What is the most creative way you’ve used Facebook for your business?
This was the question StartupNation asked of 10 successful entrepreneurs. The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.
1. Run Promotions
The number one reason people subscribe to you on Facebook is because they want deals or promotions; the same goes for email. Run a promotion once a month, such as giving away a limited-edition product of yours that they can’t get anywhere else. This will get people engaged and visiting on a regular basis.
2. Use Your Birthday
What’s the most valuable space on Facebook that everyone sees? The birthday section. For years this space has stayed on the upper right-hand corner of the home page to alert you of your friends’ birthdays. In the past, I’ve edited my birthday to match a handful of my major product launches. On my personal profile I’ve made a status update alerting friends of the launch. Low? Maybe. But it works.
– Brett Farmiloe, Markitors
3. Let the Customers Decide
Social media can really drive your business forward. Especially Facebook, because of its market share in the social space. Optimize it by listening to customer feedback and letting consumers help you drive marketing campaigns. We love to use images, so consumers can poll which color of a style they like best. Polling helps us determine what to push!
– Pablo Palatnik, ShadesDaddy.com
4. Post Funny Content
Post content that isn’t directly related to your business from time to time. It could be about a staff member’s birthday or a fun YouTube video you came across. It makes your company more personable and attractive to new customers.
– Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance
5. Optimize App Store Copy
Facebook is an incredibly interesting way to learn more about your customer base, and one of the most interesting things we’ve done with it is use it to optimize our app store copy. By driving traffic with Facebook ads, we can remove a variable from our app store optimization and see exactly what copy converts best.
– Emerson Spartz, Spartz
6. Promote Our Partners
We promote our best partners (our restaurants) on Facebook before our own brand to share brand equity and build credibility. When we first launch in a market, customers will recognize one of our national brands before they recognize ours, so it’s better to promote theirs than ours.
7. Create Private Groups
We created a private Facebook group to provide a forum for our customers to share with us and one another, like a digital focus group. It has been incredibly helpful to have ongoing interaction and feedback. The group has made us think differently about the challenges our customers face and has made us reevaluate how we can help.
– Sarah Schupp, UniversityParent
8. Post Product Reviews
Facebook is a great way for product users to show their excitement about a product. Consumers can go to the Facebook page and discuss the product or post pictures. Videos and pictures of consumers interacting with products get a lot of attention.
– Ty Morse, Songwhale
9. Hold Contests
We ran a customer photo contest where customers submitted pictures of their solar installations to win cash prizes. The contest resulted in great social media content and thousands of new fans for our Facebook page.
– Kelcy Pegler, Jr., Roof Diagnostics
10. Target Custom Audiences
Facebook allows you to upload email lists and target those people. This can be invaluable because you’re only targeting the people who matter to you, and that means you aren’t spending a lot of cash. Be careful not to violate Facebook’s terms though; you need to make sure you aren’t just randomly uploading lists of people at your whim. That can get you banned.
– Eric Siu, Single Grain
