Accord­ing to Face­book, the goal of its News Feed is (and always has been) to “show peo­ple the things they want to see.” Over the course of last year, Face­book took feed­back from its users and got to work opti­miz­ing the News Feed expe­ri­ence. For brands, this is a sig­nif­i­cant trans­for­ma­tion that puts con­tent mar­ket­ing at the heart of Face­book strat­e­gy. By refo­cus­ing Face­book efforts on the things con­sumers want to see and know­ing the basic dos and don’ts, mar­keters can lever­age the chan­nel as anoth­er exten­sion to bring their brand and its sto­ries to life.

Don’t Make It All About You

With emi­nent changes rolling out to Facebook’s News Feed algo­rithm to weed out over­ly pro­mo­tion­al posts, brands should take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to re-eval­u­ate the mes­sages they are shar­ing. Instead of sell­ing, focus on telling sto­ries that res­onate with your audi­ence but are still rel­e­vant to your brand.

A good exam­ple of this can be seen with Blue Apron. Blue Apron offers a ser­vice to deliv­er ingre­di­ents and recipes for peo­ple to pre­pare meals at home, but here, it offers a link to help­ful instruc­tions on how to make stock using veg­etable scraps.

This may seem counter-intu­itive to the ser­vice they pro­vide, but it’s actu­al­ly a suc­cess­ful way to con­nect with the culi­nary inter­est of their tar­get mar­ket. Fur­ther­more, this post dri­ves audi­ences back to the brand’s blog where they can explore more recipes and con­tin­ue to engage with more con­tent.

Do Capitalize On Timely Events

While you want to cap­i­tal­ize on time­ly events, they must be appro­pri­ate­ly aligned with your brand. If you try to reach too far out­side the bounds of your brand per­sona, you won’t seem gen­uine. When exe­cut­ed suc­cess­ful­ly, this type of con­tent can draw high engage­ment giv­en Facebook’s con­sum­able and share­able nature.

Two brands that have done this right include Nasty Gal and Tos­ti­tos.

Awards sea­son is as much about the fash­ion as it is about the awards. Nasty Gal took the Gold­en Globes as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to high­light red car­pet fash­ions and offer sim­i­lar, inspired finds from its brand.

Whether it’s game day or Nation­al Que­so Day, Tos­ti­tos is on it with on-point con­tent.

Do Empower The Community

Tap into the pow­er of your fans on Face­book and make your con­tent more inter­ac­tive. These peo­ple have liked your brand for a rea­son and are a strong base from which to pull ideas and feed­back.

The Hon­est Com­pa­ny took an oppor­tu­ni­ty to solic­it its cus­tomers for feed­back on their favorite prod­ucts and added a give­away to encour­age response.

Ben­e­fit Cos­met­ics asked its fan to cap­tion a fun pho­to and enticed with a reward.

These exam­ples show how to get a two-way con­ver­sa­tion going and can make the audi­ences feel like they have more of a stake in the brand — adding an incen­tive once in a while doesn’t hurt either.

Do Tag Other Pages, Companies, Fans In Your Posts

Fur­ther build a sense of com­mu­ni­ty by con­nect­ing with cus­tomers and high­light­ing rel­e­vant part­ners by tag­ging them in pho­tos and posts. Sim­i­lar to the exam­ple above, this sim­ple tac­tic can go a long way by shin­ing the spot­light on oth­ers, rather than the brand itself. GoPro can often be seen shar­ing pho­tos and videos sub­mit­ted by the users of its prod­uct (a great way to source con­tent, by the way) and giv­ing cred­it where due.

Do Optimize Your Photos, Posts

Get­ting images right on Face­book may mean the dif­fer­ence between get­ting some­one click­ing on your con­tent or ignor­ing it. The image present with a link is the first impres­sion giv­en to the view so you bet­ter make it count.

