How to Grow Your Business Using Facebook

1. Intro: Hello. Welcome to this class on how to grow your business using Facebook. My name is Donna and that's me in the lovely picture on the right, and I'm going to be your tutor throughout this class. In this class, we're going to cover off five key points. We're going to look at Facebook pages versus Facebook groups and sign the difference between them, the uses, that kind of thing. Then we're going to look at content strategy for organic growth. This is where you'll get some actionable tips to take away. Looking at how to boost your engagement because that's really important to grow any Facebook page. Then we're going to look at the insights and analytics because they'll give you a better understanding what works, what doesn't, so we're going to cover off what to look at for that. Finally, I'm going to finish off by sharing some top free tools, which I always love free, free is better that will help with your Facebook Shachi and basically be useful to you basically. Without further ado, let's get started. 2. Facebook Pages vs Facebook Groups: In this lesson, we're going to cover off Facebook pages versus Facebook groups. Let's start by clearing up the basics. Your pages public, like your business storefront, shop front, wherever it is, is what shows up on Google when people check your hours, browse your posts, see what you have to offer. A group on the other hand, is a private space. It's where real conversations happen. You can post them both, but pages are more visible to everyone, where groups, you can either make them public or private, but most people make them private because they're connected to specific topics and to also control who goes in them as well. So what pages are best for? They're great for brand awareness, ad campaigns, if you want to scale, sharing public posts, updates, launches, that type of thing, and they're great for SEO visibility on Google and Facebook. That is the best reason to have them. What are groups best for? Well, they're great for customer education, relationship building, nurturing warm leads, running challenges. For example, a lot of people will do 30, visibility charge or something, they'll do it in a group because what they'll do is control who's in that group and what they can do is from that. They can see who's engaged and then they can actively reach out to them afterwards or they can get to sign up to email list, that type of thing. A 30 day challenge is actually a really common thing to set up with groups and things like that, and but they can come from different sources as well. That's the great thing about groups. Once you've created one, you can share that link through other means, say from an email list or from other social media platforms to groups to join them as well. It's the same as Facebook, exactly the same as well. It's just getting people to go to them really. That's the difference between a page and a group. If you are a business, then a page is where you want to be. If you are a business and you have an educational side of it or a series of different topics or something like that, you can set up multiple groups along with your page. You don't need to restrict yourself to one or the other. You can have both if you want. But what you'll find is groups, you'll find a lot more of interaction, a lot more engagement that you'll have to do to talk with people. That's the point of a group. It's basically a WhatsApp chat. You're basically talking and you're building that trust, that conversation. That's what you've got to see it as. 3. Content Strategy for Organic Growth: In this lesson, we're going to look at content strategy for organic growth. Your content should do three things. Teach, connect, and sell. I call these three pillars value connections and promotion. You want to rotate between them throughout the week to build trust without overwhelming people. Let's look at value content. This is a perfect example. You've got tips, how to guides, checklists, tutorials, helping your audience learn something, building trust. A perfect example is three Canva hacks to make your product listing pop. That's an example. It's your giving value to what you're giving them basically. They're seeing a point in what you're producing for them. Then you've got the connection content. This is where your personal stories, behind the scenes, relatable posts. This is the point where you're building emotional connection. This is a really important aspect of it. This connection is what will sell what you have to offer. It will build up loyalty and it will build your Facebook page organically through word of mouth. It's through reviews and through those personal connections, it all links to this point. An example is what I thought freelancing would look like versus reality. Those types of things are connection building. It's your opinion, it's about you behind your business and that type of aspect. Then you've got the promotional content. What I will say with this is do not throw billions of promotional content out straight away. Do them say every three posts limit it per week. I know you want to be like, I've got all this to offer. It's not how you're going to build up an organic growth. It will put off so many people if you do post after post after post about things. When you do do them, always have a call to action like sign up, buy here, find out more that type of language. Show off the product, the service, the features, provide