To be a successful small business owner, it’s imperative to know how to connect with your customers. This means that you need to know how to effectively manage all of your social media accounts to keep your audience interested in what your company says, and give your audience a reason to periodically visit your pages. As important as it is to write text posts on social media to keep the dialogues between you and your audience strong, it is just as important to share various types of media, too.
Facebook is one of the easiest social media outlets to share information because of the “share” button that is at the bottom of every post. As an administrator of a Facebook page, it’s simple to share posts from people who follow you, people you follow, and even some of your older posts that you want to bring more attention to. In addition, you have the opportunity to add a few of your own words to every post you share, which helps create a fresh dialogue and humanize your business, making your audience more inclined to interact with you.
How to Share Articles and Photos on Facebook
To share content, find the media or post you want to share and go to the bottom of the post where you’ll see “Like,” “Comment,” and “Share” buttons. From there, click on the “Share” button so a drop-down screen will pop up. When this happens, choose the option that says “Share on a page you manage” so you make sure to share the post on your company page, not your personal Facebook account.
Once you choose the page you’d like the post to go to, you will have the opportunity to add some of your own words to the post. The commentary you add shouldn’t be lengthy because the post you’re sharing should contain most of the information. What your comments add is substance to say why the post is relevant to your business and why your customers should care about it.
When sharing on Facebook, it’s also important to add the location of your business if its relevant to the post. Adding your location enables potential customers to see that your business is near them, and allows your audience to feel a closer, more personal connection to your company.
How to Share Customer Photos and Posts
A great way to create a dialogue between you and your audience is to share pictures and posts that your customers or clients have tagged you in or written about your business. This type of marketing, called consumer or user generated marketing, is an easy way to save time, money, and effort in your marketing activities.
To share a client or customer’s post, you use the same method as sharing any other text or media post. Find the “Share” button at the bottom and select “Share on a page you manage” before adding your own personal message. Your client will receive an immediate notification saying that your page shared their post and will feel the relationship start to build. When sharing, it’s best to write a quick caption thanking the person for their business to create a more personal connection between you and your clients, as well as makes your clients feel appreciated.
How to Create and Share an Event
Creating and sharing events gives you the ultimate reason to personally reach out to your customers and invite them to see your business in action. If you’re a bakery that will be at a local food expo in the area, odds are there is already an official Facebook event for the expo, however, it is up to you to share the post on your Facebook announcing that you will be there. You also need to personally invite your audience to come visit you there. If you’re having an independent event, Facebook makes it easy to create your own event online to share to your page and invite your friends and followers.
Events are an easy way to foster personal relationships with your audience when they come to see your business, and you can use special event promotions to create anticipation for the event and encourage potential clients to attend. Whether you have giveaways for the first 50 people who visit your booth, or you have a show-only promotion, these are great to include in your captions when promoting the event so your audience knows exactly what they will get out of visiting you.
What to Share on Facebook
There’s no right or wrong post to share on your small business’s Facebook page. Posts with written words are a great way to give details about your company or a promotion, but too many lengthy text posts make it difficult for your audience to stay engaged. We recommend always including a photo in a post because photos tend to grab the attention of people more than just words.
Something people don’t realize is that it’s also okay to not be completely serious in every post. For example, if you’re a dog-walking business, there are plenty of dog-related holidays to post about such as National Bring Your Dog to Work Day and National Puppy Day. Posting about “holidays” like this may sound like a joke at first, but it gives you a great opportunity to create special promotions on these days, and makes your social media pages more fun to look at, which will entice your clients to visit your pages more frequently and stay engaged.
Why You Want to Share on Facebook
The simple answer is that you want to share to increase outreach and get your name out there! Sharing is caring and the more you share posts, photos, and events, the more people know more about your business.
There are many ways in which sharing on Facebook can effectively boost your sales and reach to your audience, and one of the main reasons is by fostering these important relationships and humanizing your business.
Finally, if you’re sharing posts and certain details are subject to change, such as a date or time, it’s okay! Always keep in mind that it’s more important to get your events and content on your audience’s radar first, and let the details follow.
