Facebook is sharing heaven. Home to selfie sharers, comment sharers and information sharers.
Specifically, more than one billion people share their posts and comments and engage with each other’s photos and ideas on the network. So when it comes to “sharing businesses” – those companies that turn assets into services and allow individuals to borrow, rent or benefit from property owned by someone else – using Facebook is the perfect environment to grow their business.
Lex Barber, who holds the Game of Thrones-inspired title of Marketing Khaleesi, at the self-explanatory sharing company, Liftshare, thinks Facebook has helped grow the business: “Facebook has been absolutely instrumental. It’s been great for us. It’s opened us up to all these people who might not even have considered sharing before.”
“Also, Facebook and other social media channels are already sharing platforms – making it perfect for sharing businesses to operate on,” she adds.
Debbie Wosskow, founder of sharing economy business Love Home Swap, and the chairman of Sharing Economy UK, goes even further to connect Facebook to growth: “I’d put it right up there with Google. It has a lot of great drivers for the sharing economy.”
Both Liftshare and Love Home Swap have used Facebook to grow their businesses. The former, which started with a post asking for a lift to Norwich on a Bristol University notice board 17 years ago, took on a new lease of life with the advent of Facebook. It enabled the company to connect lift-sharers more easily and opened the business up to those already at ease with the sharing ethos, who, having seen Liftshare pop up on their feed, might now try the service.
Love Home Swap, a home-exchange sharing community with more than 65,000 properties in around 160 countries on its books, has a more specific demographic to target – families who love to travel. By using an approach heavily tailored to this market, Facebook has allowed Wosskow to engage directly with this cohort.
Co-founder of dog-sharing site Borrow my Doggy, Rikke Rosenlund, agrees that Facebook can be a powerful tool for growth if used properly. Her team has built an 180,000-strong following on Facebook – which has translated into tangible growth for the business. The company uses the platform to interact with this substantial community and also to spread the word to potential new members.
“It’s been a great way to share information with our community. We create quite a lot of content – everything from dog training videos, videos on cooking for dogs, through to testimonials,” she says.
Rikke suggests another idea – working with similar companies or organisations to tap into their audience.
“Sometimes we run competitions with companies we love or share information with them. We have had postings [mentioning] the likes of the charity, The Dogs Trust, for example, which is a way for us to communicate with other organisations that have the best interests of dogs and people in mind,” says Rikke.
Whatever you do, be focused. “It’s easy to get sucked into the broad range of what Facebook has to offer, because it’s so big,” stresses Wosskow. Deciding on a plan and sticking to it will help avoid many wasted hours.
Top tips for using Facebook to grow your sharing business
1. Know your tribe
“Social media is all about engaging with your audience,” says Wosskow. “Know where they are and know how they want to be engaged”
Barber agrees: “It can be a bit overwhelming as to who you’re trying to target. It can be really easy to throw money at it and target a really wide range., when at the end of the day with sharing economy sites there are going to be some people who are more likely to use them than others.” Knowing your audience and not casting too wide a net is crucial.
2. Define what success looks like
Wosskow cautions that a business must decide how it is going to measure success, as there are so many different metrics to work with and so many different possible goals and outcomes.
“Be really clear on what you are trying to achieve, and what you’re willing to invest in. Otherwise, you can run the risk of burning through budget,” she says.
3. Make sure your activity is joined up
“Joining up your activity with other channels has got to be part of your overall strategy,” says Wosskow.
Make sure your email marketing and Instagram feeds, for example, are all up and running, connected, and are being used appropriately for the chosen target audience.
4. Be reactive
“Speed is essential when engaging with customers,” says Wosskow. If users post or message, you must be able to react fast.
For sharing businesses specifically, trust is an integral part of gaining new customers and the journey often starts on social media. “So you’ve got to stay on top of your reviews and engage quickly – ideally within the hour,” she suggests.
Liftshare operates as close to a 24hr response service as they can and Barber knows that people will expect someone to react to queries at all hours of the day. “Its pretty easy to do. I just have it on my phone and I answer them as it goes off,” she explains.
5. Think mobile
“Is your site optimised for mobile, is your app only available on iOS? You need to think cross-divide to have the best impact”, suggests Wosskow.
6. Gather insight
Facebook can be very useful as an insight tool, especially for small business where budgets are too tight to stretch to expensive audience profiling tools.
“The real power of social for businesses like mine is customer insight,” says Wosskow. “It’s a very relevant and constant way of understanding your customer.”
Barber, meanwhile, uses Facebook feedback to help keep the website up to date – customer suggestions often help iron out any glitches – and for general data gathering. “It’s great to see what people are talking about and what we could link to,” she says.
7. Have a conversation
Barber says: “Listen to what people are saying to you. I see a lot of people pushing out content but having nothing to say.”
The sharing and conversation goes both ways: “It’s important to remember that Facebook isn’t a one-way stream. It’s a two-way communication platform.”
Content on this page is paid for and produced to a brief agreed with Facebook sponsor of the Guardian Small Business Network Connected for Success hub.
