. Last but not least, do not spread your investment across a long time window. Although FB pushes you to spend little every day in order to make you feel you are spending less money, the best solution here is to choose an extremely visual compelling post and promote it for short period with a substantial amount.

Selling

People follow brands on FB to know more about them, to feed their love for a particular product, to receive promotions or to “kill time at work”. Certainly they are not following any brand to buy directly from Facebook. Having said that SMEs get often disillusioned with Facebook because of the low sales increment. FB is instead the perfect tool to increase brand awareness, to build brand reputation, to inform your potential audience and to get customer feedback. Anything outside this, in business terms would be a waste of time and resources. Certainly you can drive your Facebook audience to your on- or off-line store or you can push them to your events, but offering them sales opportunity on Facebook usually ends in catastrophic results, risking the company brand reputation.

Real value

The most important aspect of FB is that it works only if we are able to publish real valuable content. But what does it mean? Real is simple, in other words we could say real as physical or real as genuine. Do not push other people pictures. Do not rent media, own it. Create it. Use only content that is relatable to real life, real experience. FB is so intangible that performs at best when a topic is linked with a real happening with something that exist outside the digital world. Value instead is slightly more complicated. What is value for somebody following a brand on-line? Coupon, vouchers maybe discounts? You have only to check the RedBull F1 account to understand that for motorsport there is something even better: behind the scenes content, inside company information, latest update on products and people insights. Engineering details, specific processes or even new standards. This is what motorsport is very good at selling and this is exactly what our prospective audience is after. Real valuable content.