Social Media Week – Day 2 (for small businesses)

Disclaimer: Outdated post – content not relevant anymore

Growing your business with Facebook

If you already have a Facebook account your halfway to making a page for you business. You can click here and follow the simple instructions and fill in the details to create a page. Before you set anything up. Take some time to think about your business and what a Facebook page can offer.

A Facebook business page:

• Gives you free access to thousands of people (local and global)

• Gives you a new place to build your brand identity and brand awareness

• Shows people that you are online and up to date with technology

Generates traffic to your business website

• Improves your Google rank when it is integrated with your website.

• Allows you to build and contribute to your community

• Gives you a new avenue to interact with your customers, receive raw feedback and build a trusting relationship

You need to think about how your business can take advantage of these great features and give you the edge over your competitors. Think about who your business is targeting. This is really important; it is the forming of your online brand. Every move you make on your Facebook page should be conscious of your target markets wants. You want to build trust with your brand online. One of the best ways to do this is to give people valuable information that is related to your industry i.e., If you have a plumbing business you may want to post tips on how to save money on your water bill.

If you use Facebook to simply broadcast hard sales you will not be successful. You need to prove to your followers that you want to interact and be a part of a community that helps each other – this is what social media is ALL about. Sharing quality content and contributing to the community shows your followers that you are an expert in your field. When they need your services you will be in their mind and the will call on you. It is ok to promote you product/services but don’t abuse the relationship and broadcast hard sales at every opportunity.

There are tons of resources explaining every little part.

User Analytics to Find Out Who Likes you! :)

Facebook business pages offer you user analytics (similar to Google analytics). This means you can view all sorts of information about the users of your page. You can find out what country and city they are from or demographics of gender and age as well as where they have been and clicked on your Facebook.

This is very valuable information for a company. Once you know who is using your website and how they are using your website you can target groups of people further! This is very powerful because the more you can target specific demographics there more you can meet the specific wants of that demographic.

Advanced advertising

Facebook is a major player not just in social media but also in online advertising. Facebook Ads are taking on Google ads! In the below graphic you can see where Facebook sits compared to other companies in the industry.

facebook-in-the-market

Headed by apple and followed by Google, Facebook has recently been evaluated at 50 million. Facebook Ads have advantage, a unique selling point that Google currently can’t compete with. Facebook has huge amounts of data about its users in particular their gender, their interests, their locations, their favourite movies, their favourite music and much more.

This means that Facebook advertising can target groups of people with astonishingly specific qualities. This is revolutionising the way advertising happens online and it’s just the beginning. The problem with Google ads is that the market is saturated and the companies that are using Google ads are massive multinational companies with enormous budgets. It’s seems like a weird thing but Facebook is making advertising personal – advertising for the little guy.

Facebook & your Website

It’s great to have people joining your Facebook page and looking at your company but you also want them to go to your website. Once you have people on your Facebook page it is important to give them reasons to go to your website. Your website should also be linking back to your Facebook page.

In Situ is a restaurant in Manly that is taken up Facebook to its advantage. In Situ regularly post photos of there people with specials, meals and deals as well as information about the restaurant itself. See an the In Situ facebook page here. This is non-aggressive strategy that makes people feel comfortable as well as interested to find out more at the company website.

Making your Facebook page look hot!

Your Facebook page needs to represent your brand no matter what sort of business you have. Facebook has many applications that allow you to personalise your page. Starting with your profile image to adding a custom welcome tab. Custom welcome tabs are nearly like a website within the Facebook page. In here you can put customised content including logos, images, videos, animations – pretty much anything. It is a great way to make your business page stand out and get people to like your business.

Here are some examples of some welcome pages (ours is included).

1800-flowers
Coca-cola
Oreos
Spicy Broccoli Media

The Must have Facebook checklist

• Make your business a valuable asset of the network! – give out tips and free information.
• Makes sure you always post content that is inline with your branding goal and your target market.
• Make yourself known as an expert in your field.
• Sell products only on occasion – don’t abuse the relationship.
• Start now!

Tomorrow we will be focusing on twitter – explaining how to start a twitter profile for your company, keeping your branding/message consistent and its importance relative to your online presence.

[Links]
How to build a Facebook page.
Great link to setting up a winning business page.
10 things all businesses should do to market more effectively on facebook.
Facebook has a useful help centre that can answer most questions.
Facebook’s 50 billion valuation, in perspective [Infographic]