Facebook has revealed that its business brand is under development and has big plans to introduce some amazing new tools and features for businesses. As always, I’ll keep a close eye on these improvement and report back.
Why Facebook was my first choice
After my initial research as a start-up I knew who I wanted my ideal clients to be; they too were start-ups or business owners who were not particularly confident about how to attract customers through social media. Where are they most likely to be? That’s right – Facebook.
The benefit of Facebook is that most of us are familiar with how it works and are comfortable with the social element of interacting with others.
If you’re not on Facebook you’re missing out!
Good business is not all about the sales talk.
Create your content plan strategy with a mix of fun, informative and interactive posts – just make sure that the messages align with your values and mission. This allows your customers and potential customers to build a picture of who you are, connect with you, understand what it is you do and know how your product or service helps others.
Only some of your posts should be about sales. If all of your posts are hard sells, this will put people off and they’ll most likely stop following your business page. It’s simply not good practice. Don’t do it!
Here’s a recent live stream I did in collaboration with content writer Amanda from Redwood Copy discussing what makes good content.
Mix it up
Give your followers a welcome distraction and a reason to stop scrolling and read your posts. And because they’re used to interacting on Facebook, they will be a lot more receptive about starting a conversation about your post.
Having others like, comment and start conversations on your posts has huge benefits. Not only does it make the post appear popular drawing others in to see what they could be missing out on, but this engagement results in greater visibility of the posts and boosts your organic reach.
Direct feedback
With your business page being on Facebook you can create a poll to ask your followers whatever you like.
You could ask when they are most likely to scroll through their social media posts, or when they are most likely to grab a slice of much-needed chocolate cake! You also get to tailor the answers, so you get the information you need.
Have a think about the kind of information you would like to know about your followers, instead of guessing the answer, find out directly from them.
A great advantage over LinkedIn!
Facebook reviews
I say this to all of my clients and I’ll repeat it again.
“Always ask for a review!”
Social proof is such an influential way of selling your products. We’ve all been in this scenario – pondering on whether to buy someone’s service or product – but when others, especially someone we know, confirms that the service or product is great, then we’re more likely to go ahead and buy.
With LinkedIn the business owner can chose for a recommendation/review not to appear on their page. Hence, you’re only ever going to see positive ones.
With Facebook you don’t get that choice. The reviews on a business page are a true reflection. There is a feature to turn off reviews, but this doesn’t look good and potential customers will become suspicious.
Facebook reviews – making the most of them
Someone is saying something great about you – they want others to know how much you have helped them. So, shout about it and share their words about you.
It’s not ‘blowing your own trumpet’ it’s telling others how people are benefiting from your service. Don’t shy away from this important piece of marketing.
Facebook reviews – sharing the love
When someone leaves a review on a Facebook business page they leave a valuable footprint for all to see. As soon as their Facebook friends look at that same business page, the review will be clear to see resulting in the ultimate social proof.
Using your Facebook page as a mini website
On your business page you can list all of your services. If you don’t already do this, make this a priority for 2020.
You can even link these services direct to your website or your website’s shopping cart. If you need help with this, give me a shout.
Advertise your events for free!
Yes, this is free! If, like me, you run workshops or events, there is no better platform to advertise them.
Let’s say 10 of your followers respond with a ‘Going’ or ‘interested’ all of their Facebook friends will be notified of this and hear about the event too. How’s that for amazing organic reach and cross promotion?!
Recruitment services
We can already see evidence that Facebook is competing with LinkedIn and I know we’ll see more and more features to support businesses.
This new super feature allows business owners to advertise job roles through their Facebook pages. Knowing that most people use Facebook regularly, your ideal candidate is likely to be only a few clicks away!
Getting your team to use the Facebook business page
Facebook make it incredibly easy to set others up as administrators for the page, meaning you control who else can post on the business’ behalf.
LinkedIn is all about individuals, after all, it is an online networking platform and favours individual’s posts over company posts. To explain the disadvantage of this you need to think about what happens to an individual’s LinkedIn account when they no longer work there – their connections and content is lost to your business.
Training your staff on how and what to post on your Facebook business page will be more beneficial as the posts remain on your page forever and you’ll continue to benefit from their messages.
Visibility
The visibility of Facebook business page posts remains a bit of a sticking point. Yes, visibility still isn’t great – but if you know how to work Facebook and use all of its features to the max there’s no reason why your voice shouldn’t be heard over your competitors.
Use this to your advantage by adapting your content strategy to encourage interaction and engagement.
Facebook Groups
In 2019 Facebook groups had a much improved make-over. Now you can join a group as your business!
Go and have a look to see what relevant groups are out there and join as your business – what a fab way to be able to share your knowledge, advice and generally get on people’s radars!
Analytics
Love or loathe figures and graphs – you really should be checking your data, and Facebook would win the ‘Social Media Analytic Provider’ trophy if there was such a thing.
This graph shows the number of likes from the Last Post, a client of mine who completed my online Facebook course in June. The results speak for themselves!
From the comprehensive and FREE data accessible to you through your business page you can see how well each post performs, how many impressions, how much engagement, what time of the day most of your followers are on Facebook and more.
If you’re not sure what data is available check out a previous livestream called ‘Why data is important on social media’.
Believe me, I can get you excited about this subject!
I hope this has inspired you to grow your business page or indeed set one up if you haven’t already. And don’t forget if you need some extra training or wish to train up your team to really get behind the benefits of using Facebook get in contact.
Or, if you’d prefer to learn in the comfort of your own home and at your own pace my Online Course – Creating and Managing Successful Facebook Pages is just the thing you need.
Bye for now,
Becs
