When I’m on the road now, I see about half of the trucks on the road now have a .com somewhere on the trailer or the side of the cab. I’m not surprised. It’s a great way to advertise your business. Facebook is probably the only better way to get your name out there.
Did you know that this year (2016) Facebook and Google tied for searches for news? That makes Facebook pretty powerful!
Facebook vs. LinkedIn
I’m on both Facebook and LinkedIn. As a professional in the world of logistics and transportation, I figure I should be on LinkedIn. I can find the names of companies’ shipping leads on LinkedIn. But it’s not really a good place to make many contacts with a personal nature.
Since my goal is to meet potential customers who will learn to know, like, and trust me with their shipping needs, I need a place to build a relationship. That’s what Facebook does for me.
I’m always on the lookout for loads – and for drivers. I used LinkedIn to find shipping leads for the companies I want to cultivate as customers. I don’t find drivers on LinkedIn. They may be there, but I don’t have much luck finding them. It occurred to me last week that I was looking in the wrong spot. I need to be looking at Facebook.
Consider this: Facebook is about relationships. Families use it to keep in touch. Friends share their friends’ posts. I’m looking to find people – why not use the number one tool to get the word out to friends and families?
Facts About Facebook
Finding out who your readers are on Facebook is important. If you’re looking for a specific target audience, it’s best to figure out where that audience is and go there. Undoubtedly, Facebook is the reigning king of social media. Whether or not your preferred audience is Facebook’s typical user, almost everyone uses it to some degree. Finding the right community might take time, but when you find it, using social media marketing tricks, you can target your audience to help them find you.
Like all social media platforms, it takes time and work to make your feed successful. If you’ve got the time, Facebook might be a useful tool.
Here’s the one drawback to Facebook. If you don’t post something regularly, other people are not going to find it very useful or interesting, so they won’t come back to read it again. In this world where Twitter is dominating online communication with 144 characters and it goes so fast that I can’t even keep up (and most people don’t try), Facebook moves fast too. There are some social media experts who say you need to post something as much as two or three times a day to keep your content page interesting.
That’s a lot of work, finding that much to post. I don’t update every day, but you’ll see something every few days on my Facebook page. When I see something I think is worth putting up there, I’ll share it – just like everyone else. I’m not going to share just anything just to get new content on there. I want my feed to be interesting – not weird.
What’s the Point of Your Facebook?
If you’re looking for loads, I doubt that Facebook is going to do you much good. If you’re looking for drivers, you might find Facebook is a good tool if you use it well. Fill your trucking business Facebook page with stories about how your company recognizes and rewards its drivers, then you may be on to something. But you can’t be lazy about posting. Like everything else, what you get out of Facebook is what you’ll put into it.
I’m thinking about using Facebook to find new drivers. I might run some ads for my company to recruit new owner-operators. But I won’t do it until I’ve got a good amount of content on my page. The point of my page is to make my business look like a business a driver would like to work for.
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