Read the following excerpt from my book ‘The NZ Small Business Superhero’s Marketing Handbook’ to find out why Facebook is the best social media tool for small businesses…
However, if you are already a regular Facebook user and enjoy spending time on Facebook, then extending this to help promote your business is a no-brainer.
Firstly, some Facebook fundamentals. You cannot set up a normal Facebook profile for a business. It is against the Facebook terms of service and if you are discovered, your Facebook presence could be shut down.
Instead of setting up a Facebook “profile” (which are only for individuals) you need to set up a Facebook “page” (which are for businesses, organisations and celebrities).
Profiles and pages work in very similar ways, but there are some key differences. Firstly Facebook profiles tend not to be viewable by the public, whereas Facebook pages are publicly acessible.
Another key difference is that Facebook profiles (ie for individuals) have friends, while Facebook pages (ie for business, organisation and celebrities) have likes – that is people who have joined the page by clicking its Like button.
Where they are similar is in the way “friends” and “likes” receive content posted by the individual or business concerned.
For example, if I post something on my individual Facebook profile, it appears on the news feed (or home) page of all of my Facebook friends.
Similarly, if I post something on the Web Genius Facebook page, it appears on the news feed (or home) page of everyone who likes the Web Genius Facebook page.
So the idea is to continually grow the number of customers and prospects who “like” your Facebook page, thereby creating a communication channel direct to the Facebook home pages of your audience.
If you can see the huge potential of Facebook for marketing your business, and would like to explore this option, and you are not already on Facebook as an individual, then this is the first step.
First-hand experience of how Facebook works will allow you to see much more clearly how your business could benefit, and you will begin to see opportunity and potential that was previously hidden.
Also, by building up a reasonable number of friends for your Facebook profile, you will have a starting point to begin promoting your business’s Facebook page. To set up your Facebook business page, follow the link at the bottom of the Facebook sign in page.
Getting your page set up is fairly straightforward so I will not go into that here. Instead I will cover the elements involved in developing your new Facebook page into an effective marketing tool.
To read more, you can purchase my book ‘The NZ Small Business Superhero’s Internet Marketing Handbook’ by clicking here.
