Facebook Business Toolkit
We are pretty sure by now we have all heard about Facebook. This place that over 500 million people worldwide spend the majority of their day. According to Digital Buzz, with over 500 million users, Facebook is now used by 1 in every 13 people on earth, with over 250 million of them (over 50%) who log in every day.
We thought about educating everyone on what are the best tools/features to use for your business on Facebook, simply because: some companies are just doing it wrong. Facebook creates certain tools for personal usage, such as a profile page, and certain ‘profiles’ for businesses called ‘fan pages’. However, this is just one tool that can be used to create some visibility for your brand on Facebook and get users to engage with you. Some of the other tools/features Facebook offers for business owners to get the most out of Facebook are:
1. Facebook Ads – Facebook ads are, advertisements that appear on the right side of the website. Facebook ads provide many options to control and target your ads very narrowly. You can set your budget for an advertisement, select who you would like to see it based on their age, sex, interests, groups, networks, etc. The ads control panel even allows you to tell Facebook where you would like to send the user when they click on your ad (i.e. your company website, Facebook Fan Page, etc). Facebook ads are a great way to increase your business’ visibility on Facebook.
2. Fan Pages – Fan Pages are like mini websites on Facebook for your business. Fan Pages can be customized to do pretty much anything a website can, but of course, that takes some knowledge of programming do really make good use of its full potential. There is a myriad of applications out there that can be used to make your pages more effective. If you need help to make your Facebook Fan page really stand out, feel free to contact us.
3.Multimedia (Pictures, Videos) – multimedia tends to drive engagement out of users than just plain text updates. Additionally, status updates with multimedia tend to have a heavier weighting than other types of posts, hence these status updates float to the top of people’s timeline. Share pictures and videos of your company and its events to add a personal touch to your social media presence.
4. Facebook Questions – a new feature of Facebook. This is a feature that allows you to ask questions and get responses that are visible to everyone. Facebook has other features for facilitating questions, such as discussion boards. This differs from questions in that questions are integrated into user’s timeline and can be integrated into your fan pages. Questions is designed so that anyone on Facebook can help you find the answer. For example, when you ask a question and your friends answer or follow, their friends can see and answer it too.
5. Facebook Comments – Facebook Comments is now a feature that is available not only on Facebook’s website. Facebook Comments can be integrated into your website and enable people to leave comments once they are signed in to the website(which most people usually are). Comments also includes many of the administrative options you’d expect. Admins can moderate comments, and readers can mark posts as spam, and so on. Comments is a good alternative to commenting systems for your company’s blog such as Disqus or even your own built in comments system on your website.
6. Widgets – Facebook is a great tool for marketing and interacting with your community, but your companies Facebook presence won’t grow by itself (most times). Therefore, cross promotions are necessary. Include Facebook into your companies offline promotions and even other online destinations like your company website. Facebook provides a number of widgets to show off your business’ Facebook success. These include: Photo Badge, Like Badge, Page Badge, etc.
We have included a bonus guide, just because you have read this entire post.
Marketing on Facebook: Best Practice Guide