Social Media Guide for Farriers

In this increasingly digital age, it is important for small business owners, like yourselves, to incorporate a social media presence into your marketing strategy. While word of mouth to gain new clients will likely never be a thing of the past, social media can be a powerful way to build your brand and engage with your audience.

Below, we have put together a social media guide specifically for Facebook to get your pages up and running, or in front of more people if it exists already. We recommend creating a Facebook business page because of its large equine audience and ease of use.

Step One: If you have not already, you will need to have a personal Facebook profile to create a business page. We have outlined the steps below. On the left-hand side of your timeline you will see the term “Pages” under “Explore”. Once you click “Pages” this screen will appear:

 

Step Two: Once you click “Create Page” it will prompt you to decide what kind of page you are creating. We recommend clicking “Business or Brand.”

 

Step Three: It will then ask you to provide personal information to populate the page. Some details will be required, others will not. We recommend filling it out as completely as possible so that future followers will know who you are, how to contact you, where your business resides and what you specialize in.

 

Once you have created a page, or if you have an existing page that could use additional help gaining followers, we recommend expanding the content you post to the page and increasing the frequency of your posts.

Consistent content and posting will go a long way in increasing engagement and the ultimate goal: new business. We recommend posting as often as possible to ensure your content is seen by your new (or existing) followers. This could look like posting three to five times a week, every other day, or only on the weekends. Whatever works best for you, remember to be as consistent as possible.

Ideas for posts:

• Offer a Question and Answer forum for your followers, ask if they have questions about their own horse’s hoof health, hoof care in general, etc. Makes sure to take the time to reply to comments and questions from followers
• Share informational material that might be relevant to your clients
• Share “Before and After” images
• Ask for reviews from existing clients
• Industry news
• Share the work you are proud of (images and video are ideal)
• Interesting cases you come across

While some of this may seem tedious at first, the benefits of managing a Facebook business page really do pay out in the long run. It is important to remember that these are just ideas and that you should customize your page to fit your own business. As you begin to incorporate new content into your own page, be sure to keep an eye on which ones get the most engagement (likes, shares and comments). Once you know what works best for your own farrier business, you can prioritize them in future posts.

We hope this guide is helpful and please check back in our next newsletter for additional marketing information that expands on how to create engaging content on Facebook.

Written by Emily Smith.