In this article, we will discuss a few of our favorite ways to grow your fans and drive traffic to your Shapeways shop using Facebook!
Facebook is a great way to share your latest products and get new shoppers to know about your products. It is an easy, free and with a bit of nurturing can grow quite quickly.
First up, if you haven’t set up your business page on Facebook yet, we recommend doing so ASAP. Facebook not only drives significant sales of up and coming businesses, it also provides you tons of data on your fans so you can see what folks like, share and click on. This will help you grow your business in real time and help direct the type of posts that work the hardest for you.
Example of Facebook for Business page. Note: separate tabs for Page, Messages, Notifications, Insights, etc. These are the tabs that help you identify you are on a business page, and not your personal Facebook.
Focus on posting highly engaging images. Did you know that posts with images get 2X the amount of engagement than text posts alone? You even have the opportunity to drive engagement 4X if you include video content on your page.
It’s All About Mobile. Did you know that 47% of Facebook users only log on from a mobile device? Create content that is optimized for viewing and consumption on a mobile device. For us, this means using clean images and engaging captions for fans to quickly intake. Assume your fan is viewing your post the same way they search for things in a supermarket: those items that stand out, get added to the cart.
Keep headlines sharp and invite your fans to actively engage with each post. Facebook is great place to get a conversation starter with your fans. Have fun with a short and interesting headline to get them to look further at your post.
If your Facebook page is new, you want to build up your fan base. Here, we recommending focusing on your current fans, and engaging them in such a way that they will like and share your content, so their friends will see your posts and start following you too. One way to do this is in the description below your picture, you invite your fans to click, share, comment on your post.
Second, add a link to the post for your fans to go see all your cool ideas in your Shapeways shop.
In addition to adding links directly to your shop we like to invite friends to comment on our posts right there on Facebook. You can accomplish this by posing a question to your fans: How would they use your product? Do they want it in a special material?
Use each post as a way to chat with your fans. And remember, be responsive! If you have fans and customers that know they can contact you on Facebook, be there to answer their questions quickly and timely. This is a great forum for great customer service, and Facebook makes it easier than ever to connect and communicate.
Timing your posts. We all know that it can be hard to see all the new posts on our Facebook feeds everyday. This is also true of friends seeing your post. Think about the best time of day to share. And try different times of day to see where you get the most fan engagement; likes, comments, shares.
Finally, Facebook analytics! Now that you have your business page set up and your posting like a wildcat. You can see how it is going. Only you can see these business tabs at the top of your page. They show you who your fans are, when they come to Facebook, what they are doing when they look at your post. We review these details often and find ways to always improve our posts so our friends and fans find our information meaningful. Since Facebook is an ever evolving in it’s features, the best way to keep up to date with how-to use insights, is to go straight to the source on getting started with Facebook Insights.
Hope this has been helpful. Let me know what you think in the comments below! And don’t forget to let me know what you would like us to write about next.