Reach a broader audience with Facebook “off-roading”
From Jade McAuley, Rebel Marketing
Rev up your business’ Facebook presence by taking a trip “off-road”. Outside of publishing content on your own page, make the time to regularly check your page’s own newsfeed for posts from other brand pages that you can engage with – and potentially reach their audience as well.
Firstly, where do you find this newsfeed?
Jump on to your brand’s Facebook page and have a look on the left-hand side – click ‘See Pages Feed’. Ta-da – posts from the other brand pages that you’ve liked as your business. Or is this page blank for you? Then you’ll need to…
Like other brand FB pages as your business
Still on this page, at the top there is a lurid green button that says ‘Like Other Pages’. Click on this guy to annoyingly one-by-one add pages that you’d like to follow as your brand.
To make this a teensy tiny bit easier, open Facebook up in a second tab as well to search for the pages you want to follow. Sometimes page names may not be what you think, so if you can find them in that second tab and then copy the name into the field you’ve created on that first tab. Once you’ve found the page, hit ‘Save’ and their posts will start appearing in that newsfeed.
Where does the whole “reach a broader audience” thing come into it?
Now that your page’s newsfeed is populated, start liking and commenting on posts that are relevant to your business. For example, if you were following the Daily Mercury page and they posted about something in your industry – you can comment as your business with some facts and a link to your website to find out more. All of those people who have engaged with that post, and future people who will read that post – may see what you’ve written. If you’ve commented with something interesting or valuable or informative, then you may have just earned some well-deserved interest in your business.
You can also engage with any brand page just from your own newsfeed by switching on the actual post to your brand before commenting or liking. In the bottom right-hand corner of every brand page post, there is a mini version of your profile pic – click the drop down arrow beside this to switch to your brand page.
Who should I follow?
No matter your business, it’s generally a good idea to follow local media pages (they often have huge audiences that you can capitalise on), organisations/networking groups etc that your business is associated with, local community groups relevant to your business, your suppliers, your clients, your local council (useful source of local news and events) and anything else that might potentially provide you with good content because you can then…
Also use this feed for content ideas
By following pages such as local event guides, you are providing yourself with useful, relevant and interesting content that is ripe and ready to share with your own audience. When you share content from another page, it saves you from having to think of something to post about and it gives the other page a little ‘feel-good’ about your business. So if a supplier has posted about a sale that’s relevant to your followers too, share it and everyone will love you – I promise.
When sharing, please make sure you add to the post with your own comments before hitting that share button. If you just share a post outright, you’re missing an opportunity to talk with your audience – what a waste!
So within your current social media management schedule, set up some time to regular look for new pages to follow and to engage with brand pages in your newsfeed. As long as you are being genuine and adding something valuable to the conversation – you could be reaching potential new customers all of the time, for free.
