How to Most Effectively Market Your Business on Facebook

 

 

Any network that has been formed that focuses on marketing has failed. It is one of the reasons why Google had so many failed social media sites, because they focused too heavily on promotion and not enough on the people using the site. That is something that you should remember; that it is powered by human users who have not signed on to be marketed to. If you can keep in mind that you cannot force your promotion on people, you will be more able to use Facebook to the benefit of your business.

 

 

You need a personal profile to start a Fan Page anyway. With your personal profile you should make it very clear and obvious where you work and that you love everything about it. Try to get as many friends as possible on Facebook, but do not concentrate too much on getting friends on your profile. Getting friends has only a tiny benefit, but they are useful because every now and again one of them will convert into a customer.

 

 

Basing your profile on trying to get friends in order to get customers is a fool’s game. If anything, you need to make your personal profile all about brand building. Do not over promote anything in any sense. Simply cast a positive light on your company. This acts as a nice little foundation for a good reputation, which is going to help deflect some of the mud that your competitors are going to try and throw at you later on.

 

 

This is the page where you are allowed to be promotional. It is built so that you can post whatever you like, but its aim is to improve the reputation of whatever the Fan Page is about (in this case it will be your business). Do not work too hard to get “likes” on your Fan Page. The “likes” on your Fan Page are meaningless. Nobody in their right mind is going to judge your products or your company based upon how many likes it has. The only possible use for “likes” is for TV shows and celebrities who need to show that they are popular.

 

 

This is absolutely essential if you want to succeed with your Facebook campaign. You need to have a series of goals, as well as a mission statement. This is the end-goal of your campaign that is never truly reached because you are always striving for improvement.

 

Your mission statement should be accompanied with smaller goals. It is imperative that your smaller goals have both a time limit and a metric that you can measure. It is very easy to spend a lot of time on Facebook and have it look like you have achieved something when you in-fact have not. Plenty of people brag that they have thousands of “likes” on their Fan Page and thousands of friends, but they cannot brag about any sort of ROI from it.

 

 

When you go in with your plan, you must make absolutely sure that you can measure your progress. How you do this is up to you, for example some people measure how many conversions they get from Fan Page viewers to website viewer. Other people measure how many times their product images are shared across social media. You must be able to measure your progress; otherwise you are wasting time without knowing it.

 

 

The whole idea of going into your Facebook campaign with a plan is reliant on measurable metrics and a time limit. You need a time limit, or your goal will never be reached. If you have not reached the goal by the time limit, then you need to take a serious look at your strategy and create a new plan. You need to do this because you cannot underestimate how much of a time vampire that Facebook is.

 

It is unlikely that you have to money to waste staff hours or productive time on Facebook, when it is not giving you any sort of return. You may think that you are brand building or that people are seeing your posts and so they know about you. But, this is not how Facebook works. A potential customer may see your poster in a shop window and it has a drip-drip marketing effect. But, on Facebook the drip-drip effect is so small that a person can see your post every month and still not know what your company actually does.

 

That is why you need a time limit on your smaller goals, so that if you do not reach your goal, then you have the incentive to create a new plan.

 

 

In the offline and online marketing world, changing your plans, your goals, your strategy or your campaign costs money. But posts on Facebook are free, and if you change your strategy overnight, very, very few people are going to notice or care. Their earth is not going to crumble beneath their feet, they are not going to lose respect for your company, and it will not shake the trust they have in your brand. The only way this will happen is if you post something offensive to that person, or if you take a massive detour from your brand ideals.