Masterclass Online: How to use Facebook to help grow your business

Well, that’s a wrap on another Masterclass Online! If you joined us live, you would have heard Mia Garlick, Facebook’s Director of Policy for Australia and New Zealand, along with our fabulous host, Shelly Horton chatting all things social media and answering all your questions (and there were hundreds!) about how use Facebook to grow your business. It was one of our most popular Masterclass Online sessions to date, and it was (as you would expect) packed full of tips and tricks. Read on for our top takeaways from Mia’s session, and this is just a snippet of the gold Mia shared, so if you’re a business owner or social media is part of your job, it’s definitely worth a watch too.

1. Video is becoming a daily habit in Australia

You’ve probably already seen the increase in video content in your own news feed, and Mia confirmed it. There was a 2084% increase in the share of mobile video views over the past five years, and 50% of Australians on Facebook regularly watch videos on the platform. So it’s worthwhile to add video to your content strategy if you haven’t already.

“You have about three seconds to grab someone’s attention when they’re scrolling in their news feed, so you want to have interesting, eye-catching graphics. Don’t have a logo that’s taking three seconds or 10 seconds to appear. Of people who view at least 3 seconds of video, 64% watch it to at least 10 seconds. So you want people to at least watch three seconds, and then you can draw them in to increase the chance that they’ll watch more, and engage more deeply with your content.”

2. The top creative apps to create better content

Creating richer communication and better content was a big theme of Mia’s session, and with the changing algorithm, it’s more important than ever to share, engage and create content that’s going to get your audience talking. Some of the easy tools and apps she mentioned were:

Videoshop: Combines photos and videos, experiment with stop-motion, resize and edit videos.

Quik: Apply video templates, text overlays, and music.

Ripl: Layer animated templates on top of photos.

NB: These apps are also available on Google Play too.

3. What’s the best way to navigate Facebook’s changes?

One of our awesome attendees, Belle, asked Mia, “What’s the best way for small businesses to keep up with the changes Facey rolls out?”

Mia said, “The Facebook for Business page has some great materials, as does the Facebook Marketing page for Australia and New Zealand, if you like that page, you’ll see the updates we paste there too. When we roll out an update, you’ll see a pop-up into your page that says ‘learn more’ – if you don’t have time to learn more, make a note so that you can go back to our business site and do research for that update. It is a very changing space, so I totally feel the pain that led to that question!”

4. How to get the best ROI on your ads

There are 15 million active Australian users on Facebook every month, so how do you get them to find your brand? Mia touched on how to get the best return on your investment when creating Facebook ads.

“When you go into your Ads Manager, you’ll notice there are quite a lot of questions we ask now to help you get the best return on your investment. So think about what your objectives are so we [Facebook] can help you reach your targets. For example, are you trying to drive people to your website? Or do you have a sale on? Are you trying to increase subscriptions or collect leads for your database? It’s worthwhile to think about this before you start a campaign so that we can better help you achieve your goals.”

“In terms of targeting, think about demographics and particular interests and think about where they’re based and their behaviours. Going into Ads Manager and playing with these options can be a really helpful way of thinking about who your ideal customer is.”

5. How many posts should I be doing on Facebook per day?

“Great question, the really annoying thing is there’s no magic number,” says Mia. “It really depends on what you’re trying to achieve and what you’re trying to communicate because the nature of the algorithm looks at how you interact with your page.

“You don’t want to stop posting for a couple of weeks, so try to schedule a couple of posts if you’re going to be away from your phone for awhile. The baseline of what you want to be doing is 3 -5 posts a week. If you’ve got great content and lots of great stories to share, you can be posting once a day, and you can also use the stories feature if you’ve got say, 12 amazing stories.”

Resources:

Our monthly Masterclass Online sessions are FREE for Premium members, you just have to register your spot. We’ll be announcing our March Masterclass Online VERY soon, so look out for that to hit your inbox. And if you’re not a Premium member, you can still take part and watch our Masterclass Online sessions for $14.95, or check out more about membership here.