Things You Need to Know
Considering the incredible popularity of Facebook, your aspiration to build your influencer status on Facebook is a sound marketing move. Sixty-nine percent of American adults and 51 percent of US teens use Facebook, according to Pew Research Centre’s 2018 and 2019 surveys. And 74 percent of these adults use Facebook at least once a day to catch up on news and posts from their friends and influencers, these figures are similar throughout a lot of countries in Europe. That’s a lot of potential eyes on you and your brand.
Once you’ve finished reading this guide, head on over to our ‘Register As An Influencer’ Page where you’ll find resources to register yourself as a Social Media Influencer - Click Here To Check It Out.
In this Facebook Influencer Marketing Guide, we’ll walk you through the beginnings of setting up your Facebook profile to establishing your influencer brand on the platform. You’ll discover and learn strategies for creating great content that encourages likes, shares and comments. We’ll show you how to use analytics to measure your success and how to increase engagement to get more followers. Learn about proper etiquette on the platform - and find out ways to make money on Facebook too. To start off, let’s look at how to get setup on Facebook.
How To Set Up Facebook
You may have been using Facebook for years, or you may be totally new to the social media game. If you’re a veteran, we’ll show you how your Facebook profile is different from a Facebook Page for influencers - and for everyone, we’ll show you how to get the most out of your profile and how to set up your Facebook Page for your influencer brand.
How Facebook Pages Work
A Facebook Page is where you post information about your brand or business. Instead of friends, your Facebook Page has followers. These are people who choose to “follow” you because they like your content and want to be alerted when you post new content.
When people hit either the Like or Follow button on your Facebook Page, they’ll receive updates on all the content you post on your Page in their News Feed. They automatically follow your Page when they hit Like. Followers can unfollow at any time - Austin Mahone got his start as a music influencer by posting his covers of pop songs on YouTube as a teenager. He has 11.7 million followers on Facebook and 4.54 million subscribers on YouTube with over a billion views of his videos.
Since your aspiration is to become an influencer, you’ll want to create a Facebook Page for your brand or business. The advantage to this is that you can keep your brand awareness separate from your personal life. Also, people often prefer to keep parts of their personal profiles private, but you’ll probably not want limitations on your privacy settings for your brand. That way more people can find you and follow you.
In order to set up a Facebook Page for your brand, Facebook requires you first set up a personal Facebook profile. If you already have a Facebook profile, use it. Facebook wants to know you’re a real person to allow you to set up and maintain a Facebook Page. If you’re new to the Facebook arena, we’ll show you how to set up your profile now.
What To Include In Your Facebook Profile
Even if you’ll be using your Facebook Page more than your Facebook profile, you’ll still want to add some basic information so that Facebook is confident you’re a real person. Pages are meant for public figures, including “celebrities, athletes, bands, politicians, journalists and creators,” says Facebook’s policies. And it will remove accounts that cannot be verified.
You can make your personal profile completely private if you like. That means only people whom you “friend” will be able to see your photos, birthday and any other information within your profile. So take a moment to add some content to your profile. This can include:
Setting Up A Facebook Page For Your Brand
Facebook will then take you through a series of steps to help you set up your profile photo or logo, your banner picture and information on your About page. These can include:
You can now create a separate Facebook Page for your brand or business. Since your Page will be linked to your personal profile, you’ll sign into your profile to get to it. You can set up as many Facebook Pages as you like. We recommend setting up just one for your brand so that it’s easier to manage and your audience has one central place to go to find your content. If you’ve diversified and have completely unrelated brands, you can set up separate pages for them.
Setting up your Facebook Page is similar to setting up your profile in that you’ll include photos or a logo or both and identifying information about your brand.
How Facebook Works
Facebook provides a variety of ways to reach your audience, including through photos, video, text and more. You can communicate with people publicly or privately. And they can engage with your content in a number of ways, including sharing it, reacting to it, making comments and clicking on links.
