6 Ways to Make Facebook Work for Your Small Business

According to Facebook, there are more than 200 million active business pages and most likely you have one as well.

Here are 6 ways to maximise the benefits of a Facebook business page and help to engage with – and possibly increase – your customer base.

1. Link your Facebook page to your website or make Facebook your main online presence

No website yet? No problem. Many businesses use Facebook as their primary online presence. But remember, you want to build your brand, not the social media site’s brand.

The solution

Register a domain name (or web address) and redirect it to your Facebook page. Also known as web forwarding, you create a rule that all visitors to your domain name be directed to a web location of your choice (in this case your Facebook page). Redirecting gives you a memorable and permanent company web address to use for marketing and is becoming increasingly popular.

If you already have a website, make sure to include social sharing buttons on prominent pages and content. That way, people who find something of interest on your website can easily like and share that content on their social media channels.

2. Share relevant content

Your Facebook page is not only a place to communicate basic information about your business to customers, you can also post about news and upcoming events, upload photos and videos, celebrate milestones or even share links from other sources that support your business’s message. Better yet, provide a link back to your website, if you have one, to drive more traffic to your website.

One important tip

Craft posts that are relevant and valuable to your followers. With the information overload that many Facebook users experience every day, the key is quality, not quantity.

Remember to post consistently. For some, it may be once a day or more and for others, once a week.

Create a cadence and voice so that your followers will know when and what type of posts to expect from your business.

3. Engage with customers

Your Facebook page is also a channel to engage with customers instantly and in a 2-way conversation. Monitor and listen to comments on posts and any customer reviews. You don’t need to respond to every message, but interact when needed. Reply to issues that you can resolve and say thanks if it’s a positive post.

With the page’s messaging feature, customers can send you private messages. You can also send back automated or saved replies to customers who message you and even note your average response time to questions – keeping customers informed, happy and engaged.

4. Create an offer or host an event

Facebook business pages make it easy to create special offers, like discounts and coupons for your customers to redeem. You can also hold a special event and invite all of your followers.

When people accept your invitation, it’s added to their Facebook calendar, as a reminder. Plus, you can see who is going to your event and who is interested, so you can properly plan attendance.

5. Advertise

With consumers spending more time on social media, you may want to consider this advertising channel. Ads on Facebook give you the opportunity to promote your business to a massive user base for as little as $1.

To get started, settle on an objective for your campaign. Do you want to increase brand awareness, find new customers or generate leads? This will give you direction on how to best target your message based on:

• location
  
  
• demographics
  
  
• interests
  
  
• behaviours
  
  
• connections

Next, decide where you want to place your ads (news feed, right-hand column, etc.), set a daily budget and start tracking performance. Be sure to monitor your campaign and optimise content that does well.

Another option is to boost a post. This features allows you to promote an existing post on your page to not only the people who like your page but their friends and beyond. Just set your budget and target audience and Facebook will do the rest.

6. Measure performance

Rule number one in marketing is to know and understand your audience. Meta Business Manager is a feature of your page that gives you a view into who your followers are (age, gender and location), how often they visit, how many people like, comment on or share your content and what content is resonating with your audience.

Take this information and use it to make future marketing decisions that will improve engagement with your customers, and ideally add to your bottom line.

Getting your business on Facebook is just the first step. The platform offers an assortment of features that can help you boost your presence and engagement with customers. Marketing on social media can be different for each small business based on your industry, location and customer base, so test the platform out and see what works for you.

SOURCE: Score