Using Facebook for Business

As we mentioned in the article, Tips to Understanding Social Media Marketing (SMM), the idea of marketing with a social media outlet like facebook is to create a relationship with your audience.

Don't make the mistake of using Facebook as a direct marketing tool as you will quickly get "hidden" from your audience's news feed or removed all together. Consider the following ten basic tips for using a Facebook fan page to better your business.

10 Tips for Facebook Fan Pages

1. Create a fan page
   Once you have determined your target audience that will help you to define your overall persona. Typically you want to create a professional fan page without being too formal. Keep your page simple but make sure to fill it out completely.
    
2. Suggest to friends
   Suggest your fan page to all your current contacts- friends, family, co-workers, clients, prospects, vendors- anyone you can think of. 
    
3. Invite others
   Find other businesses, professional organizations or other people with similar interests and invite them to be a fan. Set a goal for yourself to suggest your fan page 10 new people every day (or every week if that’s more realistic) to quickly build your fan list.
    
4. Draw on your employees
   Encourage your employees to suggest your fan page to their friends, family and other contacts. Ask them to comment on the company’s wall, photos or comments. Make Facebook "use guidelines" for your employees to work within so they know what is and what is not appropriate company posting. Help them to understand the vision and goals of your SMM plan.
    
5. Create Good Posts
   1. Post things to your fan page wall that have some sort of value to your audience. People typically aren’t interested in reading posts that talk about how great your company is. They are on facebook for fun, not for a sales pitch. As a general rule of thumb, your posts shouldn’t be trying to selling anything.
   2. Make sure your posts have a conversational voice, rather than a commercial voice and try to elicit feedback/comments.
   3. Content should mostly relate to business but it’s ok to sprinkle in some personal/fun stuff to show your company’s personality.
   4. Be selective about what (and how much) you post so as not to overload your fans with multiple posts a day.
   5. Ideas for posts include:
      1. Audience participation (ex. A pet store asking for fans to upload a favorite pictures of their pet OR a department store asking what they love most about their dad on father’s day)
      2. Links to interesting articles or websites
      3. Links to new (valuable) articles on your blog or website
      4. Tips related to your field (ex. A restaurant posting a good cooking tip)
      5. Exciting news about your company (new clients, projects or employees)
      6. Events
      7. Charity Work
      8. Pictures of employee functions or office life
      9. Conversation about current events that relate to your field if it’s appropriate
6. Comment
   Talk to your fans! Make comments on their posts, pictures, videos or events. Give a shout-out to an employee who did a good job. Congratulate a client on a new baby.
    
7. Update your page
   Anytime you make changes to your page your fans are notified. Uploading photos of your new office space, staff, functions, office happenings, awards and office pets are great ways to keep your page fresh and help your audience get to know you and your staff.
    
8. Address negative feedback
   Be quick to respond to negative feedback. People respect when a company can admit they’re wrong. For example, a simple response to a negative post could be “Hi Paul, I’m the GM at this restaurant. I’m so sorry to hear about your bad experience and would like to make things right. Please call me at 555.555.5555 so we can discuss further.” Often times you will find that even your fan base will make comments defending you.
    
9. Praise positive feedback
   Comment back to your fans that take the time to post on your wall, upload a photo or otherwise comment on your fan page. It makes them feel special.
    
10. Be respectful
    Don’t abuse your fan status! Again, Facebook is not a commercial! Post only meaningful, useful information and conversation. Don’t tag people unless the picture/post specifically relates to that person.
     

To become a Facebook fan of Trulium, click here and then click the "like button".

Keep an eye out for our summer newsletters featuring a Social Media Marketing series offering tips on how to use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to benefit your business. Sign up for our newsletter by clicking here and filling out the contact form with "sign me up for your newsletter" in the comments section.