In my last blog I gave an introduction to why your business might want to have a Facebook presence. Let’s look into this social media platform in a little more detail to discuss what this animal actual is, and how you can benefit from a presence on it.

What It Is:

Facebook is a social media networking site that allows you to build a community while communicating with people who might want to do business with you – or their influencers. Facebook was, in fact, invented originally for college students. Since its creation in 2004 it has grown to become the world’s largest social network, with more than 1 billion users worldwide. Now, presumably as a business you are not hoping to invite people to a lot of parties, (although, on the other hand, that might be a good idea, too!). But you do want to invite people to do business with you and in order to do that you need to start conversations with them that might lead to a sale.

How Do You Do That?

• Set up a Facebook Page for Your Business: It’s actually quite easy to establish a FB page and the platform at this point in time makes it a relatively straightforward process. There are instructions to walk you through the steps reasonably carefully. You want to select images for your page that are consistent with the images you use on your other branding materials – your logo, for example—and your business description should be the standard one you use elsewhere that explains what you do for whom, and how you do it.
• Start Posting on Your Page Consistently. Relevant topics might include:
  • News of any educational webinars you’re running (with a link back to your website where the main information is posted)
  • Attendance at any upcoming conferences (with an invitation to people to link back to your website for more information)
  • Any speaking engagements your executive might be undertaking
  • Interesting articles you’ve found online that are helpful to your customers – perhaps on industry-related or government websites
  • Links to articles on your website that relate to customer issues
  • Links to your regular blog postings
  • Links to your You Tube videos
  • Images of interest to your customers
  • Notice of promotions and hires within your company
  • Links to your online newsletter
  • Images of your products, people and promotions
  • Pictures from the company barbecue, bowling or fundraising events
• Invite People to “Like” Your Page: Use your other social media channels and your website to invite people to “Like” you on Facebook. They need to have their own Facebook account in order to do this but once they “Like” you, your news will show up in their newstream. The more creative and inventive your posts are, the better your opportunities will be to encourage people to do business with you. And, of course, you want to “Like” the Facebook pages of your customers whenever possible.
• Invite Engagement: With Facebook, you can ask your customers to share news of how you’ve helped them solve a problem or recognize great service people or sales reps. You can ask customers questions and use their responses in an upcoming blog post or case study. You can also solicit details about innovative uses of your product or “good news” information that might be relevant for media coverage.
• Think Outside the Box: Or the platform, as the case may be. Facebook has all kinds of applications that allow you to invite people to sign up for your company newsletter, for example, or shop online. There are applications that let you get customer support through Facebook or download coupons. You can run contests on Facebook, giving people the opportunity to win prizes in exchange for their best product-related stories, or for winning a draw that requires them to provide their email addresses (thus growing your database as well).

Implications of all of this activity:

Facebook is a great way to keep your company name in front of your customers and prospects, provided you post consistently and ensure the content you are posting is interesting, lively, informative and relevant. It can increase brand awareness, improve engagement, increase traffic to your website and ultimately contribute to more business. It also gives your business another opportunity to rank with the search engines, so it increases your online findability as well.

We have many more ideas about using Facebook for business and if you would like to book a conversation about how my team and I might be able to support you in growing your Facebook or other social media presence, please contact me at susan@crossmancommunications.com and let’s book a conversation about how we might be able to help.