Your small or medium sized business should be on Facebook
Hopefully last week’s post convinced you to start a LinkedIn company page. This week we continue to help you get your social media ducks in a row by focusing on Facebook.
Small and medium businesses can really take advantage of having a presence on Facebook since these businesses tend to focus on local customers. A recent study by G/O Media found that 73% of American consumers pointed to Facebook as the best social media source for local businesses to be listed on.
Many of you already have personal profiles on Facebook. If you do, you’ve taken the first step in creating a company page. If you don’t have a personal profile, go to facebook.com and sign up. Once your personal profile is complete, go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php to get your company page started.
You will need to fill in all of the details about your company. Facebook will ask you for your business category and to upload a logo and business image. You will also want to add your business address and phone number. Make sure this information is correct. Providing locals with your contact information, website URL and hours of operation on Facebook can lead to new customers and increased business.
Once you have a company page you can keep people coming back by offering discounts or featuring special promotions to keep your current customers engaged, as well as finding new customers for your business.
The more engagement you generate the better your company will rank in Facebook’s search engine – getting you to the top of the list.
Some other ways to engage your customers on Facebook include adding videos (make sure they’re not too long), publishing posts and most importantly responding (quickly) to questions or comments from Facebook users. This doesn’t need to take a lot of your time. A good starting point would be to spend 15 minutes, twice a day.
Many people will search for your business on Facebook prior to looking for your business website through Google or another search engine. Once people have found, and hopefully liked, your business it’s critical they can find your website address easily.
The 2015 Social Media Marketing Industry Report found that Facebook is used by 93% of respondents to increase their business, followed by Twitter at 73% and then LinkedIn at 71%. This statistic shows how many businesses value the opportunities offered by Facebook. So, if you’re not on Facebook, your competition probably is.
To further enhance your social media presence, check back over the coming weeks as we take a look at integrating social media into your overall marketing plan.