Facebook Strategies for 2022

1. Create a Digital Shop on Facebook

If you’re not selling products or services on your Facebook (and Instagram) pages, you’re literally leaving money on the table every month. Having products in your Facebook shop allows you to tag those products in your Facebook posts which can help guide your followers to purchase those products.

I should actually backtrack and say that first you should have a website where people can purchase your products and services and then create a Facebook Shop and sync your products between the two, but for the sake of brevity, we’ll act like you don’t have a website at all and simply address creating a digital shop on Facebook.

Step 1: Add Your Shop Using a Laptop or Desktop (sorry, no phones)

Go to your business’s Facebook Page and click the Add Shop Section link. Agree to the terms & services to continue.

Step 2: Add Business and Payment Processing Details

Once you’ve agreed to Merchant Terms and Policies, you’ll enter your business details and set up payment processing with Stripe. If you have a Stripe account already, log into that account first and then click the link to connect to an existing Stripe account. Otherwise, you’ll need to set up a Stripe account and then proceed.

Once you’ve finished this setup, your call to action button changes to a Shop Now button, which takes page visitors to your Shop section.

Step 2: Add Products to Your Shop

Now you’re ready to add products to your shop. To do this, click the Add Products button.

You can find Facebook’s detailed guidelines and recommendations for photos on the product listing guidelines page. They include the following:

• You must have one image for each product.
• The image must be a real image of the product, not a graphical representation, illustration, or icon of the product.
• It’s recommended that the image is a minimum of 1,024 x 1,024 pixels.
• It’s recommended that the product image has a white backdrop or captures the product in use in real-life situations.
• The image cannot contain text (calls to action or promo codes), offensive content, advertising or promotional material, watermarks, or time-sensitive information.

You’ll also need to follow the guidelines and recommendations for your product description. They include the following:

• The description should pertain to the product only and be easily digestible, making use of short sentences and bullet points.
• The description cannot contain HTML, phone numbers, email addresses, long titles, excessive punctuation, all letters capitalized or in lowercase, book or movie spoilers, or external links.

Finally, you’ll find a few guidelines and recommendations about product variants. In short, you can have only four variants per product and variations must be spelled out, not abbreviated. For example, you should say “Large,” not “L,” for sizing options.

The Advanced Options tab allows you to set custom tax percentages. Note that Facebook only shows your shop to customers in the United States and automatically calculates taxes based on specific locations. You can enter your own rates, but you’ll be responsible for whether they’re accurate.

Products may initially be marked “In Review” (similar to ads) to make sure they meet Merchant Terms and Policies, as well as product listing guidelines. So while you can see them, the public may not until they’re approved.

Note the default shipping and returns policy on individual items pages states items must ship within five business days and items can be returned within 45 days. This is a policy required of all Facebook pages that use the Shop section and cannot be changed.

If you want to add more products, go to your shop and click on the Add Product block or go to your Publishing Tools and access the Shop section there.

2. Run a Birthday Ad Campaign

If you’re a restaurant or retail business you definitely want to be running a paid birthday campaign. The way this works is, you create an ad that targets people born in any given month. You run this ad for the entire month offering a promotional deal (ex: Buy 1 meal, get 1 free). The ad should take them to a landing page that’s similarly branded to the ad they clicked and incudes all the details of the offer as well as an opt-in form where they give you their name, email, phone number (these are the primary data points you should be asking for).

Once they enter their info, they will receive a coupon via email or text message that can be redeemed only during their birth month. Now you not only have a happy customer, you also have their contact information to re-market for future promotions.

3. Run A Contest to Gain High Quality Followers

One of the hardest things to do these days is attract real followers who are likely to engage with your content on a regular basis. People have a tendency to scroll past posts from brands and businesses out of habit, mainly because that content simply doesn’t speak to most people. Here’s a great way to not only attract people who will engage with your content, but also drive sales to your business:

Step 1: Setup a Giveaway on Facebook

It’s best to give away either a high dollar/desirable product or service OR bundle several smaller items or services together for a gift basket giveaway. Either way, you want a nice photo of the prize to be front and center in the creative of your giveaway post.

Step 2: Make Entry into the Contest EASY

You may have done giveaways before that didn’t garner the attention or engagement you were hoping for. That’s usually because the “cost” of admission is too high and you’re asking for people to do too much (i.e. tag a friend, comment, like, and share the post). All you should be asking for is for an email address or mobile phone number.

Step 3: Create a Facebook Ad for this Contest

You’ll want to go into your Facebook Ads Manager and create a new ad (select traffic or lead generation as the ad’s objective) using the photo of the prize you’re giving away. This ad should point people who click it to either a landing page on your website or use Facebook’s native lead generation form. Hit publish and wait for contest entries.

Step 4: Reach Out!

Once you start getting people responding to this ad, reach out to them via the information they’ve provided. Your outreach should be thanking them for entering the contest and then informing them that they can attain extra contest entries by liking your Facebook page, Liking your Instagram profile, commenting, tagging friends, etc.

This now means that not only have you collected contact information from new people, you’re also getting them to like your business’s profile and engaging with your content on multiple platforms at their own discretion.

Step 5: Announce a Winner and Reach out AGAIN!

Once your contest winner has been determined, make a post announcing and tagging the winner.

Then, reach out to everyone who didn’t win once more and thank them again. Then offer them a nice discount or coupon code to be used in your store or business. Make sure it’s a decent discount (20% OFF or more is a great place to start).

Now you’ve boosted your Facebook likes, gotten people to advertise your business for you, and attracted brand new customers all from one contest/ad.

