Social media is an important component of your Chamber’s marketing and communication strategy. It’s how you can let members know about activities and trainings, how you can highlight your members, and how you can promote Chamber membership.
When I work with a Chamber of Commerce on their Facebook marketing plan, I review their existing account to see what is and isn’t working for them. Combing through their posts, I can get ideas for their accounts, see how they can rework some things, and talk about why some things aren’t working.
Here are 5 things that Chambers of Commerce should do and should not do on their social media accounts.
#1 Do Be Consistent with Your Posting
Posting content regularly to your Chamber’s social media accounts can make it easier for your content to be seen by your audience. Posting regularly signals to your audience and to the algorithms to expect content at specific days and times.
To help you to create consistency in your social media postings, set up a social media calendar for your Chamber that shows what days you will post, what content and it what format you will post, as well as lists what types of media you need to accompany your content. I usually recommend planning your content ahead as far as possible – 6 months is great, but realistically even a few weeks ahead will help you out a lot.
Set certain days of the week for certain types of content. If you are doing LIVE videos, plan those at the same time each week. If you do a Q&A session, plan those on a specific day each week. The consistency will help your organic reach (the number of people who see your content) and will also help your audience know what to expect from you.
#2 Don’t Post Only Article Links
While it’s great that your Chamber is posting unique content that you wrote – I love that! – only sharing it on your Chamber’s timeline with an article link is doing your Chamber a disservice.
Facebook wants to keep people on its platform, so linking out to an external website is not something they want to promote.
While I do think sharing a link post is a good thing to do, you want to make sure that you share your content in multiple formats. Post it as a long-form post on Facebook with an image, as a video summary with your major takeaways, as a pull-quote from the article, and in other creative ways.
By sharing your article content in multiple formats, it still brings attention to the article on your website (you can tell people to visit your website for the complete article or post a link in the comments) and it still gets that important information out there. It also provides you lots of content to post on your Facebook page or other social media accounts with the production of just one article!
#3 Don’t Share Videos From YouTube
I do strongly encourage Chambers to have a YouTube account and post their videos there, but to get the most out of your video, you also need to upload the video directly to Facebook. This means uploading the video file directly into your Facebook Business account and posting it there.
As I mentioned in #2, Facebook doesn’t want to direct users to a source outside of their platform, so when the algorithm notices you have posted a link to a YouTube video, it will reduce its reach (the number of people who see the video).
Conversely, when you upload the video natively to Facebook, you have a better chance of it being viewed by your followers. If it’s relevant to your users and strikes a chord with them, you’ll get some engagement with the video and it will be seen by even more people.
So, give your videos the best chance of being seen and upload them to Facebook when you want to share them.
#4 Do Plan Ahead
As Chamber of Commerce professionals, you are BUSY! You have a lot on your plate, so scheduling and posting on social media often falls to the wayside when your other Chamber responsibilities ramp up.
If you create a plan and schedule your posts ahead of time, you can be more consistent and have less stress each week.
There are several good scheduling tools out there – Agorapulse and Hootsuite are two popular options – but don’t forget about the scheduler built into Facebook. It now has a visual planner that looks a lot like what you find in some paid apps. You’ll find the planner in Facebook Business Suite (now called Meta Business Suite).
PRO TIP: The Meta Business Suite planner also highlights upcoming National Days – something I always recommend Chambers of Commerce pay attention to as a way to highlight member businesses.
I recommend that you plan your Chamber of Commerce Facebook content ahead by at minimum two weeks, but ideally, as far ahead as 6 months. This allows you to write your content in batches, gather or take the images necessary, and plan your video production.
#5 Do Post Events on Facebook using Facebook Events
I often find that Chambers of Commerce share information about their upcoming events on their Facebook Business Pages using images or text posts, but they forget to make use of the Events feature on Facebook.
Posting an Event on Facebook is a free tool that you can use to share everything going on with your Chamber in an easy-to-find place as well as allows you to possibly reach new people. All of your Chambers events can be found from your Business Page – so your members can see everything that is coming up that might interest them.
Facebook users can find local events by searching categories on their personal profile’s events tab – this can help your event be discovered by locals looking for something to do.
By including details, updates, photos, and more in your Facebook Event, you can keep those interested in the event up-to-date and create excitement about your upcoming event.
Better yet, you can run ads to promote your event on Facebook and reach even more people who may be interested in your event.
I’ve even noticed lately that Facebook is sending notifications to page followers about events they might be interested. So, take advantage of this tool to get the free promotional opportunity for your events!
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