How to use Facebook to become the “face” behind your online business…
Let’s face it: the Internet is a pretty impersonal place to be. Sure, you can add an About Us page to your site and include a perfectly Photoshopped portrait of anyone you like (who’s to know?), send emails to a variety of faceless people, and altogether remain relatively anonymous to your audience.
Or you can introduce yourself and your business to the world with a Facebook page.
Now, for some people that may be a scary thought. Certainly, if your face (or your business) is featured on “America’s Most Wanted” flyers in 47 states, maybe it’s better you avoid Facebook, but if you want your visitors to get to know who you are and what your business is all about, then a Facebook page is where you can let people know just how fabulous you really are, (or want to be).
Tips for Becoming Facebook Fabulous
Facebook has moved way beyond an interactive community for teens and college types to chat about their social lives or lack thereof.
In the same way, only a few years ago the decision about whether to have an online business presence was only for the visionaries and/or Web geeks, nowadays it’s a virtual given. The same goes for Facebook.
But there are Facebook pages and then there are FACEBOOK PAGES, so it’s a real no-brainer that in order to raise your online stakes, you need a Facebook presence that your visitors actually want to visit.
The best bit is that creating a Facebook page that begs to be visited isn’t difficult. Like most things Internet, it simply requires a little time, effort, and creativity.
So, let’s look at the Top 5 Tips for becoming Facebook Fabulous:
1. Boring is NOT Good for Business
Your Facebook page is an opportunity to connect and interact with customers and potential customers, so you have to showcase your very best business face.
The Red Bull Facebook page illustrated here is an obvious example of “un-boring” to the extreme (kinda like the brand?) and demonstrates what can be achieved with a little flair and lots of Facebook know-how.
Okay, so maybe you don’t need to go quite this far, but I wanted to show you how the hundreds of thousands of Facebook apps available can be applied to create a truly fabulous Facebook page.
When creating your business Facebook page, it’s important to note these tips:
• Your Facebook page name needs to get found easily, so include the name of your company together with your most relevant keywords.
• Create a memorable profile image that reflects your business strengths, ideals, strategies or whatever it takes to make it stand out. Although you have 200 pixels width to play with, ensure the key concepts are contained within a 176 pixel boundary for your thumbnail image to present properly.
• Make the page uniquely yours. Customize the tabs to suit your content and try to include interesting details like Photos, Videos, Events, YouTube etc and be sure to include an interesting profile.
2. Use the “Like” Button Wherever Possible
Perhaps the most easily recognized feature of Facebook is the “Like” button. I’m guessing you’ve seen it and no doubt clicked on it once or twice, but here is an image just in case you’ve been living under a rock for a while?
Once you’ve added the “Like” button and built up a fan base, you can then add the Like Box to your site, showing a selection of faces and names of people who are already fans. This little box seems to have an extraordinary effect on people: when they see real people and real names, they are more willing to be a part of whatever is going on too, so they are more willing to “Like” you too.
To find out more about Facebook’s Like button, you can find the documentation by clicking on the link.
3. Become a Facebook Butterfly
Like a social butterfly, engage in as much connectivity as you possibly can.
• Invite colleagues, business associates, friends, family, and most importantly, customers or would-be customers, to become fans. And in return, become fans on their Facebook pages. Add a friendly comment about how much you like their page or something positive.
That innocuous comment will then feed out to all their Facebook followers and hey, you’ve got something going!
• Engage and stimulate your visitors by constantly updating with fresh, original content. Latest news, new trends, industry gossip or product reviews all create interactive discussion. Take the time to respond to relevant posts on other pages, even if it’s just to say “hi there” or “thanks”.
• Encourage visitors to become fans with special offers, competitions and promotions, or seduce them with exciting information that can only be accessed once they become a fan.
• Avoid over-promotional, “salesy” posts. Think about how your fans can benefit from every post you make so they look forward to hearing what you have to say.
• Facebook now offers a “Share” button so your fans can share your information on a variety of social networks. Information about how to set up the Facebook Share button is available by clicking on the link.
4. Play to the Facebook Demographic
To achieve online success, your site is targeted to meet your market demographic and based on the fundamentals of organic search, if it is correctly optimized, your target market will be those who search for your target products or services.
But the same can’t be said for Facebook. According to Quantcast’s latest figures, Facebook’s fastest growing market segment is skewed towards female users; over 53% have children and a majority earn over $60K per year.
However, Facebook has a constantly shifting and evolving user demographic, so this current trend is just that – a current trend.
While you may get the occasional visitor who finds your Facebook page via a search engine, the bulk of your visitors arrive via your Facebook links or by sheer accident.
So it follows that in order to achieve the same success with your Facebook page, it has to fit the trending market demographic for Facebook. Follow the logic?
Sad but true fact: there are some products and services that simply aren’t going to cut it on Facebook… unless you can skew your business towards a Facebook audience.
In some cases, this would make for a fascinating diversion in marketing tactics or by playing up your company’s strengths in order to encourage the (current) largely female user base.
5. Get to Know the Facebook Business Apps
Facebook has over 52,000 applications available to users on its platform, many of which are designed specifically for business.
You can leverage your social media exposure a thousand-fold just by dropping the most appropriate apps into your Facebook page and watching it do what it does best. And best of all, they’re all free (yes, you heard me, FREE!), plus, most are relatively easy to install.
Rather than attempting to list the thousands of apps available and leaving you to sort through them, instead, I’ll suggest you head on over to mashable.com and read “8 Essential Apps for Your Brand’s Facebook Page”. I assure you, it’s well worth the effort.
Oh, and don’t forget, I’m still here when you get back!
