To end this series, we are going to bring things bang up to date, showing you why Facebook is now one of the most important places to get the word out about your business, and how to start using it.
There are 500 million active Facebook users. Over 70% of these are outside of the United States, and the fastest growing sector of users is women over 55! Facebook is not only one of the most universally used websites, it is actually widening web use overall.
If you’re not a user, there’s nothing like trying it: Go to www.facebook.com, sign up, then give it half an hour a week. It feels very alien at first, but it’s natural after a while, and fun! Look at the last few weeks in your life: There have to be at least half a dozen things that have happened to you that you’ve chatted to friends about – running a charity race, going on holiday, someone’s wedding, new job, bumped your car, saw a great film, whatever. You simply update Facebook with “where you’re at”, and your friends (that is, those who have joined Facebook too) can see this; in return, you get to see their updates. That’s really the basis of it.
So now you’re a pro! It’s time to see how this intensely social, seemingly personal environment can help you to promote your business. We’re going to show you two ways, and give you three practical actions you can undertake right away.
The first way is to get a Facebook Page for your business. Facebook Pages are like a cross between a website and a personal Facebook profile. With a free Facebook Page, Facebook users can comment on your brand, your offers, your new shop repaint, the cartoon on your delivery van – anything. And you can interact, talking back and building rapport and loyalty. It’s a free “extra” website for your business, and it is easy to get started; go here to find out more: http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages.
While you’re there, get some free SEO (search engine optimisation) out of it. Once 25 or more people like your Page (ask all your friends and family to come and give you the thumbs up by clicking the “Like” button), you can change its Facebook web address to one which contains your business’s name. That’s one free brand entry in the Google search results coming your way.
Here’s our second marketing tip. All over Facebook there are the aforementioned “Like” buttons – you can click and say you “like” photos, music, people’s status updates, companies and so on. But if you have a company website, or better still a blog, you can now add a Facebook Like button into every page of your site, every new news item, every blog post – every bit of content.
So what happens when you do this? Well, whenever anyone is on your website and they click on a Facebook Like button, it puts a story in their update feed in Facebook itself, with a graphic of your site and a link, and this appears in their friends’ news feeds too.
The person who just clicked “Like” is behaving like an evangelist for your brand in front of all their (Facebook) friends. If one of those friends clicks through to your site and “likes” something too, it is fed to all of their friends, and so on. What better way to get your brand in front of hundreds, maybe thousands, of people who may be interested in what you have to offer, for free? It’s easy to do, and any good web company can help.
To end this series, we are going to bring things bang up to date, showing you why Facebook is now one of the most important places to get the word out about your business, and how to start using it.
There are 500 million active Facebook users. Over 70% of these are outside of the United States, and the fastest growing sector of users is women over 55! Facebook is not only one of the most universally used websites, it is actually widening web use overall.
If you’re not a user, there’s nothing like trying it: Go to www.facebook.com, sign up, then give it half an hour a week. It feels very alien at first, but it’s natural after a while, and fun! Look at the last few weeks in your life: There have to be at least half a dozen things that have happened to you that you’ve chatted to friends about – running a charity race, going on holiday, someone’s wedding, new job, bumped your car, saw a great film, whatever. You simply update Facebook with “where you’re at”, and your friends (that is, those who have joined Facebook too) can see this; in return, you get to see their updates. That’s really the basis of it.
So now you’re a pro! It’s time to see how this intensely social, seemingly personal environment can help you to promote your business. We’re going to show you two ways, and give you three practical actions you can undertake right away.
The first way is to get a Facebook Page for your business. Facebook Pages are like a cross between a website and a personal Facebook profile. With a free Facebook Page, Facebook users can comment on your brand, your offers, your new shop repaint, the cartoon on your delivery van – anything. And you can interact, talking back and building rapport and loyalty. It’s a free “extra” website for your business, and it is easy to get started; go here to find out more: http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages.
While you’re there, get some free SEO (search engine optimisation) out of it. Once 25 or more people like your Page (ask all your friends and family to come and give you the thumbs up by clicking the “Like” button), you can change its Facebook web address to one which contains your business’s name. That’s one free brand entry in the Google search results coming your way.
Here’s our second marketing tip. All over Facebook there are the aforementioned “Like” buttons – you can click and say you “like” photos, music, people’s status updates, companies and so on. But if you have a company website, or better still a blog, you can now add a Facebook Like button into every page of your site, every new news item, every blog post – every bit of content.
So what happens when you do this? Well, whenever anyone is on your website and they click on a Facebook Like button, it puts a story in their update feed in Facebook itself, with a graphic of your site and a link, and this appears in their friends’ news feeds too.
The person who just clicked “Like” is behaving like an evangelist for your brand in front of all their (Facebook) friends. If one of those friends clicks through to your site and “likes” something too, it is fed to all of their friends, and so on. What better way to get your brand in front of hundreds, maybe thousands, of people who may be interested in what you have to offer, for free? It’s easy to do, and any good web company can help.