GOOGLE REVIEWS
PLEASE BE AWARE: This is an old article, and while we think there are still nuggets of good advice included here, it may be out of date. Things move very quickly in the world of Digital Marketing, Lead Generation and Conversion Rate Optimisation - so please see our latest news for the most recent advice on how to get more out of your website and online marketing.
Using Facebook for small businesses can be a confusing affair, with so many different options, ways to post and people to post too, often you can be put off before you even start. Having all your fans in one place, ready to hear from you about your business can be great, but we all know that fans don’t all necessarily want to hear about the same elements of your business at the same time.
If your business is a garage, for example, you may have HGV clients, business clients or domestic clients, and although they are all interested in what you do, their actual interests may actually be in different areas. This is where Facebook’s latest development comes in particularly handy, they are now allowing you to target your posts to specific people, at specific times!
I believe that this feature, has come directly off the back of Google+’s extremely useful circles element, that allows you to post your messages directly to certain groups only. However, the Facebook feature gives you the opportunity to dissect your followers through; age, gender, education, interests, relationship status, language, work place and locations.
These divisions can really help you target the right audience with an appropriate message that’s completely relevant, and useful to them.
Although targeting your posts is a fantastic way to get your messages to the audience you think you need attract, there are some potentially negative aspects to the approach:
1. Initially, you are automatically diminishing the reach of your posts, as straight away, anyone who doesn’t fit the criteria that you have specified, will not see it.
HOWEVER
Due to the lesser audience, you can post more targeted and extremely niche information that will meet their specific needs. Targeting individuals using a blanket approach to everyone, may lead to people becoming irritated with irrelevant content, and eventually un ‘liking’ your page.
If you only ever post messages to everyone, you run the risk of only being able to post broad, generic content that is of only a small use to people. This is why it’s important to pair up your targeted content along with the generic posts.
2. Another slight inconvenience comes from the fact that although your targeted posts will not show in the unspecified users news feed, it will still appear on your timeline. This means that if you are driving people to your timeline, whether or not they fit your specified criteria, they will still see your really targeted posts, that could potentially be really irrelevant to them. This can be combatted by manually hiding all the posts you don’t wish everyone to see, and this can be a pain.
HOWEVER
This said, targeting posts can really help with content marketing, and the small amount of time it takes to hide the offending posts can be really worth it.
Benefits of the targeted posts feature include increased engagement, more shares, more likes, more comments, and given the new scheduling feature, combining the two can even give you a break from your computer!
Whatever you choose to do, it is important that you manage your posts effectively, combining broad, generic posts, with targeted specific posts, in order to address specific needs, while maintaining general advice, for the rest of your fans.