Know the ide­al dimen­sions for pho­tos and images; these can change fre­quent­ly so keep tabs on Face­book updates. Fur­ther­more, when insert­ing a link, con­sid­er updat­ing the pho­to, title, and descrip­tion that’s auto-pop­u­lat­ed if need­ed to cre­ate some­thing more bespoke and appeal­ing.

When you find a post that works, pin it to the top of your page so it won’t be missed by vis­i­tors.

Do Boost The Facebook Experience With Apps, Additional Content

Face­book has evolved to include a vari­ety of addi­tion­al con­tent oppor­tu­ni­ties that inte­grate with­in the Page ecosys­tem so brands can build out cus­tomized, brand­ed hubs.

Take advan­tage of avail­able apps to build out your page, mak­ing it more invit­ing and use­ful for con­sumers. Add tabs to stream your oth­er social feeds; if you have store/shop loca­tions, high­light them through map plu­g­ins.

And now, you can even inte­grate spe­cif­ic and rel­e­vant calls to action that align with your over­ar­ch­ing busi­ness goals, like Zap­pos’ inclu­sion of “Shop Now.”

Do Explore Video

Ear­li­er this month, Face­book report­ed a 3.6x year-over-year growth in the amount of video in the News Feed. Face­book video has explod­ed for over the past sev­er­al months, over­tak­ing YouTube for the amount of video posts from brands in late last year.

Video offers a mul­ti-sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence for your audi­ence and a way to enhance your sto­ry­telling.

It worked for British retail­er John Lewis, which saw Face­book source 40 per­cent of views for its annu­al Christ­mas advert.

With the oppor­tu­ni­ty for video on Face­book grow­ing expo­nen­tial­ly, now’s the time to explore this for­mat.

Don’t Ignore The Insights

Let data help guide the deci­sions you make about your con­tent on Face­book. Face­book Page Insights are a free and easy way to get an under­stand­ing of how your page is grow­ing and per­form­ing, what posts are gar­ner­ing the most engage­ment, and what your audi­ence looks like. These ana­lyt­ics can help shape your strat­e­gy so you can be the most effec­tive with your con­tent on Face­book.

Don’t Think You Can Get By Without Some Paid Promotion

By now, we all know that Face­book reach is on the decline. Your organ­ic pres­ence alone won’t get you the same vis­i­bil­i­ty as it did in the past. To com­pete in the mar­ket, you must con­sid­er paid pro­mo­tion to com­ple­ment your efforts.

Even on the paid side, how­ev­er, impres­sion lev­els are decreas­ing, but the good news is, engage­ment has not fal­tered — this has to do with pow­er­ful tar­get­ing options that allow adver­tis­ers to bet­ter iden­ti­fy and reach their key audi­ences.

Make your adver­tis­ing worth­while by ampli­fy­ing your key mes­sag­ing and best per­form­ing con­tent. As you grow more com­fort­able with Face­book adver­tis­ing, seek out more advanced tar­get­ing meth­ods to tai­lor and opti­mize your con­tent for spe­cif­ic audi­ence seg­ments.

Don’t View Facebook In A Silo

While Face­book may be the reign­ing des­ti­na­tion for con­sumers, it isn’t the only social net­work­ing site vis­it­ed. The major­i­ty of Face­book users also engage across addi­tion­al social net­works such as LinkedIn, Twit­ter, Insta­gram, and Pin­ter­est, accord­ing to find­ings from Pew Research Cen­ter.

Giv­en this, remem­ber that Face­book is only one com­po­nent of your con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. Since your audi­ence could very well be fol­low­ing you across sev­er­al out­lets, make sure you spread out your efforts across the chan­nels that mat­ter most to your con­sumers. Cre­ate a con­sis­tent brand expe­ri­ence, but at the same time, keep your mes­sages var­ied across plat­forms – a copy/paste of posts from one chan­nel to anoth­er looks lazy and may results in peo­ple hid­ing your posts or even unfol­low­ing you.