And, like most things, when managed properly social media and Facebook can be a huge benefit to jewellers by attracting new customers while better engaging with existing ones.
With more than 2 billion users it’s no wonder Facebook is an important business tool. While it might be too big to ignore, Facebook can sometimes feel a little daunting for jewellers but here’s how you can use it to gain new customers and manage promote customer reviews.
Here are some steps to set-up a Facebook Business page for your store that will not only attract new customers, but can also encourage them to offer reviews to bolster your online reputation:
How to Create a Facebook Business Page
If you haven’t set up your Facebook Business page yet, now’s a good time to start. The process is really easy. You can get set up in just four steps.
- From your personal Facebook account, click on the arrow in the top-right corner and select ‘Create Page’ from the drop-down menu
- Select a business category for your page
- Pick your industry and fill out the basic information about your business, including your contact information
- Start optimizing!
Why Facebook?
Besides the sheer size of the audience that you can reach through your Facebook Business page there are a number of reasons businesses should take advantage of Facebook, including:
- It has by far more adult users than any other social network. According to Pew Research 68 per cent of adults use Facebook compared to just 28 per cent for Instagram, which is the second most used social network by adults
- Those adults on Facebook spend more than 25 minutes per day on the platform
- Consumers use Facebook to discover new products
- 96 per cent of social marketers say the ROI for Facebook is greater than other social platforms
Maximise Images on your Facebook Business Page
1. Upload recognisable images
One of the first things you should do after setting up your Facebook Business page is to upload recognisable images for your profile and cover pics. Typically, your profile picture would be your logo, but could be anything that consumers would readily associate with your brand.
As far as your cover image goes, you want to create something that is both visually appealing and true to your brand. This is going to be one of the first things that people see when they go to your Facebook Business page so you want to be attractive.
When uploading images to Facebook it’s important that you adhere to their sizing guidelines. These change on a regular basis, so make sure you are keeping tabs on what the current sizing recommendations are. As of the posting of this blog post, here are some sizes (in pixels) to consider:
- Profile picture: Displays at 170 × 170 on desktops and 128 × 128 on smartphones
- Cover photo: Displays at 820 × 312 on desktop and 640 × 360 on smartphones
- Shared image: 1200 × 900
- Shared link: 1200 × 628
- Video: 16:9 or 9:16 aspect ratio
2. Thoroughly complete your Facebook Business page profile
One of the biggest mistakes we see individuals make when they create a Facebook Business page is not completing their entire profile. Doing so will not only help your page rank higher, but it will also provide visitors to your page the most important information they need to know about your business, including:
- Description: Make sure that you write a quick description that not only highlights what your business does but also includes important keywords for your business. Just make sure that you aren’t practicing ‘keyword stuffing.’
- Business hours: Many customers are coming to your page because they want to know when you’re open. Be sure that your business hours are accurate. If your hours ever change, like during the holiday season, for example, make sure they are updated to reflect those new hours.
- Link to your website: Make it as easy as possible for visitors to your Facebook Business page to get to your website. This can be accomplished by including a link to your site on your Facebook page.
3. Who is the target audience for your Facebook Business Page?
There are a number of things to consider when your business starts focusing on Facebook. The first thing you want to nail down is who is your core audience? Are you trying to engage with prospects or existing customers?
To get a real handle on your target market, you should take the time to conduct research on how consumers are researching and finding businesses like yours. If they are coming through Facebook, it stands to reason that you need to bolster your presence there.
Once you’ve settled in on who you want your target market to be, it’s time to start driving traffic to your page and building up an audience. HubSpot outlined the perfect strategy for building the audience on your Facebook Business page in a recent blog post. Here are a couple of suggestions they make:
- Fill out your profile completely
- Prominently place Facebook ‘like’ boxes on your website and blog
- Invite existing contacts to like your page
- Encourage employees to like your page
- Be a valuable resource
- Post frequently
Engage regularly
One of the hardest things to get right is figuring out how often should post to your Facebook Business page, how often you should interact with your Facebook posts, and what can you do to encourage engagement with your posts.
Research recommends that you should post on your Facebook Business page once per day. If you don’t have enough content to fill up that cadence, don’t be afraid to re-share content from trusted sources you think your followers would appreciate.
When it comes to increasing engagement with your posts, the Buffer blog has good suggestions. Below are the tactics we think are easiest to implement from that post.
- Post at the right time
- Incorporate more videos
- Ask customers what they think
- Try going live
Facebook Ads and your Facebook Business Page
Now that you’ve got your page set up and are starting to build an audience, let’s delve into some aspects of your Facebook Business page that will help you maximise the value of your presence. First, let’s talk about Facebook Ads.
Facebook Ads makes it easy for you to reach a targeted audience across all of Facebook’s platforms, including Instagram and Facebook Messenger. Facebook Ads can help you increase brand awareness, collect leads, and drive purchase decisions. For more information about creating ad campaigns on Facebook, check out this Beginner’s Guide to advertising on Facebook.
Facebook Messenger and your Facebook Business Page
The way that consumers want to engage with businesses is changing. No longer do they want to email or talk on the phone. Most consumers (89 per cent to be exact), would like to engage with businesses via a messaging app. The problem is less than 50 per cent of businesses are capable of messaging with their customers.
Facebook Messenger is one of the largest messaging apps out there that can be used to engage with customers. And there are 60 million businesses out there that are doing just that. On a monthly basis, there are 2 billion messages sent between consumers and businesses. The good thing for you is that Facebook Messenger is also one of the easiest messaging apps to set up and manage.
Below are the steps to set up Facebook Messenger on your Facebook Business page:
- Click on settings on the top, right of your page
- From the General Tab, select Messages
- Check the box next to “Allow people to contact my Page privately by showing the Message button”
- Be sure and save changes
Once you have activated Facebook Messenger, it’s important to have a plan in place to respond to and engage with customers (here’s a great resource on how to use Facebook Messenger for your business). That’s because Facebook will let visitors to your page know how responsive you are to incoming messages. If you appear to be non-responsive, you could be driving consumers to the competition.
We strongly recommend having a tool in place to manage all of your Facebook Messenger interactions. This will ensure you are staying on top of new conversations as well as make it easier to understand typical customer requests and questions to help you improve the customer experience.
Facebook Reviews
Finally, you should take the time to ask your customers to review your business on Facebook. Online reviews are now an invaluable tool for consumers who are researching new products and businesses. Reviews are a powerful tool because they not only help you rank higher in local search, but they can also be what convinces customers to ultimately choose your business.
To start collecting reviews on your Facebook Business page, you will need to follow these steps (here’s the Facebook link):
- Click on settings on the top, right of your page
- Click edit page in the left column
- Scroll down until you see the “Add a Tab” button and then click it
- Click the “Add Tab” button next to Reviews
Just like Facebook Messenger, it’s important to constantly monitor and respond to the reviews that your business gets, especially when you get a negative review. When customers see that you are engaged with your reviews, it shows them that you care about their opinion and really want to make your business better.
Because most businesses need to collect reviews on multiple sites, it’s smart to implement a solution that allows you to consolidate, manage, and respond to all of your reviews in one place.
Podium not only helps you know when new reviews go live, it helps you generate more reviews to get found, get chosen, and get insight. With Podium, we believe customers are your best form of marketing and reviews are the best medium.
See why 130,000+ users trust Podium to:
- Build a reputation on the review sites that matter most to you
- Improve local SEO to more easily get found
- Gain insights to improve business operations
- Manage, report on, and track all of your reviews
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