Ways To Communicate On Facebook
On both your personal profile and Facebook Page, you can choose if you want your posts and messages to be visible to the whole world. Or you can post or message to only your Facebook friends or only one specific person. You’ll be able to communicate with people by:
On your profile page, your News Feed is the list of stories that constantly update on your page. These are posts made by you, your Friends, and Pages and groups you’re following on Facebook. On your Facebook Page, your feed includes only posts you’ve made and any comments Facebook users and you have placed on your posts.
Text Content
Facebook allows you to use up to 63,206 characters in your posts. That equals a lot of words. But most people are not going to stick around to read a long post on Facebook. Instead, write a brief summary or call-to-action and link to the full story on your blog. Facebook posts that are between one and 40 characters have been found to get 86 percent more engagement than longer posts. Scott Ayres, author of Facebook All-in-One for Dummies, offers additional tips for writing successful Facebook posts:
Photos
Add one to 10 photos to a post on your Facebook Page. To get started:
Click the Photo/Video button under the Create section, which is under your banner photo.
Choose from the options:
These photos will now be displayed as an Album for your viewers to see. You can edit the album at any time by adding or deleting photos, dragging photos to change their order, or deleting the entire album.
Now you can add music if you like, from a variety of pre-set tracks or those you upload. When you’re done, hit Create a Slideshow.
Create An Instant Experience:
This option allows you to add a variety of multimedia components to your post. After clicking Create an Instant Experience, click on the plus sign after “Select a Canvas.”
As you add components to your Instant Experience, you’ll see a preview of it on the right panel. You can also see how it will look on mobile devices by selecting Mobile Preview.
Videos
Add video to your Facebook Page using the same steps you use for adding photos. You can also edit your videos directly from your Facebook Page by clicking on the Publishing Tools option at the top of your Page.
Click on Video Library on the left side of the Publishing Tools page, then put a check in the box next to the video you want to edit. From the Actions dropdown menu, choose Edit Video.
You’ll have a variety of options including choosing your video’s thumbnail, adding subtitles and captions, adding meta tags for better search engine optimization (SEO) and more. When you’re finished, click Save.
Facebook Live
Going live on Facebook lets you interact with your audience in real-time. You create an immersive experience where viewers ask you questions, and they can get answers right away. You can also take them behind-the-scenes for a more personal look at what you do and what you stand for.
You can use Facebook Live from your computer or on your mobile device while you’re on the go. And after your live session is over, you can repurpose the content in future posts. It will stay on your Page’s timeline, so you can download it, edit it, pin it to the top of your Page, post it on your blog or channel or a number of other options. For you and your audience to get the most out of the experience, follow some best practices with these Facebook Live tips:
Facebook Stories
Facebook Stories is another way to reach your audience. Although your stories are visible for only 24 hours, they’re positioned at the top of users’ Facebook app. This means stories are the first thing they see when they open Facebook, unlike posts on their News Feed that continuously cycle down.
You can also repurpose your Facebook Stories for future content. Although they’re no longer visible to your audience, your stories are saved in your story archive. Reach this by clicking Publishing Tools at the top of your Facebook Page - then navigate to Story Archive on the left menu.
To create a story on your Facebook Page, you’ll need to use the Facebook app on a mobile device. Go to your Page and tap Camera under the Create a post bar.
Your device’s camera will open, and you can take a photo or video or upload one from your device’s library. To take a photo or video with special effects, you can:
Use Marketing Tools
We’ve got a FANTASTIC range of Facebook Marketing Tools on our Facebook Marketing Tools Page - click here to check them out.
Features Of Facebook
As you’re creating posts, Facebook makes available a variety of features to enhance them. These features can enhance the visibility of your posts, help express your emotions or thoughts and add interest. Consider using these features to increase engagement with your Facebook audience:
Be sure to do a little digging before using a hashtag to find out how your audience is hashtagging the topic you want to be part of. For instance, London Fashion Week’s official Facebook Page shows that #LFW is the hashtag to go with, not #LondonFashionWeek, for example.
Posts with hashtags can get more engagement than those without them, up to 12.6 percent more, says SproutSocial. But don’t overdo hashtags on Facebook. Too many become distracting and meaningless. Whereas using more hashtags is better marketing on other platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, best practices for Facebook is one or two only.
