Facebook is a major social channel that plays a huge role in countless businesses’ marketing strategies. With a powerful, ever-expanding user base, Facebook offers numerous benefits and advantages, helping businesses acquire leads, increase conversions, and promote customer engagement – 24/7/365.

With more than 1.55 billion active users, and over 1 billion users logging into their account everyday, Facebook is the definition of a powerhouse. Of the 72% of Facebook users that log on at least once a month, 65% of them use it daily. And we’re not talking short sessions either. The average time spent on Facebook per day is more than 20 minutes!

Social media marketing is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to target customers and drive sales to your online store. But if you’re hoping to grow and expand your business by exploiting this profitable avenue, there are some important factors you’ll want to keep in mind before you get to typing.

Check out the following tips and tricks for crafting awesome posts that Facebook fans will want to like and share with their family and friends.

Craft Quality and Engaging Posts

As an eCommerce merchant, odds are you’ve heard the hackneyed phrase “content is king”. The timeworn statement litters eCommerce blogs and guides for a good reason – poor, uninformative content always leads to dead ends. Crafting high-quality content, even when posting to Facebook, is a proven necessity if you’re looking for positive, tangible results.

Every post published to your Facebook account should be appealing, relevant, and most importantly, provide your customers with value. While this may seem like a difficult undertaking, remember that your posts aren’t limited to content produced solely by your team and website. Posting quotes, questions, and helpful guides (even from third party sites!) all make for excellent Facebook posts.

Keep Your Posts Short

If you’re looking to captivate your shoppers’ attention while browsing Facebook, you’ll want to keep your posts short yet catchy. Quickly and concisely provide the necessary information or message in as few sentences as possible. Research shows that the longer your posts, the less likely your customers are to read it.

Use High Quality Images

While images aren’t a necessity when posting to Facebook, their inclusion is highly recommended. Studies show that posts which include awesome images are 40% more likely to receive engagement. Images serve to bolster your copy, helping customers better visualize your product, promotion and/or message.

Tone Down Promotional Language

Customers aren’t interested in being inundated with sales pitch after sales pitch. Don’t think of Facebook as a free billboard to constantly push sales-heavy advertisements. Instead, provide a variety of quality content that users will find helpful or informative. You may want to offer helpful tips, a link to a great article, provide an inspirational or humorous quote, pose a thoughtful question, or share something newsworthy you found significant or interesting.

Treat Facebook as a social hub for communicating with customers and building relationships. That doesn’t mean you can’t advertise products, sales and promotions – just ensure every post isn’t demanding customers to “shop” or “buy now!”.

Create Urgency with Time-Sensitive Deals

An excellent way to attract attention and increase the likelihood of customers sharing your content is to promote a limited time deal. Great deals threatened by an expiration date incite a sense of urgency that demands shoppers to take action sooner rather than later. Today’s shoppers are the definition of bargain hunters, and will feel compelled to take advantage of your deal if only for the emotion a time-sensitive deal creates.

Continually Provide Fresh Content

Creating great content isn’t enough to win over a large following on Facebook. The key to succeeding via a social platform and bringing in the sales is to post high-quality content on a regular basis. Ideally, you’ll want to post at least one to two times a day, preferably when most of your audience is online.

If you’re just getting started and feeling a bit overwhelmed, feel free to start off at two posts per week and work toward increasing this number during the weeks ahead. It’s better to publish fewer posts of excellent quality than to push out a ton of poor content that users won’t find of value.

Attract Attention with Contests

Contests are one of the easiest ways to get customers hyped and can provide your business with a huge marketing opportunity. How customers submit their entries can be a fun and profitable tactic for your online store. You may want to require customers to “like”, share, or comment on your post for contest eligibility. Consider posing a question and having your customers provide their answers in the comment section – contests are supposed to be fun, so don’t be afraid to get a little creative.

Whatever prize or entry requirement you decide on, be sure to track your results. You may find that customers respond better to certain tactics and promotions better than others.

Engage With Your Community

Engaging with your audience is the best way to build relationships and promote loyalty. Take time to respond to any inquiries or concerns that may arise. It’s important to remember that social media platforms are the preferred channel for voicing dissatisfaction, so you’ll want to allocate a decent amount of time to monitoring Facebook activity.

If any of your customers drop in to say hello or express their love for your product, be sure to express your thanks or return a friendly greeting. Customers are eager to know that their opinion and loyalty is valued, and are more likely to share your content and become a life-time customer if you take the time to express your gratitude.