10 Facebook Content Marketing Dos & Don’ts For Brands

Start bring­ing your brand and sto­ries to life by refo­cus­ing your Face­book mar­ket­ing efforts on the con­tent con­sumers want to see.

Kelly Wrather By Kelly Wrather from Kenshoo. Join the discussion » 0 comments

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.

Blue Apron Recipes facebook

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.

Nasty Gal Golden Globes facebook

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

Tostitos Queso facebook

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.

Honest Co Comments facebook

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

Benefit Caption Contest Facebook

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.

Go Pro Photo Facebook

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.”

Zappos Show Now CTA Facebook

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.

Monty The Penguin Facebook 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.

Facebook Page Insights

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.

Kelly Wrather

Written by Kelly Wrather

Sr. Manager, Content Marketing, Kenshoo

Kelly Wrather is the Senior Manager of Content Marketing at Kenshoo, the global leader in predictive marketing software. Prior to joining Kenshoo, she helped launch the Accuen brand, the trading desk of Omnicom Media Group. A graduate of Boston University's College of Communication, Wrather's previous experience also spans social media and online community management.

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