Social Media Lessons from 6 Must-Follow Brands on Facebook

06 Sep Social Media Lessons from 6 Must-Follow Brands on Facebook

By Dara Fontein

If you have a sibling, you know that sometimes the best way to learn how to do something is from example. Your big brother might have known how to sneak out of the house in the quietest way possible. Your older sister might have taught you how to beat your brother in Mario Kart. Whatever it was, you got top tips from the experts that shaped the way you would do things in the future.

If you are seeking advice for your business’ Facebook presence, you can adopt this same mentality. There’s no better way to boost your Facebook strategy than looking at how successful brands are using the site for their own businesses. To see what the pros are doing, we explore six must-follow brands on Facebook who are doing great things on the network.

6 brands to follow on Facebook

1. Target

Top Takeaway: Provide quick and effective social customer service

Target, one of America’s largest retailers, has an equally large Facebook presence totalling over 23 million Likes. With this big of a following there are sure to be countless customer service inquiries. If you look at the comments of any of the Facebook content shared on their page, you’ll find that the majority are not reactions to the post, but unrelated customer service questions and complaints.

Although the volume of messages Target receives on their Facebook page seems overwhelming, they handle them with grace thanks to a few tactics.

1. They address each customer by name in their responses to ensure they are delivering personalized service.
2. The customer service representative signs their own name at the end of each response to show that they are actually people and not robots providing automatically generated responses.
3. They provide a direct phone number to the customer in case they want to speak to a person offline.
4. They provide a response in a timely manner (less than 24 hours, with some responses as fast as under 10 minutes).

Take a page out of Target’s book and boost your own Facebook customer service efforts by applying these effective techniques.

2. Teva

Top Takeaway: Show lifestyle-centric rather than product-centric content

Your fans aren’t following you on Facebook to be constantly sold to, which is something that hip footwear brand Teva clearly knows. Instead of simply sharing image after static image of shoes and Teva products, the brand uses their Facebook page to showcase the lifestyle surrounding their products. They show the people who are using their products, and the (aspirational) lifestyles that they lead. Teva recognizes the type of customer they attract, and align their Facebook content accordingly.

While of course they don’t ignore their products, Teva balances creative product-centric content with lifestyle-focused posts to provide an engaging mix for their Facebook audience.

Follow in Teva’s steps (see what I did there?) by making sure you:

• Don’t put your product front and center in every post
• Share lifestyle and aspirational content
• Show your product in the real world, rather than solely in a studio photoshoot
• Showcase the customers who are using your product or service
• Keep your customer and their desires top of mind

At the end of the day, think about why you follow certain brands on Facebook. You aren’t looking to make their product the center of your life, but rather build a lifestyle that happens to include their brand. Brands don’t exist in a vacuum, so give your product the context it needs with your Facebook content.

3. Dollar Shave Club

Top Takeaway: Share user-generated content

Nobody is more important to your business’ success than your customers. They’re the ones on the ground actually using your product and know it best. Razor and personal grooming products company Dollar Shave Club uses Facebook to build meaningful relationships with their customers by regularly showcasing content created by them. As our post Content Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses explains, “people trustcontent created by their peers 50 percent more than other media.”

User-generated content (UGC) is a great option for branded Facebook pages as it not only puts the spotlight on your all-important customers, but provides you with unique and cost-effective social media content.

Dollar Shave Club’s #UnboxDSC campaign is a great example of user-generated content at work. The #UnboxDSC campaign asks customers to share photos unboxing their Dollar Shave Club products on their social media channels. If the company reposts a customer’s photo, they receive a free t-shirt from Dollar Shave Club.

This campaign has been successful for Dollar Shave Club because they:

• Pay attention to the content their Facebook audience is already sharing and align their campaigns accordingly
• Made the process of sharing user-generated content easy for their customers
• Highlight those who share creative and unique images so that the quality remains high
• Feature use-cases and the product in action

User-generated content invites your customers into the conversation around your brand, and allows them to feel as if they are part of a greater community. Incorporate UGC into your next Facebook campaign with the above tips as a guide. View Full Article >>

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