Everyone uses Facebook. It’s plain and simple. You probably check it several times per day, your friends and family are doing the same as well as many of the local businesses you frequent. Facebook, whether we like it or not, is an essential part of the lives of a majority of the people.
This is a good thing for small businesses. As I mentioned in my previous post on using Facebook and Groupon to help launch your new business, most people used to turn to newspaper advertisements when they were making a purchasing decision such as buying a vehicle or figuring out what band to check out over the weekend. While there is still value in newspaper advertising, the line rates continue to rise due to their increased costs for printing and distribution while readership and subscriptions decline. To top it all off, key demographics that you’re looking at targeting probably don’t even read the newspaper anymore.
As a result many new or small business are relying on Facebook to deliver information to their potential and current customers. It’s very easy to get things setup and use and the best part about it is that most of the tools are absolutely free to use. Results at no cost? It’s not hard to see why newspaper ads are declining.
I’m going to assume that you already know how to setup your Facebook page and/or are capable of hunting that information down. I may include a post a bit later on tips to setting it up but for now I would really like to give you some useful marketing ideas on how to increase the number of people who “Like” your company’s page.
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The first and most effective way is to send a message out to your family and friends asking them to like your Facebook page. When they click that magic “Like” button, its published on their profile page as well as the news feed. You will definitely have people checking it out based on the fact that their friends liked it, making it a viral form of promotion.
From time to time you should also include your Facebook page in your own status messages, with the link automatically parsed. Doing this is quite simple. Begin typing your message and when its time to include your business name, type the “@” symbol with the first few letters of your company name and you’ll be able to include. All of your friends will see this in their news feed and again, the curious will click. Check out the picture below to give you an idea on how it’s done.
Be sure to write a post on your Facebook page wall with information about upcoming events and promotions. Post pictures of your business, the people involved or special events that have taken place in the past. All of these get published to the news feed and if people comment on them or like the posts themselves, it gets published to their profile page.
Lastly, make sure you have your address tagged via GPS so you can encourage your customers to “Check In” when they arrive. You could run a contest each week/month giving away freebies to encourage people to check in when they arrive at your company’s location. The more people that check in, the more mentions you will get in that all mighty news feed.
These are just a few tips and if you’re looking for something specific to your company or place of business leave a comment below with some details and I would be more then happy to assist either on a one on one basis or to be included in a post later on.