Click here to be taken directly to the step by step instructions on how to tag Facebook pages for a business or individual.
Read on for more information about the value tagging can bring for your social media strategy.
When you think about social media marketing there is one major component that stands out to any successful social media presence for a business. And while most people immediately jump to the return on investment or ROI of increased sales as the measure of success, we focus on aspects that will lead to this increase in sales and growth… social media engagement. Social media engagement includes individuals: Commenting on your posts, liking your posts and sharing your content. Engagement really matters and any social media strategy that does not have an active engagement plan as part of the overall strategy is highly lacking.
Why does engagement matter? Because it is what makes your presence “social” instead of just coming across as you trying to push your way in. Social media marketing only works when your business or brand seamlessly ties into a community online and appears to be an active part of the community. Marketers are often caught up in the “marketing” of their products and services and forget that what makes social media different is that you get to talk directly to your customers and they get to talk back. It’s a two way conversation or it should be. The more engaged your audience is the more likely they are to share your business with others the more likely they will purchase your services or products.
One way you can increase engagement on your business Facebook page is by tagging other Facebook pages and individuals (who have liked your page). Trust me when I tell you this is a powerful way to encourage engagement. Making your presence social is the key difference that will lead to more people seeing your content, becoming a part of your community and hopefully someday becoming your customers.
Why You Should Tag Facebook Pages When Posting On Your Business Page
Tagging is a simple, but important part of any Facebook marketing strategy. It is a direct way to reach others, talk about them and give them accolades and attention. You heard me right, give others attention. For many businesses this may seem counter intuitive, “why would we want to give attention anyone else when we are really trying to get people to pay attention to us?”
I get it you are on social media to drive people to pay attention to your business and brand. You are not trying to bring the attention to someone else, but it’s important to note that if you are all about yourself and only focus on YOU YOU YOU, guess what? You are not building a community, you are simply on a soapbox yelling at anyone who will listen. This is not what being social is about and this is not how social media marketing works. As a business on social media, you are already disadvantaged because people know you are there to sell your products or services. You have to show people that while you do have a business purpose, your first purpose is to be useful and helpful to others. You want to create a sense of community and show your audience you care about them. If you do this you will build the trust and your community will want to talk about you more, and this includes sharing your posts and content which will directly increase engagement.
When you tag another page or a fan of your page you are letting others know that you are interested in sharing knowledge and information that is not always all about you. For the user, you are tagging it sends them a clear signal that you value and trust them and are willing to tell others about them. Over time these types of interactions can encourage others who are being tagged to tag your page and to return the love.
Another signal you send by tagging others is that you are not simply a business or brand that is simply posting content for hopes of gaining attention. You show that you are one that is working to engage with and have conversations with other people. Tagging is a way to encourage others to talk to you, mention you and in essence help grow your own social media presence. The more people are engaging with you the more chances you have of your content being seen, shared and most importantly getting people to take action that will lead them to become a customer or client.
Strategies For Tagging Others On Your Facebook Page
When you choose to tag someone on your business page, it is important that it fits into your larger content and digital marketing strategy. You do not want to tag a bunch of people or businesses just for the sake of tagging. You want to have the tagging appear to be fluid, natural and a part of your normal conversations.
A few ways you can begin integrating Facebook tagging include:
- Tag people when you share something that includes them, this could be sharing a photo, video, link with a mention of the person or business or anything else that is about someone other than yourself.
- Think of strategic posts that mention your business partners and tag them. This can be a post that is offering congratulations for a success they have achieved, a post that is about something you both do together as partners, articles they produce or sharing something relevant from their Facebook page.
- If you start a strategy to tag partners you should integrate a plan as to when and how often to tag partners. Perhaps it is a rotation and you will try to tag them in a post once every 3 months. Mentioning partners more than once will help grab their attention and let them know you are serious about your social media relationships and leveraging them to build your business while you help build theirs too. Tagging partners more than once will also help remind them to tag you and promote you too. Revisiting this strategy regularly to identify who is responding and who is not responding is important as you will want to adjust who you continue to tag and who you choose to stop tagging.
- Discuss Facebook page tagging with your business partners and ask them to reciprocate. This is so simple, but it is often forgotten. If you have close relationships with partners, let them know of your plans to start tagging them and ask if they will reciprocate. You can even go as far as offering pre-written posts for them to us to talk about you and tag you (if they are open to you writing content for them.)
