How to Market Your Business Using Facebook
Facebook is the most powerful social networking site, with millions visiting daily, making it a great vehicle to showcase your products and services. The question is how do market your business on Facebook? Here are few steps to guide your marketing efforts:
Use the right type of profile – Many small businesses make the mistake of creating a personal profile for their business, actually they should use a business account or Facebook Fan Page. Using a personal profile is a violation of Facebook’s rules and yes they do actually close those accounts down occasionally. The great news is recently Facebook addressed the issue by finally allowing those who mistakenly used a personal profile to transition it to a fan page or business account. This is very helpful for those who managed to build a significant following.
Establish your presence – Invite your personal friends to at least “like” your page temporarily because once you secure 25 fans on your page you can create a vanity URL. This will make it much easier to include your Facebook id in your marketing material. Once you have the needed 25, go to www.facebook.com/username and determine if you ideal name is available.
Very important: keep in mind once you select a vanity URL you can never change it. So before you push the confirmation button make absolutely sure it is spelled the way you want and carefully consider if the name is the right fit.
Post daily, but do not be too chatty – It is recommended you post daily – depending on your type of business even on weekends – but do not flood your fans with messages. Try to keep it to no more than twice a day for putting a new post on you wall. Also avoid posting the same time every day, especially if you are marketing to consumes, not other businesses. If the bulk of your fan base is at work with no access to Facebook, they will likely miss your message at 2 p.m. daily.
Keep in mind people know you have a product or service to sell, but if you try to push something in every single post they will bail on you fast. So share information unrelated to your company that is important to your demographics occasionally.
You can receive email notifications to help you respond promptly when someone posts comments on your posts.
Best change ever for fan pages – In February Facebook provided the ability of Facebook Pages to post on other Pages as the company not via the admin profile. If you sell something geared to women and assuming you are not limited to specific region, and then why not post a comment to one of Bath and Body Works’ latest post. Make it a point to target a large brand such as Target, Lane Bryant, American Idol or Starbucks for maybe a couple of days. Participate in their conversation in a genuine – not selling anything – in an effort to put yourself in front of the right audience. If your name and avatar are on point, this should help a new audience discover your Fan Page.
It is important you identify the admins who should try this because it is important you have guiding principles for the type of discussions you will enter and what you will say. If the post has devolved into an argument, via your Fan Page is not the right vehicle to share your two cents.
Inside Facebook discusses several of the other key changes Facebook implemented earlier this year, including design changes. Facebook also provided a FAQ to answer most commonly asked questions about the changes.
Invite your Fans over – Facebook allows both public and private events, this is a helpful tool to let you fans know about special events you are hosting. Again, do not be like the party promoters sending daily event invitations which simply get deleted. Strategically select the events you will post.
Important to understand that for a Fan Page you can “update” your fans after the event is created, but you cannot send an actual “invite” as you can on your personal profile.
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