Eighty-five percent of small businesses leverage Facebook, but most Page owners don't know how to optimize their brand's efforts on the network - or even why their businesses are on Facebook in the first place. With a little work your website can get much more traffic through the use of Facebook.
The first step is to create a quality post for your followers to see. Quality posts include authoritative data, engaging text and thought provoking questions. Use a link shortener like ww.u-rl.me to condense the link that will direct the follower to your site and then add it in to the post. With a short description of what the link is about you will get the people that are interested into your site immediately. Since Facebook is something that many people check multiple times throughout the day there is a much higher chance they will see this link than on other websites. This also means that you can post multiple links to your site a day without becoming too cumbersome. Try adding pictures or videos into posts and crosscheck the statistics to see what works best.
Now only a small amount of your followers or fans will see this post on their feed so it is important to promote it to reach more of them. The cost to boost your post can vary but starts at $5 and goes up from there. Use the Power Editor to customize the placement of the post so that it becomes much more visible. By using this option you have full control over the placement of the post and to which fans it targets. By selecting the right demographic that your site caters to you will have a much higher click rate than before.
In order to grow the amount of different visitors you get on your website you must expand to people who are not following you. In the Power Editor selection once again you can choose to promote your posts to people who aren't fans or followers. Facebook has a great system for this as it can be very specific in which demographics you target. Make sure that the posts being used for this are quality ones as you need to draw new people in that aren't familiar with your website. Avoid sales pitches and remember to create value for the reader.
There is some important information about your Facebook page that should be covered as well. In the "About" section make sure that you have the URL of your site there. This will give interested fans something to go to immediately once they have visited your Facebook page. It should be the very first thing in the "About" section so there is no confusion. Next it is important to use the Profile image and the cover photo to your full advantage in marketing your website. The cover image should be the logo of the website front and center so that visitors know exactly what this page is about before they even read a word. If you aren't a graphic designer then using a freelancer to make a great cover photo can make a real difference. TextBroker.com is a great resource to find quality writers; you can build a team and outsource all your content needs directly through this system.
Back to the content of the posts that everyone will see. This content should be as creative as can be as there is a ton of competition on the vast network of Facebook. If something is creative and clever your fans will know and word will spread. They have the ability to share your posts which will reach many of their followers and therefore build your network of fans. Not only this but they will be much more likely to visit the website if they think the content is well done. This is never a bad thing.
A great touch to add to the posts you send out is special offers that are only available to your fans on Facebook. Be sure to follow the Facebook ad guidelines. Not only will that draw them in even further but they will be much more likely to visit the site to see what all the fuss is about. Also, they will feel like they are part of an exclusive community and this is very important to maintaining a customer relationship. By creating loyal fans like this it will ensure that you will have visitors going to your site on a regular basis.
Basically it is important to create a loyal fan base on Facebook that expects great content out of each of your posts. This will keep them tuned in to every word and make them much more likely to click on any link you put out there. Have a little fun with it as well and don't make every post just about business. Promote something that you are doing in the community or let them know about something important that is going on in the world that is relevant to your website. If you let your fans know that you are staying up to date with the industry's trends then they will respect you much more. Even link them to other websites every once in a while to show them that you really care about them and you are just not some robot. Facebook is a social media site after all and people go there to enjoy themselves. Facebook insights will provide quality data on your boosted posts and when you combine that with Google analytics data, the impact of this service will be easily noticeable in those stats.
Joe Whyte is a longtime digital marketer, experienced programmer and serial entrepreneur.