limited offers, get that traffic into your website. You're looking to drive the traffic and sales. That's the point of promotional content. You can see the difference between value and connection. They all have different purposes. This is how you're going to grow your Facebook organically. Without throwing loads and loads of money at Facebook, this is how you'll do it. An example of promotional content is, look, my new eBook just dropped. Here's Watson side. There's a couple examples of eBooks that are currently just launched basically. You can see how simple they are. One is doing a mockup and one is doing a very simple design. But these posts will only come out every so often. Some people pay ads for this, so that bottom one is sponsored ad, so you can do it, but we're looking at organically growing it currently at the minute. So let's talk about post formats that work really well. There are so many different options when it comes to Facebook, you don't have to do videos every day or write long captions, but it helps to mix things up. Reels and photos tend to get great reach, especially behind the scenes, lifestyle shots. Carousels are great for tips and storytelling. They're brilliant because sometimes when you have too much information on a graphic, it's just too much. That's why carousels are really good. Polls are great as well. They're used quite a lot in groups, but you can use them for your business. You can ask people's opinion about thing. That is the connection point that you're creating. It's all worthwhile thinking about different formats you can try, but it's worthwhile mixing them up. Don't just stick to one static images because you'll be missing out on those people that look at reals or stories or videos, that type of thing. I have a thing. And lastly, here is an idea of making content easy. The easiest way to do it without panicking, worrying, what am I going to post today and tomorrow is to plan out right, on Mondays, it's all going to be about tips. Wednesdays is going to be stories about me and things like that. Then on Friday, you'll do your promotions. Stick to that sort of structure. Tuesday and Thursday can be different topics. But it's just a really good idea to structure your week because then you can think, actually, today is about tips and then you won't find that you'll be doing promotions like Tuesday, we say Thursday. You won't find that because everything is planned out a little bit. Scheduling, when it comes to Facebook, you can use Meta Business Suite, you can do your reels, stories, all of your content can be done through that. What I will say is try and batch your content weekly using Canva, Google Docs, whatever tools that you find are useful. But batch do it each week for every two weeks, if you get at anytime, then do a whole month if you can. Um, but it's really important to already have in mind what you're doing for the following week. You're not panicking on the day going, Oh, I need to put something out now. And throwing content out there that doesn't have any value or connection or have a purpose really because you don't want to come across as just throwing it out for the sake of it, really. Finally, then my last little tip is, if you get to a point where you're like, I can't think of anything, look at your old posts, see what's out there. Maybe you can reword it or have a look at your analytics, which I will share in a later lesson. Have a look, see what worked, see if anything was really popular or just redo a post and think, actually, I'll come from a different angle and see how this does. There's no harm in using old posts. Say you can even use one from a couple of months ago. There was no harm doing it. A lot of businesses do it because often you won't have seen that post previously, especially if you're posting every single day in a week. It's a really good tip. I do it personally and I know loads of people that find it really useful, especially when you're struggling. 4. How to Boost Engagement : In this lesson, we're going to cover off how to boost your engagement. The Facebook algorithm wants people to engage and it rewards content that gets responses. If you post and no one reacts, it gets buried. But if a few people like comment or share, people shows it to more people. In other words, engagement equals more eyes, equals more potential sales. So there are a few tactics out there, and here's what works for me. I'll ask something simple like, what should go to Productive tool or morning person or night out. These questions are low stake but highly relatable comments. What you're looking to do is you're getting someone to do a specific action. You'll ask open ended questions, you'll use humor because most people press like, add a mini call to action, save this for later. Or comment on your own post with a follow up or a business a bonus tip or something like that or freebies here kind of thing, or you can tag your group from your page to encourage cross engagement between the two. You're getting people to actually do something with your post just so that it gets seen by more and more people. So the final thing that I will talk about is timing, consistency, and community. We've talked about those tactics. Now we're going to look at timing timing matters, and there is no specific time that's better than any because this does change. There are tons and tons of websites out there that will tell you to post at specific times, but there is a general idea of when