How to take advantage of Facebook for your business
Are you taking advantage of the enormous reach that Facebook can offer you and your business? It is true that Facebook is a place to share photos and keep in contact with friends and distant family members, but it is also a golden opportunity for your business to gain exposure and social proof from public support and feedback. Social media is one of the most valuable places you can communicate with both current customers and prospective customers.
So how can you take advantage of this opportunity?
It starts by understanding how a business Facebook page is different from a personal page, how to manage the page and the content on it and, most importantly, understanding all of the jargon that comes along with using Facebook. There aren’t too many terms to know and understand, but familiarizing yourself with them can help you to optimize your business page on Facebook. Once you get caught up on all the Facebook lingo, there are a number of things that you should have in place before you set up your page. It’s time to create a checklist. Your checklist should include your business name or page title, the contact information you want to give out, the type of business page you need, a page description, photos, and selecting your Facebook web address.
Once you have the basics down, you can begin setting up and managing your page, which is important so that you can gather and engage with your fans and begin toggling with different features. When your page is up and running, Facebook gives you the option to invite your personal friends to “like” your page. It is a good idea to invite a select few initially, but keep it limited so you have time to get into the groove of using and optimizing your new business page. Check out your privacy settings to see who can see your posts and contact you, and adjust it accordingly. Upload a cover photo and make the page inviting and visually appealing to page visitors. Post your first status update; comment on someone else’s post, or even share a post. It is important to get the momentum going and generate some activity on your page before you invite people to “like” it.
It’s Time to Attract
After you get your Facebook page set up for your business and get familiar with it’s components, it’s time to take a deeper dive and begin focusing on driving engagement with your customers and building relationships with your prospects. Write up a company description for your page, and make sure to add milestones to tell the story of your business’ growth. You can include things such as your business’ launch date, new product releases, events you are hosting and so on. Continue to post milestones as you reach them. Along with that, keep posting content that is relevant to you and your customers. Make sure it is something they will find useful, beneficial, and interesting. Use different types of content, such as videos and pictures, and strategize how you plan to release them on your page.
Be sure to be monitoring the results of your page once you get it up and running. Using Facebook analytics can help you see how your page is currently performing and help you to plan out future posts. The Insights button on your page gives you information on page likes, such as how many people were reached by your post, engagement, and data on your individual posts. Also, you can watch other pages and track the success of your competitors or other pages of interest and use it as an opportunity to benchmark your own performance. Monitoring all of your results can help you when it is time to extend your reach to Facebook users who currently are not likers of your page. There are a number of different ways to advertise your page on Facebook, so it is key to understand how all of the different options work and how you can integrate them into your plans for optimizing your business page on Facebook.
Take advantage of the power of social networking and download your free guide, Facebook for Business. Become equipped with the skills to analyze your business’ Facebook page, and extend your reach beyond the people who already love you and are fans of your business. Go ahead and get started. Your business will thank you for it.
