Online social interaction has become one of the main
pastimes for many people utilising social media sites such as Twitter,
Facebook, Linkedin etc. The king of these sites is Facebook with over
500 million people registered on the site, 700 billion minutes spent on
Facebook and on average each user having 130 friends ( and these numbers
are escalating), as a small business owner, you can see the potential
of Facebook to generate leads and sales.

A Word of Caution

However,
one word of caution is that social media is about social interaction,
and if you use the social media sites with an attitude of sell, sell,
sell or me, me, me then you will be wasting your time and energies. You
have to engage with your contacts and critics, listen to what people are
saying, good and bad. Keep content fresh. Use status updates and
newsfeeds to tell people about specials, events, contests or anything of
interest.

Small Business Marketing Facebook Essentials

Gain clarity about your Facebook Marketing goals before you start

Decide
upfront what you want to acheive from your Facebook Marketing. Is is
getting more customers, providing a better service or maybe creating a
brand awareness. Once this is clear, then you can work out your action
plan

Build Your Profile and Facebook Business Page

You
start by building your profile. It is advisable to have a separate
profile for your relatives and non-business contacts and one for your
business contacts. You then build your facebook page using your business
profile. Consider what keywords you want to be found for on the search
engines and build your profile and facebook page around this keyword As
well as having a Facebook Page, you can also create a Facebook group
which can have your keyword as the title.

Make Friends and Get People to “Like” your Facebook Page

Start
building your list of friends by inviting your current business
contacts and then ask them to “like” your Facebook Page. Then look for
groups or pages that relate to your product or service. Example if you
are a plumber, then you can join a builders group or a local community
group. Through these groups you can then make business contacts by
inviting them to be your friend. However the success of them becoming
your friends is determined by how you invite them and the uniqueness of
your message. Once your Facebook page is ready, make sure you create its
awareness through your website and other marketing materials so that
people can come and join your Facebook page

Make Your Profile and Pages Informative and Interactive

You
want to take advantage of the power of viral marketing and therefore
your aim is to get your friends to invite their friends to “like” your
Facebook Page.

Facebook Ads

Just like Google Adwords and
other Pay-Per- Click marketing, you can set up a Facebook Ad and pay
only when someone clicks on that advertisement. Because of the in depth
profiling available in Facebook, your ads can be highly targeted with a
low cost per click giving you a potentially high return on your
investment.

Final Points

Bing has now linked up with
Facebook and Google and other search engines are now starting to use
social media as part of their algorithm. Therefore a Small Business in
this day and age must incorporate Facebook as part of their Small
Business Marketing Strategy