Partner Article

Top ten tips when using Facebook for business

Even if you are a novice in the world of Social Media, unless you have been manning the Space Station for the last ten years you must at least have heard of Facebook. Over 800 million people have a page and Facebook is still growing, so by default that’s potentially nearly a billion new customers that you could access! So how do you get to them?

Any business can have a Facebook business page, but it is more suited to some types of businesses than others. Facebook can work well for retail businesses where you can advertise sales, new stock, extended opening hours, discount vouchers and the places where you will be selling product. Facebook is also useful for certain types of service industry businesses, but it is probably more appropriate for a personal trainer or a hairdressing salon than it is for a plumber or a solicitor.

The potential value of Facebook is clear. If you have a personal Facebook page and you have 100 friends and they all have 100 friends you already have a potential audience of 10,000. You can see how quickly the numbers can add up. Share your business page with your followers and then ask them to ‘like’ your page (they will then get all your updates). Then ask them to share the page with their followers….you can see how the numbers start to stack up and pay dividends in raising awareness of your business!

You can set up a Facebook business page or a page specifically for a product or brand if you prefer, either way your followers will be your ‘fans’ rather than ‘friends’ in the business context, and this way you can keep the image of your business professional, and separate it from any personal page you may also have.

So what practical steps can you take to make Facebook work for you? The following ten tips may help:

1) Once you have decided that Facebook is the right approach for your business you need to decide what message you want to get across and consider how best to do it.

2) If you have lots of exciting goods to sell you should get as many colourful pictures as you can onto the site because people buy with their eyes, and then you need to entice them to the point of sale, whether that is a website or a shop.

3) If you are providing a service you need to raise awareness of its benefits, so before and after photo shots can work well. Short videos of fitness classes might entice new sign-ups for a personal trainer.

4) Encourage feedback from your followers, hopefully this will be positive but remember somebody could post negative feedback on your page and you will need a strategy to deal with this if it happens.

5) Keep your wall updated and spend time on it at a minimum on three to four occasions a week, but more if you can. If you find a piece of information that you think might interest your followers post it even if it’s not what you sell or do, if it’s useful it will keep your followers interested.

6) Keep followers updated on what’s going on, new techniques in the salon, new products and why you have picked them, what’s cooking in the kitchen, daily specials etc. This will make them feel a part of the business and more likely to come back.

7) Promote important events, Christmas, Easter, summer holidays, shows etc.

8) Let people know about changes in working practices, opening hours over Christmas, whether you will be open over bank holidays and so on, as this kind of information may increase business for you.

9) Don’t overload followers with information and remember that this is a business page, not a personal Facebook page so don’t tell the world you have just broken a nail, or seen a great pair of trainers in the shops! There is a fine line between making people interested and switching them off totally!

10) The important thing to remember about Facebook (and most Social Media platforms) is to keep your page updated. If you haven’t updated your Facebook page for nine months how does it make your business look? Closed probably! One restaurant thought this didn’t matter and was too busy and successful to take time to update its Facebook page, but to the world of Facebook it looked like it wasn’t operating anymore. Close your page down if you aren’t using it as the last thing you want to create is a negative image for your business.

For more information and support in starting or growing a business contact NBSL on 01670 813322 and visit the website at www.nbsl.org.uk

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Phil Langton .