Over time, I’ve had the privilege to work with a wide range of businesses. I’ve worked with businesses of all sizes and most industries, ranging from tourism to confectionary and alcohol to startups, I’ve seen and worked with it all. Most times, they bring me in to shed light on how they can be more effective with their social media and content marketing efforts.
It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, social media and content marketing is important. It’s an important part of any digital strategy and is an opportunity to accomplish a wide range of marketing goals. Whether you’re looking to build awareness or increase engagement, using content marketing gives you an advantage that carries over into the future.
As someone who spends a lot of time talking about content marketing, it no longer surprises me when people don’t include Facebook in their content marketing mix. While Facebook is a social network, it’s also a channel that presents brands with a great opportunity for content marketing success. Facebook is the largest social network and is a channel in which users spend more time than any other network. It’s an opportunity for brands to tell their story and establish a meaningful relationship with their existing and potential fan base.
The biggest opportunity that is presented by using content marketing on Facebook is through status updates. A status update is a post that a brand makes that is then shared in their newsfeed with the content being shared by their friends, colleagues and family members. The content published by a brand can then be interacted with by users and ultimately reach thousands if not millions of users in the matter of minutes. It’s through interactions such as likes, shares and comments that allow Facebook to be an essential part of a content marketing plan.
It’s easy to share content on Facebook but it’s difficult to share content worth sharing (tweet this). Content worth sharing is content that drives engagement from your fans and sparks some sort of interaction or conversation. A post that doesn’t spark any interest from users is a post that you could have done better without actually sharing.
Over time, I’ve helped brands craft a combination of both great and horrible status updates. At the same time, I’ve spent hours learning and studying some of the best Facebook pages to better understand the formula for going viral. I’ve spent countless hours looking for trends and attempting to identify commonalities between those that go viral and those that do not. Through this research, I’ve uncovered what I like to call the secret sauce to going viral on Facebook. It’s not filled with herbs and spices like the Colonels secret recipe but it’s filled with insights and info that I feel confident that you’ll learn from:
What’s your take? What ingredients do you think also make for viral Facebook content?