Facebook for business

Facebook is the one of the biggest online social network on the Internet today. At present it has over 500 million active users and an average of 10,000 new websites integrating wit it everyday.

Why use facebook?

1. It can help you interact with customers and potential customers
2. It helps to reinforce and promote your brand
3. Gives you increased networking opportunities through friends and fans
4. Can easily publish your announcements, updates, deals and specials

Getting started

It takes a little time and effort, but with these steps you can easily create a business identity on Facebook and spread the word about your business.

1. Create a personal profile

In order to create a business page, you must first have your own personal facebook profile.

http://www.facebook.com/r.php?possible_fb_user=1&app_id=0&is_enabled=1&next=&locale=en_US

To ensure you can reach the widest network possible, you should establish a good personal profile page, allowing friends or acquaintances you may have lost contact with, find you and find your business. For privacy of information, facebook allows you to customise who sees which parts of your profile. Find friends that may already be on facebook and request them to add you as friends to widen your network reach.

2. Create your business page

Now that you have your personal profile, start creating your business profile.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php?campaign_id=372931622610&placement=pghm&extra_1=0

Populate your company information, photos, location address, photos and portfolio of products. Add upcoming events, YouTube videos and links to your website and blog postings.

Facebook has many options to enhance your business profile. Create landing pages to increase fan base and advertisements to target specific audiences. Post regularly including fun and useful posts together to keep your fans informed and interested.

Make sure your business profile is open to the public. On the Edit Page section in your facebook business page, confirm that the Page visibility option is unchecked. Many business page administrators are not aware of this small change requirement. If you don’t make the page publicly available, only users with facebook accounts will be able to view it.

3. Advertise your facebook page

Having a facebook page does not mean that your website becomes less important. They both need to work together to form the best marketing tool for your business. Have your facebook page link displayed prominently on your website. Show that you are a business that keeps up-to-date with technology trends.

Whenever you post blogs to your site or new products or information, always add a link on your facebook page as well.

4. Share information with friends and fans

Spend a bit of time weekly to increase your fans. Write to your friends and ask them to “Like” or become a fan of your facebook page. This will expose your business to their friends in turn. Build your fans slow and steady. Don’t spam your friends and fans with too many links, instead create incentives to drive people to your page and to your website. Keep the contents fresh by posting regularly and continue to improve your page.

Make technology work for you. Facebook is a powerful marketing tool for businesses enabling you to promote your brand or service to a wider audience. There are many more features or apps you can use on facebook for your business. Take time to find some interesting ones and implement them.