Pages with Personality: How To Bring Your Flair to Facebook
You’ve seen the Facebook posts before that make you laugh until your eyes water: the share by your favorite page that is just too great not to click “like,” the status from your favorite business that is so amusing or interesting that you have to click “share.” Almost 100% of the time, these kinds of posts are good and amusing and catchy for the same reason. The page managers, who share, create, and post things that are interesting, invariably bring their personality to their business pages, and spice up what can be monotonous social media content with some “flair” that makes it their own.
This kind of “flair” can be hard to explain, but it is impossible to miss when you are on Facebook. When page owners bring their personality to posts, it stands out. So how can you make sure that your Facebook posts show and highlight enough of your personality and humor, while remaining professional and keeping a good tone? How can you balance all of these goals, while injecting some flair to get your Facebook pages more traction? Here’s our quick look at pages with personality, and how to bring your “flair” to Facebook.
To demonstrate why “flair” is so important, let’s take an example of two hypothetical restaurants with similar Facebook and in-person fan bases. In theory, each restaurant should get the same kind of exposure on their Facebook pages, but in reality, what each restaurant posts has a HUGE impact on how well they are able to capitalize on the potentials of social marketing. If one restaurant posts nothing but menu items and “updates” about important events, core fans may like and share this kind of material, but most people won’t find it very interesting. In contrast, if the second restaurant shares funny and related things produced by other people, posts funny or insightful statuses from time to time, and injects some personality into their postings in general, their social media marketing will go tremendously better.
The reason why is very straight forward and simple. As Facebook has grown, more and more businesses have made pages and more and more people have made profiles, so people’s timelines get crowded. So when Facebook decides what posts to show to people, they do so based on how many people like and share those posts. Plain and simple, the more people like and engage with your content on your Facebook page, the better exposure your restaurant will get. Returning to the examples of the two identical restaurants, one that posts interesting and personality filled content and a second that only posts generic and boring updates: if these two restaurants stick to these two strategies for long, they won’t be identical for long. The personality filled posts will do so much better, that the restaurant the chooses to inject their “flair” will have more Facebook fans soon, which will translate into more exposure and likely more sales.
So how exactly do you inject “personality” into your restaurant’s Facebook page, and post things that will get you exposure and get your business ahead? Start with these simple rules.
First, mix up your posts. Keep things variable, and make sure that you put in some of the generic and more “hard sell” orientated posts on your page. Posting menu items isn’t a bad thing, as long as it isn’t all you post. From there, think about what else you can share and post that is a. related to your business, b. interesting and high quality, and c. evocative of your sense of humor and personality.
One great thing you can post is amusing and interesting things that have been posted and shared by other pages. Check out some restaurant specific and business-to-business industry blogs (just like this one!) and see if they have posted anything on Facebook lately that is interesting to you. By sharing the content of others, you will build relationships and give your fans a taste of some good performing content created by others. Another thing you can try is creating original posts that inject your humor and speak in your voice. This could be as simple as a status update of something amusing you might say to a customer, or something as intense as a brand new original video. Just as long as it is original and creative and brings your personality, original content can be great. We will have more instructions about creating original content soon.
The best thing you can do to inject your personality and “flair” into your Facebook posts is to be yourself. Don’t push things too far or get unprofessional, like posting obscenities or sharing things that are bad for your brand, but be yourself and bring your personality. As you experiment and learn more, you will get better and better at making your page pop with your personality.