Facebook Marketing Business Tips
Our main goal when talking about Facebook Marketing is not to say Facebook so many facing-times. (boo-fake)
But our intention is to show you how we learned to effectively Network Through Facebook and earn money while doing it.
One of the best ways to dramatically increase your connections and your number of sales is to harness the power of one of the largest social media sites out there: Facebook.com
Facebook has two main features that allow you to establish your brand and get your name out to users all across the world.
These two mechanisms are known as:
1) Your personal Facebook account
2) Your organization's/businesses Facebook account
Chances are that you already have a personal Facebook account and are quite familiar with how to use it. However, Facebook's “Brand accounts are incredibly different, and they should not be handled in the same manner as your personal page is.
How To Use Facebook To Brand Yourself
This article is going to discuss how you should handle your Facebook Brand account differently, and how you should go about using it in order to increase your traffic, networking, and sales.
Additionally, we are going to discuss how you should also be handling your personal account, and what specific steps you should be taking during the beginning stages of your career and the creation of your organization.
Network Through Personal Facebook Account
What You Should Be Doing With Your Personal Facebook Account
Your personal Facebook account is something that you are going to be using a lot of when you first create your very own startup.
At the same time, however, you must be careful with what you post on your Facebook and make sure that you treat your personal account with the utmost respect. If you do not, you will wind up losing friends on it, and you will run the risk of permanently losing your account.
While there is by no means anything wrong with promoting yourself and your company on Facebook, it is important that you do not go overboard with it.
If you don’t overdo your self promotion and you keep things in small doses, your friends and family will love to see what’s new with your life and what you are currently up to. Because your friends and family do know you personally, they are very likely to read the posts that you share about products and your company.
In fact, studies have even shown that 62 percent of people’s friends read these kinds of posts. It is a very effective tactic, and you should definitely consistently do it.
In order to make sure that you post enough, but to also prevent yourself from posting too much, a good rule of thumb to follow is to share a post about a product or idea once per day.
Or, if you do not have a link to a new product that you would like to post, you can instead choose to post some sort of press release relating to your company, or a blog post that is of the same idea.
Choosing to link your friends to a tweet that a fan, customer, or reviewer posted is also a great way of mixing things up while still bringing in new traffic to your company.
And, if you are looking for new sales ideas, way to market, or need help deciding on a new product, posting a quiz or survey question to your personal Facebook account is a great way to receive a diverse amount of feedback.
Additionally, make a point to post the “About Me” or “Story” page from your company’s webpage approximately once a month.
Spend a lot of time developing these pages, and make sure that they are well written and thoroughly proofread.
They are a great way of drawing people into your business, and they’re one of the simplest ways to spark creativity and make people interested in what you are doing.
It is more than worth it to dedicate time towards these pages, as they will prove to eventually be invaluable. In order to spice things up, you may want to occasionally copy and paste the text from the pages directly onto your Facebook, rather than just posting a link.
This will make it even easier for your friends to read your story, and will increase the chances that they will become interested in what you have to say. When the text is sitting there and staring them in the face, it is incredibly difficult for them to ignore it.
There is always the possibility that your friends and family will get annoyed with you posting even just once a day. Every situation varies, and it is up to you to be the judge of how often you should post things.
You always have the option of asking some of your friends and family if they are okay with the frequency of which you are posting, and if they recommend that you do something differently. If you find that you are starting to receive complaints or passive aggressive comments from your friends, try to tone it down a notch and see if that proves to be more effective.
Lastly, it is very important that you continue to keep your personal Facebook page just that: a personal Facebook page.
Make sure that you continue to consistently share updates about your life, photos, and statuses. Continue to comment on the posts that your friends and family make, and make sure that you interact with others.
Do not transition from being a normal user into merely a business user. Facebook’s Brand pages are what that is meant for. The only thing that you should be changing is that you now occasionally post relevant things about your business.
Network Through Business Page Facebook Account
What You Should Be Doing With Your Business Facebook Account
The purpose of Facebook pages is for them to be used for assorted organizations, businesses, and brands. Facebook specifically wants companies and organizations to only promote themselves through their Facebook page.
They strongly discourage promotion that is done through personal Facebook accounts, and that is why we recommend that you keep your promotion to a minimum.
Facebook pages are actually very simple to use. The only individuals who see the updates that you post on them are those who have ‘liked’ the page, as they have essentially given you their permission to advertise directly to them as often as you would like. This is a concept that is very new yet important in today’s modern marketing industry.
It has been shown that when an individual gives his or her permission to be advertised to, they are much more receptive to what they then see. Widespread spamming has faded and gone out of style, which most individuals are fine with, as it was never too effective to begin with. When you promote your organization through a Facebook page, you are much more likely to acquire customers.
In fact, studies have proven that over 70 percent of B2C companies have managed to acquire new clients through the advertisements that they have posted on their Facebook pages.
You should post on your Facebook page the exact same way that you post on your personal Facebook account.
Provide your followers with links to products, blog posts, tweets, and new advertisements.
But, with your Facebook page, it is important that you take things one-step further. Post things that are not necessarily directly associated with your business or the products that are selling.
Here are some ideas for different things that you can post that will be sure to engage your audience:
• New trends and news in your chosen industry
• High quality photos that you are legally allowed to share that are funny and entertaining
• Inspiring stories and anecdotes
• Interesting and thought provoking quotations
• Polls or surveys that spark discussion and interaction with current or potential customers
Some of these posts will have nothing to do with your brand or company, but that is perfectly okay. They are still invaluable, as they will allow you to build your brand and start a relationship with your potential customers and fan base.
Posting things such as this means that you are building up your list of potential clients, and this is an incredibly important part of business. Doing this will almost always wind up paying off at some point in the future.
But, as we mentioned before, maintaining a balance is key. Do not post too much and do not overdo things. Only post several times a day, and do not clog up your followers' newsfeeds.
Additionally, always do your best to respond to comments and posts, and try to keep conversations going if at all possible. Interaction with customers such as this is very valuable, and it will also help to build that relationship that you are striving for.
There will always be some overlap between your personal Facebook friends and your Facebook page's fans. Because of this fact, you want to make a point of not posting the same exact things on both accounts. Spice things up, and do your best to keep things interesting.
Keep your campaign fresh and exciting, and make sure not to bore people or give any person a reason to cut ties with you through social media. Even posting slightly different variations of the same thing can prove to be frustrating for some if they have to see it day in and day out.
Now that we have covered the main differences that exist between personal Facebook accounts and professional Facebook pages, here is a list of some other tasks that you can get going on right this second:
• Write down a thorough list of all of your family and friends. Go through all of your Facebook friends and your email contact lists systematically. Put down their full names and contact information in either a document or spreadsheet.
• Contact each of them with a personal message through either email or Facebook. Don’t necessarily ask them to buy something. Instead, ask for their feedback or advice, and maybe see if they are willing to give you a testimonial or review.
• Once you have done this, then ask all of your friends and family to ‘like’ your Facebook page. We recommend that you do not do this through mass messages, and instead take the time to write individual messages to each person.
• Down the line, eventually ask them to share one of your posts on their page, or to post something about your company. Make sure that you provide them with information about where they can purchase all of your products.
If you are incredibly lucky and everything goes as planned, this Facebook marketing campaign will wind up providing you with a lot of business and traffic.
However, chances are that it will not be enough. It should provide you with a solid foundation for a fan base, but you will still have to do additional things as well.
Hopefully it will manage to provide you with your first few sales!
