Without further introduction, we know that Facebook is the most popular, busiest, most crowded, most visited and probably the coolest social network site in the world right now. The social network founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his team has now more than 800 million active users, with more than 350 millions of them access Facebok not only through their desktops or laptops, but also through their mobile phones and other mobile devices. With the huge opportunity to find and attract potential customers on Facebook, business owners and marketers are now riding on the Facebook bandwagon. Small businesses have also found a haven to promote their products and services via Facebook without spending too much money on advertising expense. With Facebook, the world becomes flatter for both small and big companies when it comes to marketing competition. If you haven’t used Facebook to boost your business potential, here’s how Facebook can help your business grow and succeed.
1. You can make more friends online with your Facebook personal profile or timeline. Furthermore, you can search and add friends only from within your geographical location. So if your target market is only within your city, you can choose to add only friends who are residing within your place. This is to ensure that you’re not promoting your products to people whom your products aren’t available.
2. You can broadcast your business and products by sharing statuses, photos, links and videos related to your business to your friends and subscribers. You can also encourage your friends to start discussion through comments that can be made within your updates. If you are sharing quality and satisfying goods and services to your friends, this social media promotion can increase your business growth.
3. You can create “events” to invite your friends to attend your real events outside Facebook, which can be seminars, orientations and other activities related to your business campaign. You can also have the ability to see the people who are attending, not attending and maybe attending.
4. You can create a group related to your business or services. For example if you’re in a restaurant business, you can start a group and add members who are keen to foods and hanging out in restaurants. The group has the ability to notify your members whenever there is a new discussion in the group. This is also a good way to build your group of supporters.
5. You can create pages, which have the same abilities with your profile, that is, they can also share statuses, links, photos, videos and can also make events to broadcast your business. You can make a page that is specially created for your company or enterprise. Pages also have their own username which can be customized for your business branding. Facebook also gives you the ability to analyze your page likes, interactions and other insights that will help you analyze your campaign.
6. You can also use Facebook to keep an eye on you business competitors so that you may learn how to improve your products and better satisfy your customers. Of course, your competitors (bigger or smaller than you) are also staying and enjoying the benefits of Facebook. So learn and enjoy the competition.
7. You can also use Facebook as your medium for promoting your advocacies and social responsibilities. For example, if you have a foundation or a movement for a cause, you can find more supporters and volunteers online through you own profile, pages and groups.
8. You can join other groups in Facebook where you can share and get in return important ideas and lessons for improving your business from other members. For example, you can join a group where online marketers meet and share their marketing expertise. There, you can get new tactics on how to improve your marketing techniques.
There are many other benefits and advantages you can get from integrating Facebook to your business. The key to optimize this social network is to become a real friend to your friends, who’s there not only to make profit, but also to help people. Hence, you should socialize like a real human and not a robot who loves spam. You should also preserve your trust and integrity so that when you share anything to your status, you can encourage more likes and more interesting discussions. Also remember that though Facebook can give you an edge in your business undertaking, you should still be careful to use this edge as it might become destructive. Facebook can often become addictive to the point that it ruins your productivity. Thus, make sure that you can discipline yourself to only use Facebook according to your good plan.
Victorino Q. Abrugar is a marketing strategist and business consultant from Tacloban City, Philippines. Vic has been in the online marketing industry for more than 7 years, practicing problogging, web development, content marketing, SEO, social media marketing, and consulting.
Appreciate your insights. Although social media business pages are reportedly only responsible for 1-2% of sales, they are definitely still a great way to establish yourself as a thought leader within your trade. In the social sphere, places like Facebook are the perfect platform to build lasting relationships with customers or other industry leaders. Encouraging a dialogue between your business and other Facebookers is also an important way to demonstrate unique customer service. Thanks for the post!
Lauren
Twitter: @Volusion