12 Most Effective Ways to Market Your Business with Facebook
Marketing your business with Facebook can produce tremendous results if you are willing to commit time and energy. What’s more, Facebook is a powerful tool when used in conjunction with a well-designed and strategically executed marketing plan.
Build a presence and establish your voice within the social sphere by incorporating these 12 effective ways to begin marketing your business with Facebook.
1. Set your unique URL
Obtaining a unique URL makes your page both memorable and easily identifiable. As you set your page URL, determine how potential fans will be searching. Have you branded your name or your business name? Stay consistent in your online presence and ensure that wherever they are searching, they can find not only your Facebook page but any online profile.
2. Optimize your profile
Your Facebook profile projects not only the image but the tone of your business. You should therefore be keen while designing the profile to ensure that it sends the right image to the community. Aim at providing detailed and accurate information concerning your business.
3. Customize your Facebook page apps
Facebook Timeline contains standard and customizable apps which were formerly tabs. Tailor these apps to your business by adding links to products or services, video tips or tutorials, upcoming event information or your latest blog post.
4. Announce your page
Do you consistently market to an email list or database? If so, send an announcement to your list detailing the benefits of joining your page. This announcement could coincide with a sweepstakes or event that gives added value to their “Like.”
5. Add a link to your email signature
Promote your page via email correspondence by adding a direct link. Rather than simply adding a Facebook icon, consider adding a call to action. An example of this could be “Click Here to see the Insider’s Secret to Selling More Homes in Your Area Now!”
6. Keep your content fresh and relevant
One of the fatal mistakes most new Facebook marketers make is starting a page, inviting people to join and then failing to post meaningful and relevant content on a consistent basis. Keep your posts fresh and exciting by rotating between images, links, video and a simple status update.
7. Be responsive
Always ensure that you respond to comments and questions in a timely manner. Failure to do this will send a message that you really don’t care or simply aren’t interested in what they have to say. Responding quickly goes a long way in spreading your message via happy fans that want to share the love with friends and family.
8. Post pictures often
Images are a great way to get your post to go viral. They help you quickly catch the attention of fans as they sift through an often times overwhelming barrage of media in their newsfeed. They also take up a lot more real estate in the newsfeed which translates into more people viewing your content. Most importantly, posting images as opposed to a simple status update have been found to increase your engagement rate by 37%!
9. Use a landing page for sweepstakes or promotions
Creating a separate tab with its own unique URL allows you to drive traffic directly to that page. If you have a special discount coupon or deal available, use the link in your offline and online marketing. Be careful with this one though. Facebook is very specific about sweepstakes guidelines and explicitly prohibits placing conditions on a “Like.” You must make participation voluntary, and announce and administer your promotion using an application within the Facebook applications tab.
10. Create a Facebook Badge
Add the Facebook Like Box to your website and blog and make sure that they are prominently displayed. If you use WordPress, there are many simple ways to add this through a widget or plugin.
11. Facebook Ads
Paid Facebook advertising can be a great way of expanding your customer base. Facebook Ads put you in front of the right people by allowing you to target a specific audience by gender, age group or even geographic area. You control how much you spend on each ad by setting the pay-per-click price and a campaign budget. In the event that your campaign is not yielding the desired results, you can withdraw or edit and update your ad immediately.
12. Create consistency
Last but certainly not least is building out a strategy that creates consistency within your posting. This is where auto-posting may come in handy. I am not an advocate of automating your social media marketing altogether, but rather using it to create balance. In my opinion, a little bit of auto posting is a whole lot better than disappearing from Facebook for days at a time. Scheduling posts will also help the planning process as opposed to a hit-or-miss strategy.
The bottom line in Facebook marketing is to never stop engaging your fan base. What strategies are you using to effectively market your Facebook page?
Featured image courtesy of Thomas Hawklicensed via Creative Commons
It was about 5.00pm yesterday, the sun set beautifully in the clear and cloudless skies of Abuja, Nigeria. Descending from the elevated scape of Gwarinpa towards Wuse and central areas, I was challenged by the encompassing horizon set aglow by bright golden rays, it was like being embellished in beauty, the feeling was euphoric! I cleared off the road and parked to take in all the beauty; I wouldn't miss such an oppurtunity to experience peace amidst the rising spate of restlessness and violence that now defines our climes, I took it in from my right hand side, the jabi-Utako axis, down to the left, the Kubwa-Bwari area, just as my eyes hit the left end, there and then, my ecstacy was halted, infact, better said, the euphoria crashed! The beautiful perspective was interrupted by a miandering tick black smoke rising and violating the seeming pure skies, a scene that defines the theme of the Rio20 Climate Change Conference [Carbon Emmissions, Global Warming, Air Pollution etc] I call that picture, the entire picture the death of living beauty! I was utterly disappointed! I almost wept, for can a man have peace no more? We pray that Nigeria's participation in the Rio20 Conference would midwife solutions to ever threatening problem of Global warming. Change the world!!!!
