Building a Page

This step may seem really basic, but it’s where every successful Facebook centric business has its roots. Getting this step right is crucial for future success, so spend some time perfecting your page. It should reflect your business, as it is where your most important interactions will take place. The cover photo is the best place to start – choose one that encapsulates what your brand is all about. While it’s okay to change your cover photo as you move forward, perhaps to advertise a competition or sale, for consistency your profile picture should always display your company logo.

Next on the agenda is to add important milestones to bulk up your timeline. This is where you can get creative and use pictures to maximum effect. You might include an image of the launch of your physical store or pictures of the awards your business has won. The final step is to encourage any existing customers to head over to your Facebook page to like it. Make it super simple by adding a “find us on Facebook” icon to your website and other communications.

Quality Content

When your page is up and running, the next task is to engage your fans with interesting content. Indeed, engagement is the key driver for maximizing the benefits of Facebook. You should balance the need to update your audience on Facebook with your need to get on with other tasks crucial to the success of your business. A good start can be made with as little as two or three posts a week. Since user likes appear on their newsfeed, each post you make should be considered as an opportunity to not only touch base with your existing audience, but also to reach out to their network of friends as well.

Although not all of your interactions on Facebook should be about sales, from time to time it’s a good idea to reward your fans with a coupon or exclusive offer. Otherwise keep things human by asking questions, soliciting opinions, and sharing third party content your users may find interesting. Make sure you’re on track by setting a reminder to review your timeline every month or so. When you look back, it should be filled with useful posts, videos, images, and the odd special offer. If yours doesn’t look this, it could be time for rethink.

Make Advertising Work

If all that seems like it will take longer than you’re prepared to wait, you’re probably not a million miles from the truth. If you want to build your fan base more quickly, consider Facebook ads as a way of finding fans that can ultimately be converted into buying customers. You have the option of setting a budget so you’ll never end up spending capital you don’t have if a particular ad attracts a record number of clicks. Be sure to experiment with different well-targeted ads. At first, you will have to make tweaks to your ads regularly, making use of the simple reporting tool to discover what ads better suit different audiences and adjusting appropriately as you go on.

Research suggests that over 50% of Facebook users are more likely to purchase a product after they have “liked” it. That’s a fairly compelling number for a marketing channel that is to all intents and purposes free to use. Following these tips to getting started with Facebook for business will have you up and running in no time and start you on the road to converting fans into customers.

About the Author:
Linda Forshaw is a Business Information Systems graduate from Lancaster University in the UK. A contributor to Degree Jungle, she is a full time writer and blogger specializing in education, social media, and entrepreneurship. Contact her on Twitter @seelindaplay

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Popularity

The usefulness of Facebook as a marketing tool requires an accurate estimate of the number of small businesses that use this form of social media. This number is difficult to estimate due to the large variation between sources. Almost 50 percent of small businesses don’t use social networking at all according to Hiscox, an insurance company for small businesses. Facebook only accounted for 19 percent of the businesses that use social media in this survey. Palore is an Internet marketing firm that surveyed small businesses about their use of social media. This survey showed that 54.2 percent of small businesses have a Facebook page and 22.3 percent of small businesses have a Twitter account and a Facebook page.

Customers

Customer engagement is a primary factor in determining the effectiveness of a marketing strategy. Facebook is more likely to be useful for large businesses that have stores in many locations. The Roost Local Scorecard is an analysis of Facebook pages for small businesses. This analysis found that an average of 15 percent of the “likes” on the Facebook page for a small business were from local users, which means that a Facebook page would provide little benefit for small businesses.

Budget

A business must consider the cost of a particular marketing strategy, especially small businesses with limited financial resources. Facebook does not charge a fee for creating a Facebook page, but a Facebook page used to market a business requires a substantial investment of time and money. This includes the resources needed to update the page with fresh content and respond to comments. A large business typically hires consultants to maintain a Facebook presence, but small businesses often must perform these tasks themselves.

Objectives

The effectiveness of Facebook also depends on your specific marketing objective. Small businesses typically rely on sales leads more than brand awareness to increase revenue. Facebook can be highly effective in building brand awareness, but it is less able to generate sales leads. A lead generation program that consists of rewarding people for referrals is often more beneficial to small businesses. These businesses may generate leads with a direct mail campaign. Webmaster tools can also allow small businesses to implement pay-per-click and SEO campaigns.

