Marketing With Facebook: Why?

 When was the last time you logged onto Facebook? For me, it’s been months. Before this week, I honestly thought Facebook was a relic of the past decade; the great-great-grandparent that’s somehow still clinging onto life by a very thin, very fragile, thread. Okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I was genuinely surprised to learn Facebook’s total ad revenue is over $48.68 Billion. That’s the kind of money that would take ten lifetimes to count. So what makes Facebook such a lucrative marketing platform?

Facebook is intended to be a community-building space. With the ability to connect with friends as well as strangers who have similar interests, connection is the goal. Therefore, if a brand wants to successfully market on Facebook, they have to be willing to jump into the fray of sharing content not completely focused on pushing their company’s product. The Social Media Rule of Thirds and the 80/20 Rule are both great guidelines for brands to follow when developing a facebook marketing strategy and plan. Content explicitly promoting the business should be limited to only a fraction of the overall media produced. Sharing engaging information related to the target-audience’s interests, opportunities to interact with the brand, and reposting media from other sources should take up the majority of content priorities.

The best way to market on facebook is to make it feel like the audience isn’t being marketed to. People want to feel a genuine sense of connection and belonging, they don’t want the pressure of making a purchase shoved in their face every time they open the app. Cultivating an engaged community that is excited and interested about what your brand will post next is the goal.