Facebook Business Set up a Profile The amount of information you include in your profile is up to you, but the more you put on, the better idea people will have of who you are. Users will most likely scan your profile before accepting a friend request, so if they like what they see, they’ll be more likely to accept. People respond well to humour, positivity, and sincerity on Social Networking sites, so bear this in mind. If you already have a profile, you will need to separate business from social friends. This allows you to send emails, etc, to distinct groups. Go to friends, then make new list, and divide up friends. Privacy cannot be set for lists, but can be for individuals by going to privacy settings. Individuals can then be prevented from seeing certain areas of your profile. If you’re using facebook purely for business, this is not a worry, but may be otherwise, as others apart from yourself can post photos and comments on your profile. The problem with limiting users views is that it may appear that you have something to hide, and part of the social networking ethos is that you share details of your lives. Because of this, it is best to not be too private. Monitor the content that is posted on your profile and if you feel it really is inappropriate, you can always delete it.
Friend Acquisition Increasing the amount of friend you have is possibly the most important aspect of the process, and friend acquisition should always be ongoing. You can never have too many friends! Your best friends will be those that you can establish and maintain relationships and dialogues with, but this is time consuming, so the number will be limited. However, a second tier of friends that you may never regularly converse with is still extremely valuable. Your actions will still be displayed in their news feed, so they will have awareness of you and what you do. They may participate in surveys you post, join your groups and pages, or recommend friends. Get into the habit of adding friends whenever you login. It can be tedious to add large amounts, but five a day will soon swell your ranks.
There are ways and means of adding lot’s of random people very quickly, but there are much more targeted methods which will yield far greater results. The main way to find relevant friends is by searching through groups and pages associated with your industry. Type a keyword related to your industry in the search box to the top right of the screen. This will then display appropriate people, pages, groups, events and applications. It’s a safe assumption that everyone within these will be interested in your industry to some degree, so start adding them. Clicking on a persons name or picture will bring up a box allowing you to add them. At this stage you can allocate them to one of your friend lists and you can also add a personal message. You can just go ahead without a personal message and will get requests accepted, but there will be a higher success rate if you include a message, by way of an introduction. The more personalised the better, but copy and pasting a generic message will make the process a lot quicker and is still very effective. Try and be as honest and sincere as you can in these messages, and indeed, at all times on facebook. It won’t take much for you to blot your copybook with a friend, and if they delete you, they’ll be unlikely to accept you in the future. Worse than that, they may actively market against you, posting negative comments in groups, etc. People will be unlikely to respond to your requests immediately, and your message may not be as effective as you would hope. Therefore, it’s a good idea to test a number of messages on limited groups of requests, say five messages on groups of ten. You can then filter the less effective messages, honing the group down to say one or two that get you the best results. If people reply to your request with a message or comment, do your best to answer them, and as quickly as you can. This initial contact can come to nothing apart from that all-important first impression, but may be the starting point of a useful relationship.
Research While trawling the groups and pages for friends be observant and make notes. Look at what the pages and groups are doing, especially those that seem to have a lot of interaction from users and have lots of members. These are the most successful and what you will be aiming for when you come to create groups and pages.
When you come to create a page, you are able to add applications in order to promote interaction. Note which applications pages use, especially those that have high levels of that all-important interaction. Creating a community can be a great asset for a page, so if there are applications that are encouraging members (or fans as they’re called on facebook) to interact with each other, note them down. Also make notes about what fans and members are saying. Pay attention to the tone and content, as at some point you will want to join in and knowing the lingo will be really helpful. You may notice, for example, that there is little pitching going on. In general, never pitch on social networks, unless someone actually asks you to. As with real life networking events, never ‘sell to the room’. While you can take ideas from what others do, bare in mind that your success may come from doing what they don’t do. If you can offer an enjoyable or interesting experience that they can’t find anywhere else, users are likely to flock to you. Keep in mind while researching that there may be a trick that everybody has missed.