Creating Content On Facebook
With a knowledge of how Facebook works under your belt, you can begin to establish your influencer brand on the platform. We’ll outline some best practices here as well as give you advice on how often you should post on Facebook. You’ll find a list of helpful tools to make great content on Facebook too.
Establishing An Influencer Brand On Facebook
Facebook is the most widely used social network across the globe, so it makes sense to want to establish your influencer brand on the platform. As of the second quarter of 2019, Facebook had 2.41 billion active users, reports Statistica. That’s a lot of potential people engaging with your brand and your content.
The steps to becoming an Influencer on Facebook share many similarities with becoming an influencer in any industry. An influencer is someone who’s trusted to give an opinion, recommendation or insight that’s reliable because they’ve proven they know what they’re talking about. And that applies to any industry, whether it’s fashion or food, business or backpacking, gaming or gardening, tech or travel. Follow these top tips as you’re establishing your influencer brand on Facebook:
An influencer is genuinely interested in what they do. Most if not all have a passion for it - authenticity is what attracts an audience to you and keeps them interested in hearing more from you. In order to sustain the momentum it takes to become and remain an influencer, make it something you love waking up to every morning.
If you can’t get enough of taking photos of nature, then that’s your niche to post about. If all you think about is when you can get back into the kitchen and create the next culinary masterpiece, then you have what it takes to become a food influencer.
What makes a person an influencer is their ability to make an impact on people and build a meaningful relationship. So, it’s your audience that decides when you become an influencer by how many of them follow you loyally. People will connect with you because they like who you are and what you have to offer - so be you. You won’t be able to sustain your influence by trying to copy someone else’s success or being something you’re not. Be genuine and you’ll build your unique audience.
On your Facebook Page, use a profile photo of yourself that shows your personality and style as well as resonates what your brand is all about. Use emojis in your posts that reflect the mood of the post, whether it’s fun and playful or inspirational. In your posts, write like you speak, as if you’re having a conversation as opposed to writing a report that will be graded for grammar. Let your audience get to know you by what they see on your Page.
Post content on your Facebook Page that is valuable to others, something they can use to benefit their lives. Focus on your customer, in other works, your follower or potential follower, and give them what they need that’s related to your brand. Research the demographics of your niche and find out what concerns or interests they have. Listen to their feedback in comments or questions they ask you and make sure whatever you’re offering is trustworthy and helpful.
Communication is key to any good relationship, and that includes your relationship with your Facebook followers. Engage your audience in conversation by asking questions in your posts, holding Facebook Live Q&A sessions or having them take a poll. Respond to their questions with interest and complete answers.
When people post comments on your Page, be consistent about responding - you can use the Like button as well as replying. The interaction you have with your audience builds community and ultimately builds your brand’s influence.
Find out who the Facebook influencers in your niche or industry are and follow them, this has several advantages. For one, you’ll see what they’re doing that’s working - that will give you inspiration and tips on what you might do to increase your audience engagement.
You can also tap into more potential followers by following other influencers - as you comment on their page with valuable input, people will be interested in heading over to your Page to see what more you have to offer.
If you’re serious about becoming an influencer, you’ll need to be patient and consistent with the process. It takes effort as well as time and you may have to overcome some negative feedback and challenges along the way. That’s all to be expected - continue to keep your focus on what you want to accomplish, and the positives will outweigh the negatives.
“Patience will set you apart from the competition,” says Izaak Crook for App Institute. It will “help you be realistic about your goals and consequently help you become an influencer.
Planning your content out helps you stay organized and take advantage of seasonal topics and annual national or international events. If you use Facebook to drive traffic to your blog, create a Facebook post every time you add new content to your blog. Add a link to the new content in your Facebook post - then, repost a month, six months and a year later to drive new traffic to your content. This is especially useful for content that has received a lot of engagement.
You’ll want to keep your content fresh, up-to-date and current with trending topics to meet your audience’s needs and keep them interested. You’ll also need to keep up with any changes in Facebook’s policies, so you don’t run into any problems with the platform. The World Wide Web grows and evolves quickly, so keep up with Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines that can affect your content too. For instance, if you place an ad or sponsored content in your post, you must make that clear to viewers.
