Facebook for Business Purposes

Facebook has long ended in being just a social networking website and nobody could have predicted that it will be used as a powerful marketing tool. The fact that boosted the evolution of this socializing platform into such a powerful instrument is that nowadays it is available on any device that has a basic modern browser. The website has been improved in looks, behavior and performance even for tablet use and so the business segment of the market has not been forgotten. What Facebook preaches to the world is the concept of free thought, feeling and likes sharing, as well as a constant improving platform of photo, image, music and video sharing even if it uses the Youtube technology.

Why marketing?

Facebook has caught the attention of marketing businesses because the number of visitors at any give moment of the day and night is huge. This way, the companies get round the clock advertising, potential customer live interaction, targeted ads and many other tools that I will provide in this article. The way a company can connect its products with the customers is by using a Facebook Fan Page that allows any “fan” to visit everything on the respective profile, add comments, connect to other fans of the respective business and these “fans” must click on “Become a fan” button in order to receive updates about the respective company profile.

These updates can be new products that hit the market and the company decided to put on Facebook, new marketing strategies, and even competitions as well as announcements regarding whatever the respective company decides to post.

Before any actual Facebook marketing takes place, one must understand exactly what would be the strategy that is to be used. The best thing is to develop a plan at least few months in advance.

What can Facebook do for me and my business?

Unfortunately this simple question doesn’t have a simple answer and this means the range of effects that using Facebook has is more than one can grasp.

Facebook can be used for business purposes if you find any of the things below needed:

1. Updated content means that you always can upload new content all the time and your fans will love it. This also means that you will have lots of fans incoming all the time.
2. Supervising all the activity means that you are in full control and can observe everything that happens on the fan page. You can see what the fans are interested in, reply to the comments and answer questions, delete comments that are inappropriate and so on.
3. Time control allows you to fully grasp the time you need to create that original and updated content every day; however, this is a tricky business as creating original content daily for a business that is rather static is very hard and time consuming.
4. Targeting is intended to make your business profitable by trying to attract only people that are interested or related to your business’ field of work and so avoiding any unnecessary fans that will never become customers and will just make your life harder by posting unnecessary comments and so on. This also allows you to target only people in an age range that you find suitable. This strategy is very important as your content may not be that suitable or attractive let’s say for older adults and young teenagers for example.
5. Future customers are the actual fans means that you have the possibility of turning fans into customers but you should also take into notice that many people, even if already interested in your company, will most probably buy nothing and will just remain fans.
6. Live support is something that is necessary as you have to answer all sort of questions and presumably in real time; this activity is a full time job and will most likely ‘eat’ lots of time because Facebook is international and people tend to use it all the time, day and night.

Starting the Facebook marketing

Once you have understood all the implications that derive from the above tags and after you found using Facebook as a marketing tool proper you can start the real Facebook marketing implementation.

Even if the only way you can use Facebook for your business is with a Fan Page this approach has three ways to take, depending on how you want to use the Facebook page.

1. Business only via a Fan Page – you use a Fan Page to interact with the customers and this option allows you to create a Fan Page even without the need of an existing personal profile. If you just want to keep your business professional and handle all the fan threads on a professional level on the Fan Page this is the best choice. This can be done very easily by simply clicking “Create a Page for a business” on the Facebook starting home screen. You can also add an advertising campaign and Facebook offers administration tools for it. Even so, the option of using only a Fan Page limits in some manner the use by fans.
2. Creating a Fan Page and a personal one – what this means is that you connect your personal page to the fan page of your business. A special aspect must be considered as you connect your personal profile page with your business Fan Page and that is privacy; you don’t want your potential customers to see photos of you smoking a large cigar in the most enjoyable way while selling anti-smoke remedies on the business Fan Page. For this matter, Facebook’s Profile Privacy Settings comes to help you with that. You can limit the visibility for your personal profile to any lists you may find fit and so keeping your personal life personal.
3. Using both Fan Page and Personal Page for the business – this is a rather common way to attract customers and fans alike as both pages are intended to provide information about the business in the most professional way ever. Keeping things professional on both pages should be top priority.