Create a Page You can create a page straight from the off, but once you’ve familiarised yourself the various relevant aspects of facebook, you may find that what you initially thought was a great idea, just doesn’t fit and is essentially useless. Rather than waste your time, it’s usually best to wait until you’ve conducted research and found your feet. Once ready, go to ‘page manager’ to the top right of your profile home page, then ‘create page’. On the next page choose the type of business that best suits you and give your page a title. This may be your business name but this isn’t always the best option and for reasons discussed later, choosing the right name is very important. Because you’re looking to attract fans and create a resource and community, something more generic may be better, for example, Public Relations Help Center. You can create multiple pages, so it may be an idea to have one named after your business and others that are more generic. You can always delete pages later, and until you’re feeling confident you can achieve some success, you may not want to launch with your business name if there’s a chance the page fails. The best option may be to find your feet with a generic page that has no direct association with your business, as there is then no risk of damaging your brand.
Once you’ve done this, you’ll be taken to what is essentially the skeleton of your new page. The page will contain default applications, some of which may be of little use or relevance, but you can remove most of these by clicking the cross/delete icon in the top right corner. To add content to your page, click on ‘edit page’ toward the top right. Here you put all your research to good use. Bearing in mind the aspects incorporated by the successful pages you’ve found, populate your page. There is also an option to browse more applications, where by using the search option you can find those used by the other pages you’ve seen or try to find one that does what you require. New application are added regularly, so keep checking back for new ways to improve your page. Try as much as you can to make your page attractive, interesting, and if possible, entertaining.
Promoting your Page and getting Fans There are many ways to get people to view your page and hopefully, become fans. Facebook is so versatile that people are coming up with new and innovative ways to do this all the time and you may come up with some of your own. Facebook provide a pay per click advertising service, similar to google adwords, that can advertises and links to your page, but obviously there is a cost involved. If you would rather invest time than money, try the free methods before resorting to this. Firstly, make the most of your friends. You can send a group email to your business list of friends, so let them know that you have created a page and invite them to be fans. Briefly summarize all the great things they will find on the page and what they can expect in the future. Perhaps offer an incentive to join, such as a prize draw, and present other benefits they will receive, such as useful advice and information. Hopefully, because this list has been selected from people who would be interested, you will get a reasonable uptake. This is where the viral nature of facebook may start to come into effect. The friends of every user who joins will be informed in their news feed. Say you made 100 friends in your initial friends harvest. 50 of those join your page, each of which has 50 friends, which means that 2500 people have now been informed that your page exists. A proportion of these may be intrigued to see what page their friends have joined and look themselves, possibly join, and before your know it your fan numbers start to grow at an exponential rate.
This is obviously the ideal scenario, but this is why the name of your page is important. Your page name is all that will be displayed in the news feeds, so it has to make as much impact as possible, encouraging people to find out more by visiting your page. Your friends will also be informed of your actions in their news feeds, so interact with your page yourself. Post articles, comments, videos, etc, that you believe will attract attention. As always, be informed by what you have seen to work on other pages. Those other pages are the next way in which you can attract fans. Start interacting on the pages, asking and answering questions, starting discussions, and doing all the other things you’ve seen that provokes responses from those pages fans. Those you interact with may offer friend requests or you may request them, then you can direct them to your page. Others who view the page but that you haven’t directly conversed with may also see your comments and request friendship. The option that may give you the most new fans on your page is to post a direct link to it on other pages, but be aware that this may be risky. If you do nothing but post links it’s likely to be seen as spamming, may get you a bad reputation, and may be deleted by the page administrator anyway. Again, your research should pay off here. If you’ve found that other people are posting links, there’s most likely no problem for you to. You can also simply ask the page administrator if they mind. However it’s always a good idea to post more than just a link. Make a contribution first so that you don’t appear mercenary, and also to demonstrate the quality of content people will find on your page. A page can also become a fan of another page, which can work in the same way that a link exchange does with websites. Contact the page administrator and ask if they would like to become a fan of your page, in exchange for yours becoming a fan of theirs. A link to your page will then appear prominently on their page and yours.
