Social Media for Businesses Part 2: Facebook for Business

I am completing a three-part series on social media platforms for businesses with one blog for Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. Welcome to Part 2!

I will be highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of using Facebook based on my own experience; I do social media marketing for almost ten different companies, so I'll be sure to take the best of the best advice to pass on to you!

I'll start with the advantages that Facebook has for businesses:

1) It's easy to use: Facebook works hard to be user friendly; easy to post, easy to see your analytics, and easy to keep track of customer engagement. They also make business pages similar in format to personal pages so it will seem extra familiar to the regular Facebook user.

2) There is a large number of active users: According to Facebook's website, they have more than a billion monthly active users and 618 million daily active users (as of December 2012). This is a huge market to tap into and you don't want to miss out on it!

3) You can schedule content directly through Facebook: Facebook allows you to schedule posts directly through your business page. It lets you schedule posts up to five months out; posts can have links, pictures, videos, and text built right into them.

4) There are analytics built in: Facebook is constantly changing and updating their internal analytics to give you the best view of your business page as possible. It's very easy to see what kind of content or post does well and which does not.

5) It gives customers multiple ways to interact with you: People that like your page can send you messages, write on your wall, write recommendations, like your posts, share your posts, and comment on your posts. This is a large part of building your brand and gives customers an option of how they want to interact with you.

No social media platform is perfect though! Here are some disadvantages of Facebook for businesses:

1) It's difficult to gain and retain "likes" when first starting: Just like with any business as it starts out, a business facebook struggles to gain "likes" when first beginning (*without the use of promoted posts). A new facebook page will struggle with engagement and interaction as not all of your "likes" will see your posts. Once you gain a larger number of followers, you should see a steady increase of approximately 2-7% new "likes" per month (at least this is my experience).

2) It takes time and hard work to do it right: Although Facebook is free, you have to take into account time and effort spent into growing your Facebook "likes". On top of that, you must learn the difference between running a personal account and a business account.

3) Facebook limits who sees your posts: Not all of your "likes" will see every post. Most of my posts see an average of 30-70% of my total "likes" (Of course some get less and some get more). If you pay attention, you'll notice that Facebook limits certain types of posts (like pictures and certain links) to even fewer of your "likes".

4) Facebook lumps third party posts together and identifies where you post from: Yes you can schedule through Facebook directly, but in addition to that, you can post from many third party applications. These are convenient but can hurt the reach on your posts. Facebook may lump your posts together, may limit who sees posts from certain applications, and also identifies where you are posting from (i.e. Hootsuite, Gremln).

Even with its ups and downs, your business must have a Facebook page. With so many users waiting for you, you must not miss out! You have to use and manage it, but it can do wonders for building your brand and serving as a communication tool for your current and potential customers.

Does your business have a Facebook account? What are your favorite and least favorite aspects?

~Melissa

"Move fast and break things. If you aren't breaking things you aren't moving fast enough."

             ~Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook

See Part 1: Twitter for Business here

Part 3 coming soon: Pinterest for Business

How do I drive engagement on Facebook but still post relevant content?

Let's start by having you think of the business pages you interact with on a regular basis. What kind of status updates do you like? What kind of status updates do you share? What makes you want to interact with their page?

Some answers you may have come up with are funny pictures, funny status updates, cool facts, and maybe a really great sale announcement. Your answer would most likely not be, "man, I really love when businesses post about themselves all the time".

So, we have already learned something just by taking a look at our own habits! This is a frustrating point to learn, however, because we all want our Facebook business page to make our company shine above the rest. We want all current and potential customers to really care about everything in our businesses  We want them to share our status updates and get all of their friends to share it as well.

So. How do we drive engagement while pushing our company at the same time? Well, it has to do a lot with the content you put out there and how you position it to be most effective for your business. I've come up with three easy tips for posts that drive engagement and promote your business at the same time!

1) Post a funny picture that relates to your business. An example of this would be posting a picture for a sign company like this:

Then, make the caption relate back to your business!.

"Are you effectively getting your message across to your customers? Let us help you with a new sign! www.insertwebsitehere.com". 

Your caption will travel with the photo and each person that shares it because it is funny will share a sales pitch too!

2) Always ask questions in your status updates. This is a very simple and easy way to drive engagement with your customers. An example of this would be posting a statement like, "Our next First Friday event is coming up next week! Will we see you out and about for the festivities?". This kind of status lets people know about your event but also instantly engages them in the post and really invites people to communicate with you.

3) Provide fun facts and then spin them to fit your message. An effective way to get likes and shares is to use status updates with fun facts that most people will not know. To make them relate back to your business, add a simple sentence at the end that directly mentions your company or mentions a product that you sell. An example of this is, "One barrel of wine equals 20 cases, or 240 bottles. That equals approximately 1,200 glasses of Burgdorf wine!". Here we gave the customer a neat, widely unknown fact but mentioned the company name to make it a more effective post.

I use these tactics all the time on pages I manage and they are generally quite effective. Once you figure out what works, keep using the same techniques. If your customer is enjoying what you post and regularly liking or sharing statuses, it will quickly increase your visibility and your overall reach on Facebook!

What posts do you find create the most engagement with your company page? Please share!

Until next time-
~Melissa

"Already companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the horse-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone" ~The Cluetrain Manifesto