While plenty of newsagents are on Facebook, not enough use the platform well. It’s a good tool for connecting with shoppers and prospective shoppers as well as researching products.
While I am no Facebook expert, here are some tips which could be useful to newsagents:
- Make someone responsible for your Facebook posts. Ensure they understand the platform and your goal for using it. If you don’t have a goal don’t use it.
- Post regularly – at least three times a week.
- Be aware of when your Facebook friends are likely to be online and post at this time.
- Make sure the content is genuinely useful to your community and remember that individuals are usually on Facebook for social reasons.
- Promote Facebook-only offers – these need to have a social connection (see 4 above).
- Have a goal for each of your posts.
- Promote likes to your customers in your newsletter and in store.
- Like pages of magazines and other products you sell – to learn from them.
- Interact with suppliers and magazines you like – in a meaningful way.
Facebook is a business platform. That it is a publicly traded company should prove this to anyone who doubts this. To use it as a business tool you need a plan.
I like the idea of structure for Facebook activity. This is something I can delegate now.
I’m experimenting with Facebook but I must have set something up wrong. When I update the status or add a photo for the Newsagency, it changes the newsagency page, but doesn’t show up on my personal FB newsfeed, even though I’ve liked the page. What have I done wrong? Any ideas?
Vicki, it should automatically post to your page but you can manually share the post to your page. Cheers Al.