For small, local businesses using Facebook for social marketing, building up a fan base is important, but only so far as the people clicking the “like” button actually live nearby.
While some businesses can sell their products and services online to customers regardless of location, truly local businesses who serve a particular locale need to narrow their social marketing focus down to ensure they’re connecting with the people most likely to actually spend money with them.
So how does one determine how effective their local reach is on Facebook? One option is a new tool from Roost, a social marketing platform provider. The Roost Local Scorecard analyzes your business’s Facebook fan base and generates a “local score” using Roost’s proprietary algorithm, which takes into account those fans are located and factors in population data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The resulting number should help small businesses understand how effective their local reach is at a glance. Roost then offers some tips about how to improve that score using social marketing best practices on the local level. Ultimately, they’d obviously like you to sign up for their platform, and this is a great marketing tool for them to help facilitate that, but the Roost Local Scorecard is free to use with or without signing up for Roost’s core offering.
Of course, one can also get a pretty good idea about their local reach simply by using Facebook Insights, the social network’s official analytics dashboard. Roost’s scorecard is an easy way to boil that data down into a single number and give it some context.
Curious about your score? Head on over to Roost and connect your Facebook account to see how your company ranks locally.
