7 Tips for Your Facebook Marketing

Facebook reigns supreme as the king of social media. No other platform comes close in terms of flexibility or reach. It’s a wonderful tool to draw attention your Shop and get an impression of your customers. In other words: it’s a goldmine for your marketing efforts. Here are seven tips that will help you use this juggernaut to your advantage:

1. The Right Channel

A professional Facebook appearance requires a separate page outside of your personal page. This is the only way to make use of extra features like statistics and ad scheduling that are not available with private profiles. To do this, log into your private profile and select ‘Create Page’ in the top right navigation bar (small arrow).

2. The Right Time

What’s the right time of day to share something in order to reach the largest possible audience? Naturally, each target audience has different browsing habits, but research shows that posting around 8am, noon and 8pm will help you reach a greater number of viewers. The most traffic in total is on Thursdays, Fridays and weekends.

Posting at several different times on several different days will help you analyze when the bulk of your followers are online. You can find your stats in your admin panel under ‘Statistics’ -> ‘Posts’.

As soon as you know more, you can time your posts better. Create your post like always, but choose ‘Schedule’ instead of ‘Publish’ in the selection under the small arrow icon. Enter the day(s) and time(s) when you’ve seen the most activity in your followers.

3. The Right Content

Focus on posts that …

• add value for your subscribers (e.g. entertainment, information, promotion)
• fit your Shop’s theme and support the personality of your brand
• promote interaction (e.g. surveys, sweepstakes)
• stand out visually (e.g. with self-made banners)
• offer a good variety with a blend of external content and your own posts (use of various media such as videos, photos, graphics, text)

Facebook can certainly help you grow the popularity of your Shop, but it’s important to note that it is not a primary sales channel. Shop promotion should be an exception and not the norm. A good way to help find the perfect balance between Shop promotion and content marketing is make people aware of promos (find promo calendar in your User Account) by sharing product pictures. Avoid cheap sloganeering like “SAVE NOW, OFFER EXPIRES TODAY!”, and try to think of a funny or witty line to go with the image instead

4. Image Material for Your Own Promotional Banners

In our Flickr gallery, you’ll find a free selection of photos with blank Spreadshirt products. An even bigger selection of the images – especially of models images in casual situations – can be found on Placeit. As a Spreadshirt Partner, you’ll get a 15% discount on image material.

5. Linking Shared Images to your Shop

A ‘linked image’ leads people directly to a product page or list view in your Shop:

• Insert the corresponding link in the text field of your post – an automatic image will be generated
• If you don’t like doing this, use Facebook’s desktop version and select the large ‘+’ sign feature to upload your desired image
• Tip: In order to make it more clear to people to go visit your Shop, add a call-to-action button (a button that points to the Shop) with your image processing software
• Save the desired image in a size of 1200 x 627 pixels. Facebook trims bigger images to this size if you don’t
• If you upload more than one picture, you’ll get a ‘carousel’
• You can also integrate Instagram images directly into Facebook by linking your accounts (marketing tips for Instagram are available here)

6. Increase Reach with Paid Content

Facebook offers more ways of targeting customers than any other social media channel:

• Normal posts you share are free, but paid posts will reach an audience beyond your followers
• The higher your budget, the more views you’re bound to get

7. Keep a Close Eye on Your Biz

Be sure to keep checking the following:

• Use the Facebook Manager Page app to receive alerts of activities on your page to help you manage posts and comments on the go
• Competition stimulates business. Look at the Facebook pages of competitors with a similar target group to inspire you for future ideas to share
• Don’t give up! Set goals (e.g. one post a day or three per week) so your page doesn’t fall asleep and your followers don’t lose awareness

Do you have more tricks you want to share with other Shop Partners? Or would you like to learn more about another social media channels? We look forward to your feedback in the comments.