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As Facebook gained prominence and its membership grew by millions, it became more than just a simple social networking service. It has become one of the world’s leading social media marketing medium as well. With the vast diversity and large population of its members, it only made sense that it led to what we now call Facebook marketing.

Facebook as a Marketing Tool

Facebook provides one important thing in marketing: market. The entire membership is a wide, deep ocean of potential customers that business owners simply need to tap into.

Facebook marketing is a social media marketing strategy wherein business people and entrepreneurs promote their businesses and websites through Facebook.

The following are five Facebook marketing techniques that can help you with your website promotion.

1. Have A Unique, Official Logo

Take the official logo or banner of the business, product or service offered in your website and use it as a profile picture. Preferably, it should be striking, attractive, stands out, memorable and distinct from all the other logos out there. This will distinguish your Facebook account from other individuals and encourage people to regard you with respect as a business.

Logos are a necessity in basic marketing. It is all the more important in Facebook marketing because there are multitudes of photos and profile images in Facebook. You want to be easily recognized so that people will pay attention to your status updates regarding the latest developments of your website.

2. Install Facebook’s RSS Graffiti Application

This is a free application that you can easily access through Facebook. Simply search for it through the search box and authorize the application to access your profile account. Add the RSS Graffiti into your business’ official Facebook page. Enter the RSS feed or URL into the RSS Graffiti and complete your preferred settings (how many posts, how often, when and the like). Once you’ve saved everything, your Facebook page is all set for Facebook marketing and website promotion!

Depending on your settings, the RSS Graffiti will automatically publish the articles you add in your website. You no longer have to individually post updates and new features. Everything will be automatically done for you.

In addition to this, the application will also provide you with the stats of the website you’re publishing on your Facebook wall.

3. Provide A Link In Your Profile Page

Once you get people’s attention with your status updates and RSS feeds, they are likely to click on your profile page and learn more about the business. Provide them with the basic information about your services, and then direct them to your website for more information and exciting offers. This is website promotion and social media marketing in its most direct form.

4. Utilize Facebook Groups and Fanpages

Opening a group page in Facebook is one way to filter contacts and stragglers into a condensed population that truly has the potential to become your future customer and client pool. Write a short, personal message for each invite you send out. If he/she chooses to be a member and stay updated with your Facebook group, this is a very good sign indeed.

In social media marketing, sometimes it is more sensible to target the right market than just assimilate large numbers of contacts wherein a larger percentage will simply be indifferent to you. It is far easier to reel in visitors to your website when you all share a common interest and if they are truly interested in your group.

5. Utilize Walls and Status Updates

Each person has his own wall where he can publish his own messages and receive messages from other people. Whenever these posts are published, they also appear as alerts to all the other contacts of the person. This is a perfect opportunity for website promotion.

This works similarly with the RSS Graffiti. However, with posting on your and other people’s walls, you can be more casual and promote new updates to your website in an offhand manner that doesn’t reek of website promotion. People will simply bypass your alert if they sense that your main purpose is for them to click on the link and buy something off you.
In addition, respond to inquiries and posts published in your wall. If you do this often, you’ll also stay near the top of the updates list on everyone’s home page.

With the success of the Internet as a medium for communication, people from all over the world are connected regardless of distance, language, color and culture. It also paved the way for social media marketing, particularly website promotion and Facebook marketing. You can promote your website to a very wide audience and achieve a lot more through Facebook.

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WOW – look what Facebook has become, once a one man show in some pokey
Harved dorm room, now over 200 million users worldwide and just to top
it off – Facebook makes it to the silver screen.

The movie, called “The Social Network” will begin production later this year, rumoured to be directed by David Fincher, director of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and my favourite, Fight Club.

Just to top this one off, Justin Timberlake is to be playing the role of Facebook’s founding president Sean Parker.

So there you have it folks, don’t waste your time making short movies and videos for YouTube, hire yourself a Hollywood movie producer and take it to the silver screen.

“The Social Network” – coming to a screen near you!

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