With over 2 billion monthly users worldwide, Facebook is absolutely the largest social network of all. 1.47 billion of these users log onto Facebook every day, spending about 41 minutes on the website. Over 60 million small businesses and big brands actively use Facebook as their marketing platform to reach and increase following, foster engagement, generate leads and stay relevant and competitive. There is absolutely no reason your business shouldn’t be one of them.

If their recent data policy and algorithm change had you concerned and thinking whether your business will continue to benefit from being on Facebook, Fortune says you shouldn’t worry, nothing is changing. And Facebook confirms it too:

“Businesses that advertise with the Facebook Companies can continue to use Facebook platforms and solutions in the same way they do today. Each company is responsible for complying with the GDPR, just as they are responsible for complying with the laws that apply to them today.”

You will have to continually adjust your paid and organic content strategies, plans and tactics, as social media is constantly developing and evolving in front of our eyes. But a solid foundation and sticking to the basics will undeniably deliver the desired results. With that being said, here are the top five sure-fire practices your business needs to master to get the most out of Facebook marketing:

1. Know and Listen to Your Audience

You want your content and advertising efforts to reach people who will benefit from what your business offers, and therefore are most likely to engage with your brand. Facebook Audience Insights and other third-party social media management tools will give you this valuable in-depth information about your user demographics.

But don’t just stop there. Dig in deeper to find out what kind of content works best with your core audience, which posts receive the most attention and generate clicks, likes, shares and overall engagement. Test your content, ask questions, ask followers for their comments, listen carefully and pay attention to their interests.

2. Keep Your Posts Short and Sweet and Encourage Engagement

Your first and foremost goal, when developing a content strategy for Facebook, should be to educate, inform and entertain your audience about your brand while increasing engagement and conversions. Facebook is unique in the way that it lets you share images, videos, short or lengthy text, but it will only favor content that receives lots of engagement. And marketers experience shows that short and succinct content is what gets and keeps readers’ attention.

Images also easily catch our attention and should be an integral part of your posting strategy. In fact, their engagement rates are the highest among all post types. According to Post Planner, posts with photos generate 53% more likes, 104% more comments, and 84% more click-throughs compared to textual content. So, in order to supercharge your engagement on Facebook, make sure to include compelling visuals with your content, but also ask questions, host events, run contests and give your followers what they want.

3. Post Timely and Consistently

Deciding how often and when to post on Facebook should be an important consideration in your content strategy. After all, you don’t want to put off your following by posting too often, or disappearing for months.

But how often is too often? Your Insights information gives a good answer, but for most brands looking to build engagement and post impressions, once to twice a day is a good rule of thumb. Revive Social’s and other research data confirm this statement, as you can see on the image below.

[the image is from – https://revive.social/how-often-to-post-on-social-media/]

When it comes to your posts timing, Sprout Social’s 2018 Industry Research finds out that “engagement rates consistently peak during the midday on weekdays”, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m, with Wednesdays and Thursdays at noon being the best, and Saturdays the poorest times for engagement.

[you can include image from the research – https://media.sproutsocial.com/uploads/2018/03/Heatmap-Facebook-1.png]

4. Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

Get creative, take chances, use every tool at your disposal to garner interest and differentiate your brand from the rest of the noisy crowd. Give your fans access to exclusive information, behind-the-scene sneak peeks, and help them humanize their experience and interactions with your business.

Videos are huge nowadays. And Facebook has become the center of the social video universe, with over 8 billion average daily video views and more than 100 million hours of video watched every day. Quality video content is a great way to keep fans glued to your posts and business. Even better are Facebook Live videos. You can stream product demos, interviews, behind-the-scenes moments exclusive to your brand. According to a study of video engagement by Quintly, native Facebook videos, – this includes Facebook Live streaming, – have 168% more interactions and are shared at a 477% higher rate compared to videos linked from other hosting websites.

5. Boost Your Ads Budget

More than 67% of marketers choose Facebook as their most important platform, and for 72% of them, it’s their go-to network for paid advertising as well (just for comparison, Instagram ads are second with 31%). If you’re going to make an impact, you’ll have to spend money to boost posts or place ads on Facebook. It was even necessary before the news feed changes, and now it’s more important than ever.

To ensure the best ROI you’ll have to “return to the basics”, to test your content, learn as much as you can about your target audience, and use these valuable insights to develop an effective content strategy that inspires brand loyalty and awareness, and helps you eventually acquire new customers and conversions.

When used correctly, social media should encourage meaningful interactions between people. And Facebook especially. Small businesses will have to put in extra effort to truly connect and build real relationships with their customers. Keep in mind that these efforts will later allow you to better serve your audience, and actually turn them into raving fans of your brand.