Facebook is the frontrunner of the current social networking sites and currently has over 500 million active users around the globe!
We’ve considered what should be the 10 most important points to keep in mind when creating your local business Facebook page. In this article we cover the first five.
1. Optimise your entire account to the maximum potential. You can do this by adding a quality profile image, having an interesting and informative description of your business, making your content easily navigable using the tabs feature, including links to your website, featuring your photos and videos and so on.
2. Create a strong and loyal network of fans. Ensure that you target your marketing efforts on Facebook to get fans who are genuinely interested and passionate about your local business. It is key to emphasise and focus on your own local market because as a small business, you may lack the size to be known beyond your local area. When you focus your page on your specific business, you will gain a more targeted and involved fan base.
3. Regularly update your page with content that is valuable and relevant to your fans. Consider the most important and entertaining things that they would really enjoy reading about on your fanpage… and give it to them! If you wanted to take it a step further, you could create a survey on your page to ask them for their direct feedback.
4. Do not engage in hard selling. Facebook is a SOCIAL platform and cold selling is considered a nuisance, if not spamming. Yes, you likely want to increase your business sales through your fanpage, but you need to be subtle about it. A good method is to offer a lot of value like coupons and special deals, which will lead to sales. For example, a café can offer a free upsize on every coffee. In this way they avoid hard-selling the coffee but will obviously record more sales because to get the free upsize, customers will still need to order a coffee.
5. Position yourself as a problem solver. As a local business owner, you no doubt have a lot of specialist knowledge and skills pertaining to your niche… so turn those competencies into an asset! Become the go-to person for your fans. For example, a boutique owner can use their fanpage to help readers who need advice on styling an outfit or how to tell if a designer bag is real or fake.
Standby by for part two, where we’ll be covering 5 more tips on creating a successful Facebook Fanpage for your local business.
interesting thoughts, especially the one about hard sell, which i entirely agree with, it just doesn’t work!!!
Glad you enjoyed it, Anne! And yes, Social Media is all about conversation and value, not about pushing sales.