Some businesses are better suited to particular social marketing platforms than others. The concept of social hygiene holds that users don’t interact with the same people and brands on multiple networks – they keep their activities and contacts separate and act differently across digital environments. So there’s a strong incentive for brands to tightly focus on one or two channels when they’re looking for social engagement.
They may go the route of niche networks or specialty platforms, such as Pinterest or Instagram. However, the other road to travel is turning to social media giants like Facebook. After all, it’s still the preeminent social tool for most online businesses, despite recent changes to its News Feed visibility algorithm.
Facebook: The Google of social?
According to Social Media Examiner’s Social Media Marketing Industry Report, Facebook is still the most commonly used social platform by B2C (97 percent) and B2B (89 percent) marketers. In terms of perceived success, Facebook continues to reign supreme – 68 percent of B2C marketers said that it was the most important network in their arsenal. LinkedIn was number one in this category for B2B marketers (per 33 percent of respondents), but Facebook was a close second with 31 percent.
If nothing else, this should demonstrate that Facebook is essential to any online marketing strategy. With near-universal adoption rates, consumers and clients may come to expect a Facebook presence and will consider a lack of of one to be a sign of an untrustworthy brand. Fortunately, recent changes to how businesses represent themselves on Facebook make it easier than ever to customize the image companies put forth.
Have it your (social) way
Facebook just announced its latest redesign for Brand Pages is going live for all users, giving unprecedented control to companies that don’t want to conform to the network’s default layout. The most important customer-facing update is that different page sections, such as photos, posts, ratings and followers, can be shuffled and take up different tiles on the page. This way, companies can highlight separate parts of their social profiles, depending on their audiences’ preferences. Highly-rated restaurants or eccommerce sites may want to make their four-and-a-half star ratings prominent, while B2B companies might prefer to showcase their how-to product demonstration videos.
Ultimately, brands need to represent themselves in whatever way is most likely to attract consistent engagement from customers and qualified leads. One half of the social marketing puzzle is to select relevant platforms where these users congregate online – and the other half is to put forward the best Facebook presence possible.
