Following up from part 1 which gave a quick breakdown of Twitter for business. Part 2 provides you with a 5 minute introduction to Facebook.
Facebook needs no introduction really, you’ve read about it in the paper, some of you may have seen ‘the social network’ which was based around the creation of Facebook. It’s huge with over 845 million active monthly users (DEC 2011), Facebook is a networking tool that allows its users to connect and socialise online – messaging, uploading photos, sharing content. The list is endless and will only continue to grow as the business and website expands.
Facebook is literally for everybody. The average age of a registered user is now 38, which has increased from 33 in May 2010 and in the past 2 years users aged 65 and over has also grown by 150%. Everyone and their mum are getting on Facebook. Whether it’s connecting with old friends or keeping in touch with relatives, Facebook users on average spend 700 billion minutes on Facebook per month. But Facebook is also for businesses too, where there’s this amount of ‘fish’ there’s always an opportunity to market to them.
Here’s another statistic; 65% of businesses use Facebook as part of their marketing strategy (Source Econsultancy). But as you can imagine all the large firms are already using Facebook and connecting with their ‘fans’.
Coca- Cola are on Facebook with currently 42 million fans / likes on their page. They use their page to share TV adverts, ask fans questions to gain valuable customer feedback on products, but most importantly allow customers to be able to connect with a company with a lifetime of history. Using Facebook’s timeline feature, has put history and information dating back to 1886. Showing photos and articles of the brand’s long history.
Ford utilise their page for something very similar, once again showing images and history of the company, also showing all the previous models of their cars, allowing their fans to relish some Ford nostalgia.
But it’s not just large enterprises that are using Facebook. Since November 2011 Essex based Rolla City have gathered over 3000 fans since their launch of a roller skating rink. Using their Facebook page to interact with their customers as well as inform them of events and promotions that are forth-coming.
There are many ways in which you can use Facebook for your business, we would advise if it is something you are seriously considering obtaining a strategy to how you should use it with clear objectives in place – so you can truly achieve the best from any campaign. However as this is a quick introduction, I shall provide some quick pointers to help gain an understanding of how it can be used.
Create a business page
Unlike a regular user account a ‘page’ is a dedicated page for a business with its own unique username i.e. www.facebook.com/impactmediagroup – allowing you to point your customers directly to your page rather than search for you within Facebook. A Page is what you should be creating for your business allowing you to add ‘apps’ to your page to collect data and enquries.
Interaction & Feedback
Ask your customers and fans questions get insightful and real responses to questions about your market, your products or services. Answer their questions too, or help them with potential problems that they have with your products / services.
Promotions & Events
Utilise the Facebook pages to inform fans and customers of any events and promotions your business maybe running.
Increase Sales
Remember there’s always a reason to doing marketing, if your reason is to increase sales or visitors to your website, then you should be thinking of using Facebook in a way that achieves this objective. You could integrate a buying facility allowing users to actually purchase your products or services directly through Facebook without leaving the site.
Increase Awareness
Because there are so many people on Facebook, provide promotions or offers that other users can share with their friends, and discuss. From vouchers or viral adverts, if you can find a reason for someone to share your content – they will.
Remember always create a page for your business not a user account. User accounts have ‘friends’ and pages have ‘likes’. User accounts also limit your ‘friends’ to 5000. Where as pages are unlimited – allowing you to lengthen your reach.
Keep it up to date. The more you can keep your page fresh, follow the strategy – set yourself goals and reach them. If you have no strategy chance are your page will become total waste of effort.
Make is easier for you – a majority of other social media applications have the ability to integrate with Facebook, allowing you to post on Twitter and the same post will appear simultaneously.
Well I hope that gives you a small taster and urges some to start looking into creating a Facebook page for their business. In the mean time if you want any help please feel free to get in touch, we can help create pages for your business, create custom cover and profile images and also integrate applications too.
If you are on Facebook then don’t forget to visit our page and share the love!
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Just like the old Ronseal adverts said, this post does exactly what it says on the tin. For all those business owners and readers who want to gain an understanding of what 'social media' is, and what it can do for your business, this post is for you.
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