people are most active. For example, this image that I've got on the left hand side is actually one of the most current ones out there. This is the best time to post on Facebook. As you can see, it varies. But the one time frame that does work is between 9:00 and 12:00 P.M. So if you want to make your life interesting and a little little bit easier, post around those times. Another thing when it comes to it is make sure that you're consistently posting with the same tome, same branding, reply to all comments that you get through. Replying to those comments can make a real difference as well. It shows that you're engaged, and it can build up a sense of community almost like a group as well. But you need to be actively pursuing when your audience is online and making sure that. There is some more in depth reports out there that I've seen relating to specific industries that if you Google Search, you'll find out when the key times specifically for industries are these are the most common ones, which is usually anywhere 8-12, most of the time. Specific days you'll find are really bad for engagement. Saturdays and Sundays. Most businesses do not tend to post on those days because people are about, they don't tend to check Facebook or if they do, they're not interested in business pages. It's usually Monday to Friday that you've got to worry about. And one last tip I will share with you is that when you are posting, do not do 9:00 A.M. Every time, do 902, 904, 905 because what you'll find is so many people will do it to the hour and you'll just get lost in all the other posts. By doing it, say at different times, minutes, you'll find you'll probably reach different people. It's work for me. I've been doing Facebook for years, so I've tried and tested multiple things. What I will say is you need to be engaging daily as well. You need to be checking your Facebook regularly. You need to be commenting or if a post doesn't do well, you need to be very proactive in growing basically your Facebook account and that is the best way to do it. The more you are proactive, the more active you are, the more Facebook likes it and the more it will put your content in front of the right people. 5. Understanding Facebook Insights & Analytics: This last so we're going to cover off understanding your Facebook insights and analytics. Where you can find your analytics is you need to click on Meta Business Suite, which is usually on the left hand side. Click Insights and that's what you're looking for is the word insights, and this is where you'll come into your analytics. So pages and groups will have separate dashboards. For pages, it's really useful, especially if you've got a connected Instagram account because you can flick between the two. This is where you can do it. But you'll get so much understanding of what is working, what's not. You can see the reach month by month. What I would say when it comes to analytics, especially starting out, is do spreadsheet label it with all of the insights that you can see views, reach reach impressions, likes, comments, all of that. Do tab with that and then basically do it month by month, write down what they are. For example, in this example, it's 56 views, write it down. Then what you can do from there is you can understand if the activity you're doing, your engagement is working. You can see if it's working or not. That's the importance of analytics. It gives you scope to understand what does well, what doesn't. So the things that you do need to be tracking, if you are doing spreadsheet or just tracking in general is you need to look at best performing post types. You need to look at photos, videos, polls, reels, stories, all of it. What works? Because what works for one business might not work for your business. You might find that stories is absolutely booming and everybody loves your stories. That's where you can start thinking, actually, I need to spend more time doing the stories than static. So when it comes to Facebook, changing your strategy is not the worst thing. Changing your strategy is important. You need to be doing it to basically make it work for you basically because the algorithms work from you as well. So if something isn't working, then change it. Try it out. A lot of people that do posts on Facebook and stuff. I've learned you know, trial and error, there is no right, you need to do it this way, this way, this way. You will not find that anywhere. Nobody will tell you this way works or this way it works because it's different for everyone. Your content will be different. You captions will be different. The amount of content that you do put out is different. You can also track top engagement days and times. This is really important, especially if you're finding loads of engagement on Mondays. Maybe it's about tips. Maybe switch that with your promotion day instead. See if that works. Change that content schedule around, see if that has a greater impact, you might find that Mondays, people love seeing new ideas and things like that. And so try it around. Click through rates. You can also have a look at. That's when people click through. There'll be a stat. The higher that is, the better it is basically. Then you can see the membership growth and stuff and the number of new followers you get and things like that, which is really important to track as well. Also, you can track how many people have basically unfollowed you as well. That's really important. It might be the fact