Facebook marketing in 2021

What everyone ought to know about Facebook Marketing in 2021

By Manuela Vulpescu

Have you created your social media strategy for 2021 yet? If not, that’s the best time to get started, so let’s talk about Facebook!

Despite all scandals and the fact that its’ growth is generally slowing down, the network still dominates by far the Social Media market worldwide, especially when considering all products in the group (Facebook, Whatsapp, Messenger, and Instagram). That should be a good enough reason to have a deeper look into Facebook and see how you can best integrate it into your marketing plans for the next year.

Most popular social media networks worldwide, according to Statista (Mill users in July 2020)

 

How to use Facebook for Business?

To initiate any business activity on Facebook, you have to have a personal account. Why? Because behind any Business Page, there must be a person with a credit card who pays for advertising on social media.

All you need to know about the Facebook Algorithm

The algorithm determines which posts from friends and businesses to feature in one’s News Feed. To establish what to rank higher, Facebook looks at:

  • The time when things are posted - so it’s best to post when your fans are online.
  • The story types you post - you need to create content specifically for Facebook.
  • How informative your posts are
  • The average time spent on your content, and
  • The overall engagement of your stories.

On the other hand, it’s not “Breaking News” that Facebook decided to erode the organic reach of the posts published by companies for pushing the ads. Businesses can now reach only up to 3% of their audience without investing in advertising. More and more companies understand that it’s not enough to be good in our days. You also have to pay if you want to play.

Three tips for increasing organic reach

  • Avoid posting short irrelevant videos, quotes, quizzes, polls, or links to other websites as they get demoted by Facebook.
  • Avoid using tag baiting, comment baiting, vote baiting, share baiting, or other tricks alike as Facebook downgrades them too.
  • Be engaging as the algorithm rewards those posts that are shared on Facebook and Facebook Messenger. If “sharing” is good, “commenting” is even better since the network favors communication.

Features such as Facebook Stories and Live, or apps like Instagram , are becoming more popular and drive greater engagement. However, it is important to understand how the News Feed works to utilize it while still effectively.

Facebook tools you should not miss in 2021

  • Facebook Groups
  • Facebook Page
  • Facebook Messenger
  • Facebook Live

More engagement on Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups are places where people meet and communicate about the things they have in common. The tool is one of the most popular on the platform, and it can be a great way to build communities around your products or specific interests you might have in mind. Its role is supposed to increase in the next period of time, as Mark Zuckerberg intends to promote it on a larger scale to improve communication between Facebook users.

It might probably help to eventually start creating Facebook Groups and focus on targeted “Only Members” business interactions in 2021 while opting for:

  • Secret Groups – to use mainly for internal communication with your teams.
  • Closed Groups - if you want to create a sense of exclusivity among your customers.
  • Public Groups - to keep in touch with the fans of your products and services and initiate conversations with more and more people willing to become group members.

“Less is more” on Facebook Pages.

“Less is more” applies to Facebook too. Limit your posts to one per day, and be sure they are interesting enough to generate conversations. Choose a mix of created and curated content, and remember that people come to Facebook to be entertained and not for buying things.

Promote the posts with links to your blogs if you want to increase your web page’s traffic and use Facebook Live to boost your organic reach.

Last but not least, focus on building valuable relations. Likes don’t mean a lot anymore. Dialogues are better. They bring more than any hunt for “Fans” you might be tempted to organize.

Chatbots and Facebook Messenger

Did you know that hundreds of thousands of bots are used by Businesses on Facebook Messenger to engage in conversations, collect information, recommend products, or take orders?

most popular social media
Ralph - the Lego Gift Bot

If you want to provide personalized support and instant customer service , or if you want to help your clients browse your products and buy them, you should probably consider integrating messenger chatbots into your strategy.

Creating a chatbot is a pretty simple task. You can very well use Manychat.com to complete the job. The tool is straightforward to use. Keep in mind that the bots’ main challenge appears to lay less in their technical development and more in creating the right conversation flow, enabling them to act smart and useful when sending messages. Ralph - the Lego Gift Messenger Bot can be a great inspiration for all retailers who want to familiarize themselves with the subject.

7 Ideas to integrate Facebook Live

Facebook Live can help you:

  • launch products
  • interview experts
  • hold Q&A sessions with your customers
  • hold webinars
  • share news
  • organize “sales” parties
  • create “behind the scenes” footage

Pros and Cons of Facebook Advertising

Due to lower organic traffic, companies need to use Facebook advertising if they want to increase their brand awareness and target audiences based on where they are in the customer journey.

Pros

  • You can easily track your campaigns and get extensive data about the results.
  • You get immediate feedback.
  • You can use retargeting options and improve your acquisition costs.
  • Facebook Advertising can be relatively cheap in comparison to other forms.

Cons

  • You may target audiences that are not in your target market, basically wasting part of your money.
  • Facebook Ads are easy to forget, leading in some cases to unnecessary spendings. But, on the other hand, if you let them run too often and too long, you may end up annoying your audience.
  • It takes time, attention, and experience to get the best out of your Facebook campaigns.
  • You may spend most of your budget to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

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