Facebook And Business

While Facebook marketing  is on the rise amongst small business owners,  many are still struggling to understand the fundamental of Facebook Marketing.  I still see people struggling with just the basic setup  and making the biggest mistakes which could jeopardize their marketing efforts. Avoid these mistakes:

5 Facebook Mistakes

1.  Setting up a PROFILE for your business instead of a proper business page.  This is by far the biggest mistake that people make when starting out.

Here’s why:

• Simply put, PROFILE is intended for individual people, and business page is for business.  Therefore, setting up a profile for your business is in violation of  Facebook User Terms Of Service (TOS), under  Registration and Account Security point #4 which says… “You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain”. Facebook could shut you down without notice and they would be within their rights.
• Growth is limited if you use profile.  As a profile, you can only have 5,000 friends. As a business page, you can have unlimited number of people “like” your page. Send unlimited number of updates, and you can even e-mail them directly.  As a profile, you can only “post” on your wall.  Not too many people can keep up with everyone’s updates.
• Business page offers a lot more flexibility than a profile with multiple tabs and tools  you can use to enhance your brand.
• As a business owner, you should be busy working the business. A facebook page will allow you to assign someone or several people as “admin” to update and monitor your page.
• If you decide to become “professional” later on and actually set up a business page that mirrors your brand, you could loose followers in the moving process.
• People are more likely to “like” a page than accept a logo as a “friend”.
• More work is involved in maintaining a profile.  You will need to manually “accept friends request”.  Whereas, as a business page, people can “like” your page without any additional work from you.

2.  Becoming a broadcaster and forgetting that Facebook is a “social network”. Constantly telling people how great your business is – without providing useful content will not get you the desired result.   They will eventually ignore you, block or “unlike”  you.    Your Facebook page allows you to “attract” potential customers and “engage” with them.  Connect and discover their needs; then look for ways to fill that need.

3.  Having the illusion that people will naturally buy or engage your service without much work from you. If you include  Facebook Marketing in your business expansion strategy, then  you better understand that it will take a lot of work.  Invest your time engaging with people who are interested.

4.  Focusing on the numbers instead of the result. I’ve seen business owners collect “likes” from everybody including their family, and competitors just to inflate the number of “like” on their page, then wonder why no one is engaging with them.  Before asking someone to like your page, ask yourself this question; are they your potential customers? Will they buy from you?  Do they need your service?  If the answer is no, then start looking for the right people.

5. Not investing the time to learn how to use Facebook Marketing correctly or asking for help. You’ve started your own business and your are so proud of yourself.  So proud and full of pride you might think you don’t need to listen to people who have done it before you.   This is amateur thinking.  Successful people know when to ask for help and surround themselves with experts.

Now that you’ve learn what not to do, your next step is to do it right.

How To Set-Up A Business Page

1. First and foremost, do it right the first time by learning the right way to do it.  Even though my business is helping others make a facebook page, I still consult the facebook help page regularly for new updates to stay up to date on any new development. Remember,  technology is constantly changing.

2. Before starting your page, draw up a marketing plan and strategy.  Figure out the best facebook name for your business.  If your business name is too long, you need to create some variation and you may include some keywords for best results.  Now, create your business page.

3. So you’ve gotten this far, now what?  The most obvious one would be to let people know about your Facebook page:

• Let your friends know you’ve set up a Facebook Business Page to update those who are interested in your business without spamming those who are not.  Inform them that regular and interesting updates will now be posted only on your business page, and invite them to “like” it if they want to stay connected.
• Next is to personalize your business page (removing the odd looking numbers on your link”.   Again, the number of characters allowed is limited so plan well.
• Add your Facebook page link to your signature on every e-mail you sent, mention it in your flyers, and also on your website.
• “Like” other pages  and make comments on other business pages as your business instead of your profile.  You simply need to switch identity every time you want to promote your business page.  Here’s how to do it; if you are on your profile, click on the ACCOUNT tab (right hand corner) and you will see “use facebook as page” from the drop down menu and click on it to make a switch.  Do the same thing when you want to switch back to your  profile.

The screenshot below shows where the TAB to switch identities.

Here’s some of interaction I’ve done using my profile and business page.

Being Me As Profile

The screenshot below show how I am interacting as Imie Belanger.com business page.