Further Actions Detailed in this plan are the basics to effectively launch and promote your business on facebook, but there are many more techniques and strategies to take it further. The functionality of facebook is so broad and varied that the list of different ways it can help your business is around the same length as a piece of string. Search Google for how other people do it, and don’t be afraid to try your own ideas. As facebook is a relatively new platform, just because no one else is doing it, doesn’t mean it won’t work. Even those who claim to be experts don’t have all the answers. Facebook is an ever-evolving platform, with new components for the social and business sides being incorporated regularly. New techniques and strategies emerge with these components; so if you find that you are enjoying facebook, and especially if you find that it is having a positive effect on your business, try to keep up to date with facebook news. You might find that if you pay attention to what’s new, you might have an original idea for how to promote your business before any of your competitors, or even before any other business on the network.
Other Social Media Websites Obviously there are only so many hours in the day and fitting in the time necessary to glean results from facebook may already be difficult, but if possible additional sites should also be used as part of your social marketing strategy. You may find that specific sites suit your purposes, for example, if you want to promote your business through video, setting up a Youtube channel would be a good idea, but two sites that are generally appropriate for most businesses are Twitter and LinkedIn. Twitter is a micro-blogging site, which means that users post short (up to 140 characters) blogs or ‘tweets’, which are delivered to subscribers, either through the actual site or via SMS, RSS, email or other social networking sites. The post can also be made via these methods. Within a business Twitter can be used: • • •
To answer client and prospect questions and queries. To inform clients of developments in your business, such as new products or services. To identify client or prospects needs, by monitoring their tweets.
• • •
To conduct market research amongst your subscribers by asking questions. To communicate between staff members. To notify followers of your blog / social media site updates
Obviously if you have no subscribers, then Twitter is of little use, so how do you get subscribers? Firstly include links to your Twitter wherever you have an online presence, such as on your website or facebook page. Explain the advantages of subscribing, such as the points listed above. Contact all your existing clients and ask if they would like to subscribe, telling them the benefits. You may find that some are unaware of Twitter or how to use it, so it could be helpful to find an online guide that you can point them to. As with all social networks, one of the best ways to get subscribers, is to interact on the site. You can browse other users tweets by clicking on ‘Everyone’ to the right of the home page, but this will only bring up random, general tweets. It’s better if you can find tweets relevant to your sector, so click on search at the bottom of the screen. Search on a few keywords associated with your business. Have a browse and if you find any questions that you can answer or any advice you can give, do so. This may start a conversation with that user, who may subscribe if they like your responses, but more importantly, their subscribers will be informed of your conversation. If they find it interesting, they may subscribe too, or start a conversation, which in turn informs their subscribers. In this way your subscriber base can grow exponentially, exploiting the viral nature of the site. Interaction is the key to success, so make this part of your ongoing strategy, no matter which sites you use. LinkedIn is a Social Network aimed squarely at business. As with facebook, you can create a profile and populate it with details about yourself. Unlike facebook, the information you enter is centred around your professional life, with fields for current and past employment, education, experience, key skills, etc. Your profile is essentially an online CV. As with facebook the aim is to make lots of friends, called ‘connections’ in LinkedIn, and to raise awareness of your expertise in what you do, by interacting with users. To add connections you can use the search function to find specific people or people within a sector by entering a relevant keyword. You
can also browse groups via a link to the right of the page, but unlike facebook, you have to join a group before you can see its members. One of the main ways to start interactions is via the ‘Answers’ section, which you can find the link to at the top of the page. Users post questions here, so you can search for those relevant to your industry and provide answers. This can start conversations with the ‘asker’ and is also viewable by other users, so if your advice is good, others may contact you. You can also submit your own questions for others to answer Again like facebook, there are many other ways to promote yourself on LinkedIn, and new functionality is added regularly. Pay attention to what other people are doing, google for hints & tips, and keep up to date with new developments.