Setting up the Fan Page

There are literally thousand of Fan Pages on Facebook so the thing is the process is rather simple. There are 5 simple steps to make this journey easier for you:

1. Choose the name for the webpage: try to understand that this name should be the name that you used to advertise your business; if you used a name for offline merchandise and advertising, you should use the same name for the Fan Page as well. Many customers are also on Facebook and these will probably the first people that will like your page and ask about the products or services you provide. This is a very good reputation indicator along with a keyword for search engines so try to use exactly the same name.
2. Adding a link to Twitter: is the best thing you can do to grant yourself fast news deployment on a large network of fans and customers as that is the role of Twitter. By adding a link to a Twitter account, you grant all fans access to all updates such as photos, updates, messages and even links. What this thing implies is that you provide original fresh content all the time so that the fans are attracted every time they receive an update. Many people send old posts as updates and that way loose many fans.
3. Adding photos to your business is a very good marketing move as the fans love to see what they can have and thus become potential customers. By adding the business logo or motto that you used in advertising the business offline means that your business will get more awareness.
4. Useful information with the “About” section: must be provided as everyone that lands on the page should know what the business is all about and what you can offer. Here you can also provide other means of letting the potential customers reach the business such as blogs, live chat, main website and other social profiles.
5. Providing content is the main way you will attract fans and customers.

There are some aspects that you should know if you are new to Facebook and those are:

• Wall posts allow everyone that lands on the Fan Page to see al recent updates, posts, messages from you and the fans as well. You can control this by accessing the settings in Wall Settings but forcing fans to wait for confirmation as they post a comment may disconnect their current relation with the business as they want to see their comments posted.
• Using and managing Discussion Boards is a very powerful tool that allows you to control where the discussions between fans and your business head and so here you can be a trend setter.
• Posting links represents an easy way to share links that might be interesting for your fans such as newsletters and so on.
• Posting events allows the fans to know where you will hold a conference, what new promotion or products you have available and many other things that you might find fit.
• Uploading photos allows you to inscribe images in your fans’ minds as this is the best way to make your products and services known. This can be used as an advertising tool, update tool or whatever you might think usable in your marketing strategy. You can also upload videos to obtain any effects you want.
• Adding reviews is a powerful way to let fans know what your business is all about and allowing your fans to post feedback is the best way to have the best indicator of your business popularity.

Additional ways to create content

There are three main ways to add more content to your business page and those are enumerated below:

• Create your own content: this way you post content that you create in the events tab, on the wall and on Twitter. There’s a catch and that’s not to try and sale products and services but rather review them or offer interesting and intriguing facts about what you offer so that the fans won’t feel offended by your sales crusade and leave.
• Auto generate content is a good way to have updated content all the time but this is directly connected to the content you upload manually and so this can only go that far. You can do this by using a RSS feed system to connect to your blog and Twitter. By using that, you auto generate content for all the linked accounts and so attract new fans all the time.  You must be careful with this as having the same information on all pages might bring a general boredom to your fans and so displacing the central role of the Facebook Fan Page.
• Allow the fans to create content is the best way to receive feedback and reconsider the marketing strategy or keep doing whatever you were doing. This is a very good way to encourage fans to become customers and state your interest in the customer community.

Adding more applications

This option allows you extended control over the way the Fan Page looks and behaves as well as any apps you may want to add. Facebook offers HTML code support so any code you might want to add can be added without too much effort.

The actual marketing – bringing fans to your Page

Now that you have created the Fan Page and all the additional information that you needed to make your business comprehensible on the Fan Page you have to start considering what audience you need for your business. This marketing strategy includes both Facebook use but also external.
You can link the main website with the Facebook page and vice versa.
You can link all sent emails to the Facebook page in the signature.
Use the personal profile to send the link of your business to all your friends.
Make good use of Twitter.
Post newsletters on Facebook also.
Link the blogs and all external websites to the Facebook Fan page as many people have multiple accounts.

What Facebook offers is a Social Media Relations environment that is sure to make you reevaluate your marketing strategy all the time and deliver the best results both in advertising and marketing.

Tips and tricks to help you sell

• Behave responsibly and post content that is well thought and considered as offensive and disrespectful posts may be punished extremely as fan communities are the best friend but also the fiercest enemy.
• Let the fans roam free and say what they want to say as this is the best way to encourage sharing and this is the best feedback.
• Do not try to lure fans into becoming customers; this thing will happen anyway if your marketing strategy is good. By doing that you risk making them feel offended and leave.
• Let negative comments posted as many fans will “come to the rescue”. By deleting such comments you create a bad impression and fans will surely loose faith as you can’t stand a critic.

Conclusion

What you can achieve with Facebook is both extensive and successful if you learn and understand how to harness the full potential of this marketing tool. You have to understand the trends, the daily customer needs and make them think that what you offer is what they need and they can’t get it anywhere else. What you must emphasize on is a good reputation, good interaction and proper fan feedback.

By doing that, not only you get the fans to know you and trust you but also turn them all into potential and actual customers.

That is the real efficient way to use Facebook as a marketing tool.