My fair trade business is on Facebook, now what?

You’ve decided to get on the social media train and start a Facebook page for your business. Congratulations! You are probably wondering: “What am I going to say now?” This post is specifically written for fair trade producer’s organizations who are doing their first steps on Facebook. If that’s you, read on to discover 5 great ways to produce relevant content to feed your brand new page.

First you need to understand that the great majority of your fans (people who have liked your page) will only come to your page once. That is the one time they hit the “LIKE button”. It doesn’t mean they won’t continue to follow your stories and read your content, it’s just that they won’t come to your page to find it. Most of your fans will find your posts in their newsfeed.
It is thus important to create content on a regular basis to reach your fans via their newsfeed.

Keeping that in mind, what should you write about?

I’m tempted to answer that question by another question: “Who are your fans?” Understanding your audience is crucial to provide relevant content. As a fair trade producer’s organization your fan base will most likely consist of fair trade consumers or adherents from all over the world, Western distributors and fair trade/NGO activists. You could try to segment your audience into 2 or 3 different categories and roughly estimate the proportion each category represents. This would help you elaborate a ratio for your posts. Lets say 70% of your fans are fair trade consumers, 15% are distributors and the other 15% are NGO activists. A good posting strategy would be to write 3 posts that meet the consumers’ interests, 1 that meets the distributor’s interests and 1 you know the activists will relate to to keep everyone happy.
We understand that establishing such ratio’s isn’t easy, truly understanding your audience requires time and resources. If you have none of these, here is a list of topics you could talk about that would probably be appreciated by all of your fans:

 

1# Speak about the artisans or the farmers who produce what you sell.
Tell us about their everyday’s life, their children, their work. Post some pictures or videos of them along with a small description of who they are and what they do.

Let your audience know who’s made the products they’re buying.

 

 

2# Speak about your vision of fair trade
How is the movement perceived in your country? How do YOU perceive it? What do you think works well with the system and what would you change? What do you do to make things better?

3# Speak about the benefits of fair trade on your community
One of the major concerns of Western consumers when they buy fair trade products is to know where their money goes. Use your Facebook page to bring answers to their concerns. Explain what social investments have been made, how you decided to use the fair trade premium, … in other words what your company does to improve the livelihood of your community.

4# Speak about your organization
Of course you’ve already filled up all the basic information about your company in your page’s info tab … (if not, do it now). A good idea is to go one step further and give your fans more insights about your organization. Go ahead and create a photo album with pictures of your staff along with small job descriptions, share your organigram. Go even further and let several of your employees explain a typical day at work with a 2-minute-video. Tell us how it all started and what rough phases you went through. Describe how you see your company 5 years from now, what are the major challenges you’ll have to face?

5# Speak about your products
Remember a picture is worth a thousand words, post some quality pictures of your products along with product info and additional info on where consumers can buy these products. This is a great opportunity to tag or post a link to one of your partners/buyers. Make sure to get reciprocity though and ask for visibility on their wall in exchange.
Write some product reviews, ask your audience’s opinion on new product development with polls for example. Share some success stories, showcase your best sellers.

These are just some leads that you could follow to create relevant content for your page, I’m sure every one of you will come up with their own original way of communicating with their fans.

Please join the conversation and leave a comment about this post, tell us how you like to talk with your fans? Don’t forget to share the link to your Facebook page, I’d love to become a fan!