8 Types of Marketing Content Your Company's Facebook Page Needs Right Now

(SALEM, Ore.) - It’s impossible to overstate Facebook’s centrality to the typical company’s social media marketing efforts. As the world’s most popular social media network by most accepted measures, mastering Facebook is a mathematical imperative: The typical company generates more social leads through Facebook than any other platform.

Unfortunately, way too many businesses take a perfunctory, even negligent, approach to Facebook marketing. Not necessarily to being on Facebook — it’s not difficult to create and maintain a passable Facebook business page — but to fully exploiting Facebook’s vast marketing potential.

Don’t be like them. Take a holistic, comprehensive view of Facebook’s lead- and conversion-generating potential. Make your Facebook page the best it can possibly be, a sturdy soldier serving your sales funnel.

It’s not as difficult or time-consuming as it sounds. Begin by brainstorming ideas for creating and deploying examples of these eight types of Facebook marketing content that just about every Facebook-using business should have. You may employ a few already; the rest are well within your capabilities to create.

1. The “Who We Are” Video

This is arguably the most important piece of content for an early-stage company to post on its Facebook page. It’s important to get it just right.

Your video shouldn’t dwell on minutiae or come off as a thinly disguised investor pitch. Rather, it should clearly and succinctly introduce you to the audience you’re trying to target, or at least those you’re likely to encounter on Facebook.

Putting together a studio-quality video isn’t as difficult as it used to be. However, if you need a refresher on the basics of making a video on Facebook, check out this overview from Facebook itself.

2. The “Reality Check” Post

When was the last time you consumed truly against the grain wisdom that stuck with you long after you stopped reading?

It probably wasn’t that long ago. In a world filled to the brim with cookie-cutter articles and videos, “reality check” content is apt to make us stand up and take notice.

Here’s a great example: an article about five circumstances when cheap car insurance isn’t the best choice on the Facebook page for InsureOne, an insurance broker based in Chicago. You’d think a company like InsureOne would want its Facebook fans to purchase cheap car insurance — after all, cheap car insurance is more accessible to more consumers than, well, expensive car insurance.

But InsureOne’s post makes the case that cheap car insurance is very often inadequate car insurance, which no driver wants or needs.

Your business almost certainly has similar tidbits of non-conventional wisdom to convey. Why not make it a weekly thing? Start by publishing a “reality check” about your biggest pet peeve, the one thing your customers or vendors get wrong more than anything else.

3. The Off-Page Deep Dive

Your Facebook page isn’t the best place for super-detailed explainer-type content that’s voluminous enough to be bound and sold in stores. But it is a great funnel for driving prospects to that sort of content, which does have immense marketing value in certain contexts.

Set up an external webpage or co-opt your blog to accommodate deep-dive content. As you create new opuses, pair them with short, attention-grabbing Facebook posts explaining their key points and directing users to “read the whole thing” offsite.

4. The “Explainer” Video

This is another great way to burnish your thought leadership credentials without wearing down your prospects’ limited attention spans.

It’s perfectly acceptable to modify deep-dive multimedia content (typically, text-plus-pics-and-charts) into video form, synthesizing the top-line conclusions while excising most or all of the supporting detail. A five-minute explainer that hits all the high notes of your 2,000-word deep dive is a powerful marketing aid.

5. The “10 Types of” List

Ahem. You won’t only find this particular piece of marketing content on Facebook.

But it does take well to Facebook’s formatting rules. Like your “reality check” posts, your list-based posts can address common misconceptions or misunderstandings, gently setting your audience right and training them to be better customers or vendors. Talk about a win-win.

6. The Up-to-Date Event List

Does this qualify as marketing content? Technically, yes, even if it takes much less effort to produce and maintain than the typical off-page deep dive or explainer video. TL;DR: your Facebook Events page needs to be current and comprehensive.

7. The Check-in Feature

Talk about hands-off marketing. Making it easy for your audience to “check in” at your physical location (if you have one) is basically a digital update on the age-old practice of guerrilla marketing, wherein customers do the heavy lifting on brands’ behalf.

8. The Workflow Entry

Back to InsureOne’s Facebook page for a moment. You’ll notice in the left-side navigation bar that there’s a curious little entreaty reading, “Start Your Quote!”

Given that InsureOne is an insurance broker, it’s not difficult to deduce the meaning of this little entreaty. It might take a bit more effort to fit the concept to your own company’s needs, and it may not seem wholly natural. But if you are able to create a formal workflow entry point on your Facebook page, you’re assured to see more business as a result.

Much as we’d like it not to be so, the hard truth is that the buying public is a tough crowd. As the world shrinks and digitizes, breaking through is only going to get harder for the average business.

That’s why it is absolutely crucial for your organization to invest in a sophisticated Facebook marketing campaign that acknowledges what’s plain for everyone to see: prospects and customers alike have little patience for organizations that aren’t on their ‘A’ games, and they’re simply not prepared to reward with their business those that don’t appear to take their concerns seriously.

Fortunately, as we’ve seen, creating a robust Facebook marketing scheme is not overly difficult, nor is it a project that need consume every worker-hour from now until next quarter.

By deploying these eight types of marketing content that pretty much every Facebook business profile should have, you’ll find yourself in rare company among other Facebook-using businesses — and enjoy an Olympic-sized leg up on the competition.