How to Facebook for Businesses?

As promised in one of my previous blogs, I am analysing the various social networking sites that are the most important today. Facebook is the leader of the pack by far. As this infographic shows – it has a huge penetration footprint all across the world. There are 845Million active users on Facebook every day.

This represents a huge opportunity for marketeers to reach audiences around the world without requiring a huge outlay for advertising. However, it is important to have engaging content on your Facebook page to ensure that prospective customers keep coming back to your page.

The “How to Facebook for Businesses” is all about unraveling the mysteries of using Facebook to your advantage. If you have specific questions, do leave a comment below and I will get back to you with an answer.

Facebook Page or Profile?

As a startup, you could be forgiven for wondering if you should have a Facebook user profile (your business pretends to be a user on Facebook) or should you have a Facebook page?

I recommend setting up a Facebook page for your business as it looks more professional. Also, Facebook provides insights for your facebook page once you reach 30 “likes” for your business. Likes are just like facebook friends but for your business.

Insights aside, a Facebook page allows you to interact with people in a way you would with your customers in your store. Everyone has access to those interactions – every word you speak is valuable to your online presence – and by exploiting these interactions, you can build a loyal fan base for your business which should result in increasing recognition and sales for your business.

The Facebook page also shows any posts by your business as coming from a business name – for example on the Xava Facebook page, all posts are from Xava Ireland the business – so it allows you to create a personality for your business. It is more official in your dealings with the online social networks.

Last but not least, Facebook periodically goes through its user databases and deletes accounts that are not real so if your business exists on Facebook as a user profile under the name that does not sound like a person, your account could potentially be marked for deletion. Facebook encourages people to uses profiles and businesses to use pages and I have to agree having used both and seen the results.

Facebook Interactions

Your business will have to work hard at creating an online social persona for itself and the Facebook persona of your business will and should be different from your Twitter persona and that should, in turn, be different from your Pinterest persona. In short, you can not use one size fits all approach to the social media networking for your business.

The best analogy I can use is that you would not turn up at a fancy dress party in a sharp, well ironed tux unless  you were going as James Bond. So in short there is overlap in your online personas but by and large you must differentiate your behaviour based on the social network you are on.

Facebook is an extremely social medium. It started its life as a way for students to stay in touch with friends on campus and it has , for the most part, retained its personality. People use it to stay in touch with people and as such hate being targeted for marketing.

A business should think of Facebook as a giant global party where they can attract new customers. You have a good product but people want to hear stories at a party. Have you ever been bored at a party because someone was going on about their traveling exploits the whole evening? You do that on Facebook and people will “unlike” your Facebook page.

Everyone likes to hear a good story at a party and your Facebook page is your chance to do the sale for your business. The more engaging the content of your Facebook interactions, the more interested your customers will be in your business.

You must work hard at creating engaging content for your Facebook page liking fans and you must engage with the audience. Facebook is a 2-way medium giving you the perfect opportunity to engage with your customers.

The key things I would like to point out are

• Be Creative
• Be Engaging
• Be Polite
• Be Informative

Keep these 4 guidelines in mind and you will soon be “talking” with people from all over the world with your business name tagged on to every interaction you have – this is free publicity that you can not buy elsewhere. You will notice people talking about you on social networks.

Social Media Networks are a powerful marketing tool today and Facebook is a great way for your business to be social and engage with customers – use it wisely and you will reap the rewards.

Also remember the old adage “There is no such thing as bad publicity” is not true. Negative publicity follows from bad social media practices very quickly. Read about the 7 useful habits to have for all your online social interactions.