Consistently posting content on your Facebook Page is key to keeping your audience engaged with you and your brand. Your posts will show up in your followers’ news feeds, but they won’t stay at the top of the list for long. Many other posts are constantly flowing into their feeds. So to keep more eyes on your brand, post content often.
There’s something to be said however, for posting too often. If you’re inundating your followers’ feeds with a post every other hour for instance, your content will begin to seem meaningless. People may even unfollow you if your frequent posts become annoying or distracting. Also, it’s very difficult and unnecessary to keep a constant flow of valuable content coming out of your brain and into your Facebook posts.
As far as how often is just right, most social media studies say once a day is optimal, with a maximum rate of two posts per day, reports social media marketing expert Louise Myers. Consider these additional statistics and tips to help you decide your content creation frequency on Facebook:
Facebook’s algorithms rank posts higher that have meaningful interactions, so keep your content focused on quality over quantity.
Posting on a consistent day and time frame helps followers know when they can expect to visit your Page and see new content.
Facebook Influencer Best Practices
Each social media platform has a sort of unspoken code of ethics that users expect each other to follow. Knowing the expectations helps you to be more effective with your audience and avoid unnecessary misunderstandings or problems. Take a look at the following guidelines for platform etiquette and what to avoid as a Facebook influencer. Following these tips can help you increase engagement on Facebook and save you time and effort as you build your influencer status.
Turn Page Messaging off when you’re not active. Page Messaging is a Facebook feature that lets readers and customer message you directly with questions or comments. Respond as quickly as possible to queries to build stronger relationships with your audience. If you’re going on vacation or know you’ll be away for more than 24 hours, turn messaging off. That way, people aren’t put off by your lack of response.
This applies all the time as an influencer, but especially when responding to negative feedback and viewers concerns. If you’ve made a mistake, apologize sincerely. When someone has a concern, take it as seriously as they do. Unless someone is obviously spamming your Facebook Page or being abusive - which you should block and report, they have a genuine concern. Remember that viewers are real people that want to be heard, and a successful influencer listens and responds genuinely.
This bears repeating because people want to know who you are and what you stand for, as a person. Facebook users are savvy, and they know when someone is trying to get a Like or Comment as opposed to adding value to their lives. You won’t be able to keep up a facade, so enjoy what you’re doing and stay true to yourself. People will key in on that and appreciate it, so you’ll build a loyal following that’s well deserved, not contrived.
Only tag people in your Facebook posts when you have their permission, they created the content, or they are mentioned in the post. Otherwise, tags appear to be spammy.
If an influencer were to have competition, it might be another influencer or brand in the same genre. In reality however, other influencers are your allies. You can and should leverage each other for the same audience members. Never speak negatively about another influencer or brand, people are listening and will more often follow you when you uplift others and leave you alone when you tear people down.
When you share someone else’s content, always mention the creator’s name, brand, blog or whatever properly identifies them. This avoids plagiarism, which erodes credibility.
What To Avoid
In a 2021 poll, social media users said the number one thing they hate about brands is obvious self-promotion. That means, don’t inundate your audience with ads or promotional posts. Suggested is the following - the 80/20 rule., that means put out 80 percent content that’s informative and beneficial and no more than 20 percent that’s promoting your products, services or brand.
Definitely respond to direct questions and concerns in a timely manner and respectfully. But you don’t have to overdo commenting on Facebook. If people are not talking directly to you, you can sit back and let the conversation run.
Clickbait is a post that’s meant to pique interest and get viewers to click through to your link. However, what they find on the other end has very little if anything to do with what they thought they were getting. This is a quick way to lose your audience’s trust and interest in returning ever again to your Facebook Page. Facebook flags and penalizes posts that have the following clickbait attributes:
This can make you appear desperate for likes. It’s obvious you like your post since you posted it, so let the viewers express their opinions.
Avoid the mindset of doing what you do to become an influencer. Do what you do because you love it and you want to offer something beneficial to others. Hootsuite counsels, “When you try to be interesting, you make it about you. When you show interest, you make it about them.” Get to know your audience and find out what their interests, concerns and questions are. That way you’ll be producing engaging and relevant content that people will appreciate and keep coming back for more.