Friday, May 31, 2019
Social media offers many opportunities to engage with visitors and promote your tourism business. Facebook has 24 million monthly users, 78% of whom access the platform every day. Knowing that, how do you make this platform work to bring visitors to your business?
Facebook Canada and the Halifax Chamber of Commerce recently held a workshop in Halifax to help small businesses learn more about how to use Facebook and Instagram to connect with customers and boost sales. Here are five tips from Facebook’s small business team.
1. Go Live – You can stream live video over Facebook, and your followers will receive a notification that you are live. This is a great way to connect with your audience and add some excitement on your page. Make sure you let your followers know in advance when you are going to go live, stay live for about 10 minutes to give them a chance to tune in, and engage with the people watching by saying hello to a repeat customer or replying to comments. You could use this feature to showcase a new experience offering, for example.
2. Use Facebook Insights for Business Inspiration – On your business page, there is a tab for Facebook Insights, which shows you who is visiting with your page, where they are from, what time of day or month people visit your page, engagement on your page, etc. The local tab can even tell you who is in your area during a specific time of day. These insights tell you who your audience is, and give you some clues on what their interests are and what kinds of products or promotions might encourage them to make a purchase.
3. Give Personal Responses to Messages – These days, people are more likely to send a message over Facebook than to call a business to ask a question. Make sure you, or a staff member, are checking the messages frequently, and provide a timely personal response. This is a chance to make a connection and help close the sale. You can also program auto-responses to let customers know you’ll get back to them soon or to answer commonly asked questions like requests for your address.
4. Boost High-Performing Organic Posts – When you see one of your posts is receiving a lot of engagement (like, shares or comments), use the content in a Facebook ad or boosted post. You know this is content your customers enjoy, so it is likely to do well in an ad.
5. Target Your Ads – Really think about who you are targeting with your message. You can set your target audience by age, gender, location, and interests. You can also upload an e-mail list, such as a list of people who signed up for your newsletter, and target the people on the list with a Facebook ad.
Want to learn more about how to effectively use Facebook to connect with visitors? Here are some resources:
How to Use Facebook More Effectively – Free webinar from Tourism Nova Scotia
Facebook Business: Marketing on Facebook - News, tips and advertising best practices for marketing with Facebook.
Facebook Blueprint – Free online courses for advertising on Facebook
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