- Make sure to leverage events, meetings and any other type of activity that could produce photos and videos as a chance to tag your partners and associates. Events are a great time to tag people because they usually bring a lot of people from different backgrounds together.
- Make a list of partners, associates and others you would like to recognize on Facebook and begin to actively look for ways to tag them. Watch their Facebook pages for posts to share, news and events that may be worthwhile to share with your audience.
How To Tag A Facebook page or Individual From Your Facebook Business Page
It’s easy to tag a Facebook page or profile. Just follow the 4 steps below and you will have it mastered:
- Type the @ sign in your post
- Immediately after typing the @ sign (leave no spaces) begin typing the name of the page or person you want to tag. As you begin to type the name after the @ sign a drop down of pages and individuals following your page will appear.
To tag another page or individual type the @ sign and their name immediately after the @ sign to see a drop down menu of options of pages or individuals you can tag. - Once you see the drop-down menu with choices that match your intended business or individual, select the page or person you want to tag and it will appear in your post highlighted in light blue. This indicates that you have successfully tagged the page.
After you select a page to tag the page name will show up in your draft post with a blue highlight to indicate that you have set a tag in your post for that page. - Publish the post. You will see the tagged page in dark blue once you publish the post. This is how you know it is tagged. Click on it and you will be taken to the tagged Facebook page.
Tips To Make Facebook Tagging Of Individuals and Businesses Simpler
1. We find that tagging someone using your desktop is much easier than tagging someone using the Facebook Page Manager application on your phone. The reason the desktop is easier to use is that sometimes you have multiple choices for the same name and business and on the desktop, you can more readily assess which page is the correct page. The navigation on the desktop is a little smoother and quicker when posting as well.
Although we often post to Facebook on the go and are able to tag any post regardless of the platform we are using, tagging can take a little more time on a mobile phone. You will develop your own approach in how to make tagging work as simply as possible for you by jumping in and trying it out.
2. Another tagging option when posting on a Facebook page from a mobile phone is to go into the post later on a desktop to add the tag for the business or person. We recommend trying to complete your post with tagging initially on the phone because time is of the essence and no one wants to have to remember to go back and tag someone. In the event that you are having difficulties tagging on your phone, there is always the option to go back to your desktop and tag at a later time.
3. There are many management applications out there that allow you to post from 3rd party applications. For example, SocialNicole uses SproutSocial quite extensively. It is important to note that applications may have certain limitations when it comes to tagging other pages and they may differ amongst themselves. You will need to test tagging out to see how your management application works. Sprout Social allows us to tag business pages, but not individuals. In the event we want to tag an individual follower we post directly on Facebook from our desktop or phone.
4. Occasionally you will find it difficult to tag a business or an individual and we have one simple tip for how to deal with this. Take a break and come back to it. Yes that sounds a bit too simplistic. But we have found that sometimes the drop down menus will not work on the phone, or a drop down menu will not show certain pages for some reason even though we know the page exists. Typically if we try again later it will work. We may mention the page or business by name to get the post live and go back and tag them later when editing, or we may wait to post depending on the urgency of the post.
Final Thoughts On Facebook Tagging For Businesses
Remember when you tag on Facebook, you are linking to another business or person’s page and that can lead people to click and leave your Facebook page to go to the tagged page. It’s important to balance your desire to connect along with your desire to keep people front and center. We evaluate any post that we are planning to use tagging to make sure we are ok with traffic potentially leaving the post on our page. We also strategize to balance tagging with not tagging to ensure that we are not always driving people away. Strive to keep content balanced because too much of one thing is typically not a good thing. Tagging should be used as one of many strategies to engage with others.
Read Now: 6 Tips To Increase Your Social Media Engagement
Building a social media strategy and implementation plan is an important part of leveraging tagging effectively. Being successful on social media means crafting quality content and balancing your different messaging objectives with your overall presence. Having a strategy and plan in place that helps guide when, why and how to tag people and pages. This will strengthen your efforts and garner much greater results than randomly tagging people when it works out or you remember to tag them.
If you would like help building a real, actionable social media strategy and implementation plan that will help guide your Facebook posts to get more engagement, leads and sales contact us today for a free quote. We are happy to help you Connect. Engage and Grow!