Instagram Strategies for 2022

1. Switch Your Instagram Profile to a Professional Profile Account

If your Instagram profile is still operating as a personal account, you’ll want to switch to a business profile in order to take advantage of all the added tools and information that will be made available to you including, but not limited to:

• Access to Instagram analytics and insights including post performance, follower activity, and a clearer picture on how your posts are performing.
• The ability to add links to Instagram stories.
• The ability to tag products in your posts.
• The ability to advertise on Instagram.
• The ability to schedule posts ahead of time.

Here’s how to switch to an Instagram professional account:

Step 1: Go to your Instagram account settings

Go to your profile, then tap the hamburger menu in the top right corner of the app. Tap Settings and then tap Account to get started.

Step 2: Switch to Instagram professional account

Once in the account settings, you’ll see a blue call-to-action at the bottom of the page for you to Switch to Professional Account.

Tap that to move forward with your big switch.

Step 3: Choose a Business account

Selecting Business will allow you to start gathering impressions, reach, and video views within your reporting insights, as well as schedule content ahead of time using third party tools like Sprout Social.

Instagram recently rolled out a new type of business account – an Instagram creator account. These are more specifically for influencers, public figures or other types of content producers, whereas a business account is better for brands and businesses that sell a product or service.

This is a part of Instagram’s effort to further separate influencers and businesses, making it more obvious for its users when a partnership is an influencer promotion rather than an ad.

The tools surrounding a creator account are slightly different from those accessible in a Business account, but they were created with influencer marketing in mind. There are also more features surrounding messaging and profile flexibility.

The core business profile features are still available, including shoppable posts. This means influencers will be able to tag the products they’re recommending directly within their Instagram posts, offering even more streamlined shopping for all parties involved.

If you plan to partner with businesses as an influencer, you’ll want to create an Instagram creator account. If not, including if you plan to partner with influencers to promote your products or services, you’ll want to create an Instagram business account.

2. Only use 3-5 Hashtags Per Post

Instagram used to allow up to 30 hashtags to be used on posts and up until the last few months it was common practice to use all 30 of those hashtags on every post.

That has changed as of November, 2021 where Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri has confirmed that you should only be using 3-5 hashtags MAXIMUM per post.

As a local business, you’ll want to maximize these hashtags using the following criteria:

• Don’t put the hashtag in the caption of your post. Instead, publish your post and then immediately comment on that post using your hashtags. This makes your posts look cleaner and less spammy/promotional.
• Only use hashtags that are being used on 50,000 – 100,000 posts. Anything more and you’ll get drowned out by the noise – anything less and it typically means no one is actually using or seeing those hashtags.

• Do NOT use hashtags that are irrelevant to your post/profile. This will make people report your post for not being relevant to that hashtag, this disabling all your other hashtags as well.

3. It’s All About Reels Now

Instagram is following TikTok’s lead and heavily pushing video content via Instagram Reels and Instagram Stories, with more of an emphasis on Reels.

Recently, Instagram merged IGTV into normal videos on the feed, however they’re going to be making a more streamlined approach to video in 2022. Instagram is already testing out a vertical Instagram Stories feed which will very likely merge all 3 formats, Reels, Stories, and Feed Videos into one unified feed, much like TikTok.

With all that said, here are some strategies to get the most out of your Instagram Reels:

• If you’re repurposing your TikToks, REMOVE THE WATERMARK. Instagram suppresses all posts that contain the TikTok watermark in the bottom corner.
• Turn on HQ Uploads before you upload any videos to Reels. To do that go to Settings > Account > Data Usage and turn on High Quality Uploads.
• If you can be funny/goofy/silly – do it. Most businesses CAN find a way to be funny, so get creative
• Make sure your video ends right on the punchline. You don’t want the video to linger aimlessly after the funny stuff happens because this will trigger followers to skip to the next video. A video the ends on the punchline makes us instinctively watch it again, sometimes 3-4 times. That means your followers are watching 100% of your Reel over and over again, which tells the Instagram algorithm that you’re producing quality content that more people will like seeing on their feeds.
• Make sure the first frame of your Reels are eye catching. Vibrant colors, something bizarre in the foreground, silly faces, etc. You only get one shot at a first impression – make it count.
• Keep your Reels short. Attention spans are shorter than ever so 5-10 seconds is the Goldilocks zone on Reels.
• GOOD LIGHTING IS KEY. If you have a Ring light, great. If not, either invest in one or a reasonably priced alternative.

4. Use Stickers in Instagram Stories to Drive Sales and Engagement

There are two great ways to sell products or services on your Instagram Story (and soon on Instagram Reels).

Link Stickers

Recently Instagram replaced the “Swipe Up” option with a new tool called “Link Stickers.” This is great, however if you just have your full URL plastered over your story, it looks ugly and suspicious.

Instead, you can add your Link Sticker in and then choose “Customize Sticker Text” to change the raw link to a Call To Action that makes sense for your business.

Since everyone isn’t used to Link Stickers, it also helps to add some animated arrows pointing to the Link Sticker to draw attention to your call to action.

Community Engagement Stickers

When it comes to conversation prompts, no one does it quite like Instagram.

From emoji reactions to interactive story stickers, Instagram knows how to drive conversation and build community – and this is one advantage they’re not going to compromise in 2022.

Use the POLL sticker to ask your followers an either/or question. You can then send a DM to everyone who engaged with your Instagram Story with something relevant like a link, coupon code, or a simple “Thanks for answering the question.”

If you want a Social Media advertising agency to help you set up, create, and maintain great ads, let’s chat!