Easy ways to promote your business with facebook

Easy ways to promote your business with facebook : With around 400 million potential customers active on social network Facebook, many of whom openly display their interests, you would have thought that Facebook was manna from heaven for marketers.

In reality, very few companies are successfully exploiting the channel to promote their business, and many of those have big budgets. So why and how should an SME or start-up think about Facebook as a marketing channel?

Forming a Facebook fan page is often viewed as a fantastic way to engage with the public, and if you do it right it can be hugely successful.

Coffee chain has more than 5.5 million members on its Facebook fan page, and is by far and away the most successful brand on Facebook. But for small businesses the challenge is that much harder as they don’t enjoy the same level of brand awareness. For example, more than three quarters (77 per cent) of Facebook fan pages.

Why do it?

So why should small businesses form a Facebook fan page? Creating a Facebook page provides the opportunity to directly interact with potential and existing customers. 400 million users – and growing – simply cannot be ignored. Some of these people will be in your local area and they may be searching for your product or service.

As well as a way to sell and generate brand awareness, Facebook groups provide a free way to carry out market research – you can poll your fans, gauge their reaction to ideas before you implement them.

Content is Key

The clincher when it comes to attracting and retaining Facebook fans is what you offer them. There is an infinite amount of interest groups that Facebook users can join, so you need to make yours stand out from the herd. Most groups probably fail to reach 1,000 members because they fail to offer compelling content and, worst of all, do not interact.

So, think of video, audio, blogs and other interesting content that would appeal to your target audience. You can then use tools . to syndicate that content with minimal manual input your end. Have a look at car hire firm. page to see how innovative content has helped a small business generate a following of nearly 30,000.

Most of all, it’s a community, so INTERACT!

How promote it?

Once you’re clear on what you want to achieve from your Facebook page, what content you’re going to offer, who’s going to manage it and how often you’ll be updating content and interacting with customers, you need to think about how to attract people to your page in the first place.

Start small – friends, friends of friends, customers. Provide links on your homepage to click through to your Facebook page, offer discounts and other benefits exclusive to Facebook group members. Your popularity will spread virally, so don’t expect Rome to be built in a day.

Assess where you are after one month, two months etc and think about how you could better promote the site if you’re not hitting numbers.

For more on the subject of Facebook pages, listen to this with social media consultancy, Fresh Egg.

Promote your business with facebook - New ideas

Promote your business with facebook - New ideas : For most people, especially if you already have a personal Facebook page, Facebook is a fairly easy place to start. It’s very simple to set up a Facebook page, just visit an existing page and on the bottom left is an option that says ‘create page’. If you don’t already have a personal Facebook account you will need to set one up first from the sign up option on the page. Don’t worry fans of your business page will not have access to your personal profile.

The harder thing is to decide what to put on your page and how to get (and keep) fans! Firstly, content wise please remember than constantly posting links to your site/shop and nothing else will put people off (same applies to other social networking platforms). You are best off viewing social networking as a way of engaging your customers, dealing with queries/complaints and getting feedback, any sales you get from it are a bonus. People can tell when you are just using it to get sales and will stop following.

I try to use what I call the rule of three; I aim to make 1/3 of my updates on Facebook & Twitter about my website, 1/3 about things that are related to my area (sewing) but not on my site (ie. Free projects, interesting interviews, sales/offers & newspaper articles) and 1/3 about my customers. You may choose to go 50/50 and make half about you and your business, and the other half about other things that would interest your fans. The main thing is you need to find a balance between promoting your business and keeping your fans interested. As to what would interest your fans, that is for you to work out through trial and error, see which posts get lots of likes and comments and which don’t. Think about which products/services/lifestyles are complimentary to your product or services. For instance if you sell felt why not share links to felt projects, reviews of felt craft books etc.

Another thing to consider is timing and frequency of posts. Are you target audience likely to be home during the day or checking Facebook in the evening. Do you want to post at a set time each day, or several times to reach different audiences different times of the day. Frequency wise it is best not to stick lots of posts on at once, you need to give people time to read and digest each post. I try to leave 2-4 hours between my posts, but even leaving 10-15 minutes mean people have time to read & respond to your first post (or click on the link you've posted and visit your site/another site) before seeing your next post. If you post several updates at once it spams people's news feed and they will quite likely unlike your page.

Another great thing about Facebook & Twitter is that it’s an ideal chance to conduct market research; you have many people interested in your products/service there ready to interact so make the most of it! If you are thinking of new product ideas, ask their opinion, if you want to know how to improve your service ask them! There is a useful option just above the text box on your page to ask a question, this is essentially a chance to conduct a poll, a great way to get input from your fans.

Facebook is also a good for connecting with other similar businesses, it is very easy to share posts from their wall. To do this on your page select the option on the right that says ‘use Facebook as [company name]’ and then go to the page that has something you want to share. Under the post or image you will see a share option, select this and it will bring up an option for you to add your own description to what you are sharing and then press the share button at the bottom to post it onto your page.

Source : www.bdmaza.com