Have you tried Facebook yet? If not, ask yourself why. Do you think it’s just for grandparents to share stuff about their grandkids? Or perhaps it’s for college students to share their weekend party arrangements? How about families who plan their annual reunions? Well, it’s all of these and more. How about using it to promote your business? There are over 200 million people who are active on Facebook. Certainly some of those active users are your potential customers.
Facebook is an excellent way to promote your products or services and create a community around a particular theme. It’s also a great way to get eyeballs looking toward your website or get people to sign up for your newsletter, or read your great marketing content. It’s easy to get started. Here are a few tips to get your account up and running.
Start out by opening up a personal account. You’ll get all of Facebook’s features by starting out with a personal page. If you are afraid of privacy issues, set the privacy settings so just friends or friends of friends can view your personal page. You don’t have to completely fill out all of the personal information. But, you probably want to upload a photo, start inviting people you know to “friend you” and start posting some fun information on your wall. Use the search capability to search for people you know who might also be on Facebook. Once your friends know that you are on Facebook, they will start inviting you to friend them, as well.
For business purposes, you can then start a business page. This is where you’ll have the core of your business information. Be as detailed as possible and provide a compelling description of your business. You can upload photos, as well. If you have photos of products, you can start an album. Or, even add video to your page. Let your customers know that you are now on Facebook and invite them to “like” your business page. You can even download the code for a Facebook widget to place on your website, blog, eNewsletter, etc.
So, what do you write about on your business page wall? If you have a blog, you can easily post articles from your blog on interesting topics that are of interest to your customers. Also, start engaging with others. Post information on their walls. Make comments on other people’s posts. The key is to engage with people. The more you engage, the more people will want to like your page. There’s nothing worse that a stagnant Facebook page.
In order to get more “fans” you can advertise your products or services on Facebook. This is a pay-per-click ad similar to Google AdWords. You can target your ad for a specific period of time, to a particular audience demographics, or a particular geographic location. Ads help you to promote your Facebook page and help you to be found more easily.
Facebook keeps making changes all the time, so it will only get better in the future. For example, you can now customize your Facebook page by adding custom HTML, like a sign-up box for your eNewsletter, product information, or special promotions. So, what are you waiting for? Start promoting your business today with Facebook.