that you've switched or changed something that they don't like. It might be the content type or it might be the graphic or something they don't like and that's why they're dropping off. That's a really important aspect to track. Then how to use this data. You've got all this bloody information, you're like, no, I've got so much. It's really simple. Have a look at repubsing high engagement posts. We mentioned about repubsing. Have a look at those posts, re pubs them, reword them. If it's a specific topic, do more content on it. If you're finding that loads of people talking about specific thing like AI, for example, then do more of it. You're providing content to them that they want to see and that's what you'll learn from Facebook, you'll understand what content you need to create that will appease your audience basically. From this data, you can shift your scheduling. You can eliminate underperforming post types. For example, if you find every Monday you're doing tips, but actually no one cares about tips. Change it. Change it to something else, change it to sharing useful resources or something else and see what works. Also, you can from all this data as well, you get to understand how to plan next week's content and the month after. You'll understand how to go about changing things that need to be changed. But you'll get a better understanding what works month to month. It will probably take you some time to understand what works and what doesn't, things will change and you just need to roll with it. But analytics will be your best friend at this point. You'll get a lot of insight into valuable things that you can proactively do to grow your Facebook page and to get it seen by the right people. 6. Top Free Tools to Simplify Your Facebook Strategy: This is your final lesson. We're just going to cover off the top three tools out there to help you with your Facebook strategy. These are the most popular ones, they're really easy to use. These are going to help you planning and scheduling. Use Metabusiness Suite to schedule post for free, really useful, especially as you can post in page and group, which is really useful. Cava will be your best friend when it comes to creating content to put on Facebook as well. If you haven't tried it, try it, it's free to use. There's loads of templates on there. If you're really not a designer, that's the whole point of Canva. Troll or using Notion, are going to help you when it comes to organizing your calendar. Those ideas, when you look at analytics, you're like, actually that posted really well, put it on your troll board and go, these ideas did really well and repurpose them at another point. Engagement and visibility tools, there are so many out there. For groups, I recommend group track. If you're doing lead generations or DMs, it helps keep track of who's joining, who's engaging and who's a potential client. Facebook Live and Reels, use short videos to boost your reach. They're going to be useful tools to basically reach different audiences and events. So this is really good if you are doing master classes or anything. You can also do them, for example, as a day to day challenge, which we've mentioned before, or you can do an intro a snippet almost of the main big master class that you have. People tend to do these as events as well, free events and then basically they get them used to what you've got to offer, and then they basically lead them down the rabbit hole of here's my actual full master class, here's the pricing and stuff. They're really, really useful tools. And finally, analytics and repurposing. Metrical is a scheduling tool. It's really useful. I use it. You schedule, you can measure, and you can compare posts. It's a really good easy platform for scheduling everything. If you don't want to use Business sweet, sometimes it can be a bit slow and sometimes it has its errors, which is a bit annoying. Sometimes try Metrical. It's a really affordable tool. There's also repurposed IO. There are so many of these out there actually. What you can do is you can schedule your posts like normal and what it'll do is it'll schedule across different platforms. But what it'll do is it'll put it in a queue. You can have different queues and basically you fill up each of the queues, and then what it does is it will repurpose it in after say 20 posts, however many posts are in the queue, and it repurpose it again and it'll show it again. So that's a really good tool. There's quite a few of them out Scheduler, I think is another one. I've tried them. They're really good, especially if you've got lots of content just so that people can see it again and chat fuel. This is a really good one to automate your Facebook messenger. So we haven't touched this, but do some homework on this. It's really easy. Manichat is another one. It's free. But it's really good. You can set up automated messages. So for example, if somebody contacts you on Facebook Messenger, it will come up with the message, and they will be automatic basically. Depending what they ask for they'll get a different message. They're really useful to look into. Hopefully, you found this course really insightful coming away with lots of interesting things to do to think about. I hope every success in actually setting up a Facebook page and a group if you want to as well. Um, but I really enjoyed doing this and I have los more courses to share with you regarding Facebook and other social media platforms, so check them out.