How to use Facebook for Business

If you are running a business whether small or large, you cannot afford to ignore the ubiquitous Facebook. With over 1 billion (that’s 1 out of every 7 people on this planet!) leverage Facebook for business that not only helps them promote their business online, but also helps them engage with their existing and potential customers.

However, for every successful company on Facebook, there are thousands of others struggling to get themselves heard. Here are some strategies to leverage Facebook for business helping your brand to get noticed and market yourself

Make a distinction between you the person and your business on Facebook.

Facebook rules do not permit only individuals to set up company pages. Which means that you need to have a personal profile to set up and operate your company page?  If you would like to keep your personal relationships out of business, the best thing would be to create another personal profile for yourself which could be used exclusively for business purpose.

In order to leverage Facebook for business, the first thing is to set up your company page. There are 3 important considerations to bear in mind while creating your company page.

1. You want to create a page for a business, not a community or a group. When you select creating a page, you will be asked to specify what the page is about. Select the most appropriate fit for your business.
2. Your Facebook web address. You are only allowed to change it once, therefore keep the address as short and linked to your company as possible. For example take a look at my company page URL on Facebook . It’s easy for my customers to search me on Facebook.
3. Your privacy settings should be set to public so that what you put up on your page can be publicly viewed.

Create engaging content for your Company Page

The content that you put up must have appeal to Facebook users. In order to leverage Facebook for business in a right way, don’t rush to put up sales messages unless they are relevant such as a seasonal offer.  Instead share content that you believe would have appeal to your potential customers. For example: If you are running a restaurant, share recipes of dishes that are available in your restaurant. Shoot a video of your chef making the dish and invite readers to try and re-create the same. Create an event where they can get your Chef to taste it and declare a winner.

You will not only drive engagement with your followers but also drive footfalls to your store.

Promote your company page to Facebook users

There are several ways by which you can promote your Facebook page to users. The best way to leverage Facebook for business is to create engaging content that will prompt users to share to their friends.  You could also join some of the relevant groups & share your page and invite users of the group to come and like your page.  You could do the same with relevant communities. For leveraging Facebook for business, identify other company pages who are addressing the same audience as you are. Like & feature their pages and ask them to do the same for yours. Send out an email to all your friends and business associates and invite them to come to your page and like it.  In this manner, you will be able to build a good base of followers for your company page.

The key to building a sustainable social media initiative for your business on Facebook involves around creating engaging content that feeds sharing by your followers, which in turn builds more followers. And the cycle goes on.