Have you thought about the customer service goals you want to accomplish in 2013? This article provides five New Years’ resolutions to help your company give your users a betterFacebook experience in the coming year.

It’s the new year and odds are you’re thinking about goals and things you’d like to accomplish for 2013. Here are five New Years’ resolutions to help your company give your users a better Facebook experience and make the coming year even more successful than the last.

1. Run Facebook contests that get your fans excited (and give you data)

It’s a given that you collect data about your customers via your website. Perhaps you post verbiage that goes something like: “If you want to download our whitepaper, fill out this form” or “If you want to know about my newsletter, sign up here.” But thanks to Facebook, and other social channels, data collection can be much more fun and engaging.

On Facebook, you can use apps to create games or contests for users to enter in exchange for a little bit of information. In the past it was very expensive to create contests and custom apps, but thanks to third party apps these options are within reach of virtually any business.

2. Stop thinking about Facebook ROI

Tracking return on investment continues to be a hot topic. Even though major brands spend a fraction of their advertising and public relations budgets on Facebook and other social media, they still want to know how much a fan or a follower is “worth.” This is missing the point of social media.

Yes, you can try to establish correlations between social media engagement and sales. But trying to measure social ROI is sort of like trying to measure the effectiveness of a billboard.

Are billboards effective advertising tools? Undoubtedly, yes. Is it possible to track how billboard advertising boosts sales? It’s not impossible, but it would be difficult to obtain accurate data. A company could have a unique phone number or URL on a billboard, or even a special offer, but it would be hard to figure the true number of “generated actions” that came from it.

Instead, think about how your social presence builds loyalty, improves sentiment about your brand and increases brand awareness. That’s what social media is meant for and what it’s good at. I wrote about this topic a few months back in my article “Social Media ROI: It Doesn’t Really Matter (Really!).”

3. Rethink your Facebook advertising strategy

Stop running Facebook ads just for the purpose of getting Likes! Instead, make a promise in your ads and then give something of value to the people who click on those ads. Why? Facebook advertising should not be used only to “sell,” but rather to help users form their own opinion about the value that your company brings. Plus, it’s a better way to start a conversation.

Users need to be motivated to click “Like.” By using Facebook ads to redirect users to valuable content, users will feel good about Liking your Facebook Page because they will realize that your company is worth following. There are three primary advertising options on Facebook: traditional ads, Sponsored Stories and Promoted Posts. However, there are four other Facebook advertising options that you should work into your Facebook advertising strategy.

4. Get to know your target market better

More important than learning users’ ages or genders is getting to know what your target market’s interests are and who or what influences them. There are three effective ways to discover your market’s interests and the interests of people they follow.

• Research experts or influential bloggers in your industry. Finding thought leaders who have large followings is a key to understanding what type of Facebook content your market likes. Following these people will also help your company recognize industry trends so that you can quickly adapt your marketing strategies to what your consumers want.

  A trend that is becoming more prevalent is the shift in the way companies share industry news. A traditional news headline is not as appealing as a tip-centric, how-to article title. People are more attracted to posts that offer actionable take-away advice and tips. So instead of just sharing the news, offer an opinion on it, include suggestions or tie in best practices that relate to the news topic.

  By Jim Belosic

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