Finding Ways to Improve Your Market

Finding Ways to Improve Your Marketing on Facebook
By MELINDA F. EMERSON
ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Generating revenue along with the buzz.
In my last two posts, I talked about how Ashley White, founder of the Polkadot Alley, uses Facebook as her storefront. She now gets 95 percent of her sales through her Facebook page, and she expects annual revenue this year of $1.5 million. One reader responded with an interesting comment that asked the following question:

“What does Polkadot Alley do about the fact that Facebook limits how many of your fans get to see any given post? I get the impression that you don’t ever know who has seen a post and who hasn’t. Do you have an e-mail newsletter or other ways to contact your customers besides Facebook?

Facebook does in fact limit the reach of your posts. It uses an algorithm to measure reader engagement and determine what type of content users want to see in their news streams. If you want to make sure more of your fans see your content, you can pay to “boost” your posts — although not everyone thinks this is a good idea. (Here is a link to what Facebook says about promoting posts.).

When you pay to promote specific content on a Facebook fan page the posts appear higher in the news feed, so there is a better chance that your fans — who have already liked your page — will see them. When you promote a post from your page, you can either choose to show it in the news feeds of the people who like your page (and their friends) or you can try to reach other specific groups of people.

The cost to promote a post on a fan page depends on your geographic location and how many people you reach. You are billed daily, but you can set up a budget, and you are charged only for impressions on your post. The best way to avoid paying to promote posts on Facebook is to first target the right users on your fan page and then engage them by liking, sharing and commenting on things of mutual interest.

I also took the reader’s question to Ms. White. “There is nothing we can do in terms of ensuring that more of our fans see our posts, without paying for it,” she said. “Once you post something on a Facebook fan page, Facebook will show you approximately how many fans will see it and then offer the option to ‘boost post’ and create a budget based on the amount of fans you want to reach.”

Ms. White said that she had not had to pay Facebook to share her content on her fan page, but she conceded that keeping fans engaged is a weekly challenge. “It is definitely frustrating to think that I can’t even reach all of my own fans that chose to ‘like’ the page, but I also understand why it is done,” she said. “I don’t want to annoy my customers, so I am O.K. with it. There is just no way for every single thing to hit their news feeds without it just being too much. We really work to ensure that our fans know to come shop with us, and we hope that they actually come to our page to watch the sales, rather than wait to see the individual items post in their news feeds.”

Ms. White also said that her payment processing vendor Soldsie has been working on a “reminder” e-mail feature that will send an e-mail to current customers and Facebook fans right before a sale starts. “If it isn’t ready soon,” she said, “we will start a newsletter that will go out on sale days as a reminder and will also contain previews and any news or updates.”

Ms. White said her goal was to post only things of value to her customers on her fan page. “We really try to not overpost so that we don’t annoy our fans,” she said. “We post for sales, previews, giveaways, and when we have need to share updates. The more ‘likes’ and comments a post gets, the more it is seen.”

Melinda Emerson is founder and chief executive of Quintessence Multimedia, a social media strategy and content development company. You can follow her on Twitter.