With more than 1 billion people on Facebook, the sheer volume of potential clients and customers makes this platform worth your marketing efforts. But building a following and making sure they see what you post has become a bigger challenge as Facebook continues to tweak the algorithm in favor of advertising and big brands. But do not abandon the platform just yet.
Here are a few nifty, mostly free, tips and tricks to help your content attract, engage and retain a fan base so that when you have something to sell them, they’re still listening. For more ideas on the specific how-to aspects of content marketing on Facebook, you can employ most of the ideas in 8 Ways to Get Your Posts Seen in the News Stream easily.
Increase your visibility. Think Brand You. – Cindy Ratzlaff, Brand New, Brand You
15 Tools, Tips and Techniques to add color, style and branding to your Facebook Stream
Engaging graphics that compel the reader to like, share or comment. Here are my favorite graphics tools.
- PicMonkey: both the free and the upgrade version of this photo editing site are fabulous. Resize any photo to fit the ideal measurements for Facebook cover photos, news stream photos, avatar photos in minutes. You can enhance your photos, add a border, add text and more.
- Quozio: This is a beginner tool that helps any brand, author or speaker instantly create quality quote blocks to share on other social sites. Easy-peasy.
- ReciteThis: You’ll actually giggle as you use ReciteThis! because you’ll wonder why you didn’t try it before and you’ll recognize the backdrops you’ll have already seen on the Facebook pages of very big name users. This is a handy tool to begin branding yourself as a thought leader by turning your own quotes into impressive looking graphics to share.
- PrintShop: This little program was originally marketed to teachers to help them create fun graphics for posters, flyers and more. I love it. Think of it as PhotoShop lite and learning curve, short. PowerPoint: Using PowerPoint templates, adding your own images and text and taking a screen capture shot, you can create graphics to share in minutes. Drag them into PicMonkey to resize and voila, you’re a graphics rock star.
- Add custom apps to your business page on Facebook using Woobox apps. I love the way their Pinterest and Twitter feeds look and the app box covers can be customized by uploading your own image at exactly 111 x 74. Again, using PicMonkey to resize your image will make this so easy. Take a peek at how I’m doing it on my book page on Facebook for Queen of Your Own Life.
- Iconosquare: This is my favorite app for pulling your Instagram account into a custom Facebook app. I love the look and the way your account is displayed using this app.
- Contest apps help you do a variety of engagement activities on Facebook. You can mask valuable content and reveal it only to those who enter the contest, you can ask people to like, comment or share something to enter or to tell a friend. All of these contest apps (and many more) are worth looking over for their various options. Most have free options and a small fee for a more advanced option.
- Create video messages for your fan base to solve a problem, demonstrate your authority, share an inspiration or promote an offer. If you’re a PC user, you might like to try ScreenFlow. www.telestream.net. ScreenFlow is a video creation and editing software for Mac users.
- If you’re a PC user, you should take a look at Camtasia for the same purpose as I mentioned in #9. http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html is similar video software for PC users. They do also have a Mac version, which I use but many Mac users prefer ScreenFlow.
- Instagram now has a 15 second video option as well as the digital photo option in their app. You can toggle from photo to video in a snap and upload to Instagram, Twitter and Facebook in one click.
- Don’t forget the easiest tricks of all. Your computer comes with a mic and camera. You can record video directly to Facebook by clicking the video icon option in your status update bar. This is a nifty and underused visibility strategy.
- YouTube – Create a YouTube account. Record some screen capture videos (see #9 and #10). Share those videos from YouTube to Facebook and Twitter as well as pin them to Pinterest. End of story. Do it now.
- Hate creating video? Don’t want to be on camera quite yet? Then Animoto is for you. This is my all time favorite tool for turning digital images into video. Upload your graphics, add some text, pick a wonderful template, choose music from the royalty free library, and mix. In 60 seconds or less, you’ll have a professional looking video to share on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, your website, Pinterest, G+ and in email marketing.
- 22 Social has a brilliant concept. No website. Connect with them on Facebook and get their app to broadcast live hangouts on your business page. https://www.facebook.com/22Social
- Livestream: Meerkat, Periscope, Blab and others give you an instant platform for creating livestream videos to share on multiple social networks.
For more tips, tricks, tools and techniques to help you grow your social following through Facebook business pages, connect with me on my business page, Brand New Brand You, where I share ideas daily.
*Featured Image Credit: spaxiax / Shutterstock.com
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