Branding

Published on March 19th, 2015 | by Jose Vasquez

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Guest Post: Facebook Marketing for Tech Companies

You just created a Facebook business page for your tech company. You filled out the whole profile and optimised it with related keywords. Every other day or so, your marketing team posts and a few people like the post, but other than that, the page remains basically useless. With so many users on Facebook (728 million users daily says the company), why are more people not interacting with your page?

Nowadays, it is not enough to simply have a Facebook account and make a few occasional posts. If you truly want to make the most of it, you have to know how to use it to its fullest extent, which includes having a good strategy or campaign plan and thinking about what your audience might want to read about or what questions they could have.

Need some pointers for marketing on Facebook? Here are our best Facebook marketing tips for tech companies – be they start-ups or veteran businesses.

Strategise a plan

It is often said, ‘If you build it, they will come,’ but if no one knows your Facebook page even exists, why would they come to it at all? Moreover, why should they stick around?

Facebook is not about making random posts, and linking to tech articles is only going to get you so far. You need to look at your audience, assess their needs and start posting and creating content that will appeal to this audience.

First look at your followers and look for patterns to determine what type of audience you have. Are they mostly previous customers? Do they fall into a certain age bracket or are they all a part of a certain industry? Next think about what questions or concerns your followers might have about your company as well as the tech industry. How can you help answer questions?

Once you understand your audience and their needs, you can start constructing posts and thinking about what you want to say to your audience.

Remember the 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of your posts should be original content or outward reach, such as posting articles from other sites or asking questions of your audience. The other 20 percent should be self-marketing posts. Too many self-marketing posts will lose you follows as no one wants 24/7 marketing.

Kick off the conversation (or debate)

When it comes to preferred types of technologies, people have strong opinions, and they will defend them to the death. Need a good example? Try launching the Apple/PC debate, and you will get plenty of passionate responses from both sides of the aisle.

Facebook is a great platform for starting conversations and friendly debates among your followers. It’s easy enough to comment and follow the chain of responses, and you might gain useful insights into your customer base that you might not have seen before.

Of course, you do not want people to get nasty or mean with one another, so do moderate the debate and keep it open and friendly.

Here are a few tech-related questions:

• Should employers ban the use of personal devices in the office?
• Which type of software (word processor, personal finance tracker, instant messager) do you most rely on at work or at home?
• Company X just announced a new product. What do you think?

Don’t forget to include your employees in the conversation. They can start the conversation and encourage other friends and colleagues to jump in with their opinions and thoughts.

Use photos to offer advice

Users often skim and scroll through Facebook, which means you do not have a lot of time to capture their attention. The more skimmable and eye-catching your posts are, the better chance you will have at making your audience stop and notice your posts.

One of the best ways to catch the eye is to use photos and graphics to make your audience stop. Post photos with some type of relevant statistic. Try announcing your latest blog post with a graphic that summarises your content in bullet points. Once your audience knows what great information they are going to receive, they will be more likely to click through to your website.

Take into Facebook’s ad services

Similar to Google Adwords, Facebook marketing can be an effective retargeting and lead generating tool. With its ability to target certain sectors of your audience, you can go after customers who recently visited your site, your Facebook page’s followers and new leads with similar interests.

Here are a few of the demographics you can target with Facebook ads:

• Geographic location
• Education level
• Similar interests
• Type of device for browsing

You can target the ads using your current customer database or go after your current followers. When your customers sign up for free accounts with you, they usually provide an email address, often the same one they use for their Facebook accounts. You can further organise your customer database by purchase to create more targeted ads.

Facebook will also let your target your current followers as well as non-followers. With the Custom Audience feature, you can choose to target a small section of Facebook users with similar interests or a larger section of users with less similar interests. Either way, these are opportunities to branch out.

Streamline the posting process with marketing automation

Since its creation, marketing automation has changed the way marketers interact with Facebook, and it does not look like anyone will be turning back. Marketing automation lets your schedule posts well in advance and track the progress of your posts. This is especially useful if you are combining Facebook marketing along with several other social media accounts. All of your account information is in one place.

Tech companies benefit from marketing automation because it frees up time. Rather than spending time each day to create and craft posts, it allows marketers to focus on writing content or designing infographics. You can schedule posts at all times of day as well and catch your audience whenever they are available. Even if your audience is on the other side of the world, you can schedule Facebook posts that will launch during their best available times.

There is a subtle art to Facebook marketing for tech companies, and it is not as easy as reposting your latest blog article. Keep your content fresh and interesting, and your followers will respond and comment.

This post was guest written by Michael Bird of Social Garden

About the Author

Jose Vasquez is a serial entrepreneur and tech specialist dedicated to helping startup tech companies grow and succeed. As the founder of Build. Brand. Blast., Jose has worked with dozens of enterprises to find direction, gain momentum, and achieve results.

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