Out of the many things that Facebook can do, it has the impeccable power of shaping your startup and providing a huge platform to reach out to its customers. Startups are constantly using the features of Facebook to engage their customers and implement in their content strategies in the unique ways.

Do you want to use this most popular social media platform as a marketing strategy for your startup or business? Here’s how Facebook can shape your business in 2018:

1. The rising trend of videos

Videos are undeniably the hottest trend of present times. The first thing that you most often come across on the social media platform is videos. There are various reasons why the popularity of videos has grown to strikingly unprecedented levels on social media platforms.

The content around us is evolving more and more with each day and can be credited to the changing preferences of people. The long written blogs and other stories are being converted to short videos and video stories. To understand why people prefer videos more than anything else, ask yourself if you were given a long paragraph to read and a video, what would you choose? Videos are always more engaging than written content.

It has the power to instantly connect with people and touch their emotional self in a more compelling manner. Videos are the relatable and much easier way of grasping things. More and more companies these days are using video as a marketing tool.

So, it doesn’t matter if it is a product launch or a DIY tutorial, or an advertisement, videos are one of the best ways of engaging the customers. Facebook is providing a wonderful platform for videos to flourish and shape businesses in the coming years.

“Activate your fans, don’t just collect them like baseball cards.” – Jay Baer

2. Use the power of live marketing

One of the most advantageous and unique features of Facebook is Live Marketing. Live Marketing has helped businesses and startups attain an upper hand in the market and stand out with their strategies. As intimidating as live marketing on Facebook sounds, it’s equally tricky and challenging to accomplish. If done the right way, it can do wonders for a business and shape their strategies towards unconditional support from their customers.

Facebook’s algorithm uses over 100,000 different signs to decide which posts should be prioritized on the customer’s feeds. So, no matter how great the content you produce is, there is a strong chance that your content will get overshadowed by the unlimited posts from friends and family.

So, if you want your message to be heard, one of the best ways is to go LIVE on Facebook. The live feature from Facebook instantly provides a free pass to the business and enables them by reaching in front of the queue to speak directly to the customer.

As you go live, all those following you receive an instant notification to connect with you. While going live is facilitating Facebook to get more and more customers hooked on to their sites, it is also enabling companies to catch their customer’s attention. You can stream a lot of things live on Facebook. These can be seminars, any discussions, interviews, or events. Think of ways to go Live and embrace this great feature.

3. Get your fans to create wonderful content

Another way that startups are shaping their strategies on Facebook is through their own customers. It’s always a great idea for customers to interact with your business so that you get some buzz in the market. You can ask your happy customers to create content for you. This tactic will help rush the engagement and accelerate more attention towards your business page.

Let people talk about you more and more and letting Facebook know that there is a constant buzz around your brand. Driving engagement with the audience is a successful social media strategy that has a life of its own. One of the most basic examples are the meme pages on Facebook. They let their audience post memes, which is the core content in their case, and circulate them to the rest of the world.

You can come up with contests which require posting photos and videos online. If you are a food brand, you can ask your customers to post pictures of a recipe that they tried at home, or video of a new recipe. This will draw a great engagement to your brand and help you gain your audience’s attention.

“When you say it, it’s marketing. When they say it, it’s social proof.” – Andy Crestodina

4. Paid advertising

Paid advertising is one of the keys to achieve your objectives. It’s important to understand that while paid advertising might not work for everyone, it ultimately comes down to the ROI of your strategy.  

Paid advertising is quite inexpensive, as compared to other advertising channels and platforms in the market. It can help you get a number of potential leads, and most importantly attention among your target customers.

5. Start a Discussion

Facebook allows you to start a discussion to engage people and leave them with something to talk about your brand. There are some ways that you can initiate discussions, such as polls, quizzes, reviews,  create a survey on Facebook, etc. Through these tactics, Facebook can help your startup get your customer’s attention and understand their personas for forming better marketing strategies.

Customer personas revolve around knowing the habits, likes, dislikes, age, preferences etc. of the customer. Through the discussion, you can get to know your customer and customize your content based on their likes.

How do you use Facebook as a marketing channel for your startup or business? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.