Business Guide

The New Small Business Owner’s Guide To Doing Business On Facebook

On last count (September 2013), Facebook’s Daily Active Users numbered up to 728 million on average, Monthly Active Users to 1.19 billion, whereas Mobile Monthly Active Users came up to 874 million.

When Facebook first came into existence, no one ever imagined that it would play such a crucial role in promoting businesses. And it has grown much beyond the traditional method of marketing. Now, Facebook marketing is a lot more than just setting up a like page and spamming everyone asking for likes.

A powerful Facebook presence needs strategy. And, if you’re new to this whole thing, we understand you’re apprehension and confusion. This is why, we give you a roadmap. A step by step guide to how you can do it without feeling your way around in the dark. It’s simple, sensible and easily achievable.

Business On Facebook

1)   The audience

When it comes to Facebook, you have to observe and profile your audience’s shopping habits, the type of content they ‘like’ or subscribe to, the other pages they follow, the activities they engage in, and of course, the amount of time they spend online on an average.

2)   The goals

Setting clear, achievable goals not only give you a proper roadmap for further actions, it also keeps you motivated towards wanting to have the immense pleasure of periodically striking things off that to-do list. Your goals could be daily, weekly, monthly, or all combined together in a systematic step-by-step process. Create that pulse. Work, live and breathe around it.

Business On Facebook

3)   The team

It’s always better when you have the A-team in place to manage the various aspects. If you’re going post links from your blogs to Facebook as well as sync feeds from Twitter, things might get out of control for just one person. Having a team of at least three people on board not only makes it easier to handle everything, but also adds different dimensions to your page, keeping things fresh and dynamic.

4)   The page

While designing the page, you have to keep two things in mind- one, your page should reflect the originality of your website design; and two, use the right keywords to help your crowd find you. Keep it active, creative and in tandem with your business, you’ll be surprised how easy it is to get distracted!

Business On Facebook

5)   The features

Facebook has multiple features that can help you enhance the social media experience for your followers. You have the ‘vanity URL’, ‘check-in’, ‘find friends’, ‘Facebook Connect’ and many others that can help you enhance the user experience.

6)   The schedule

A content schedule gives a smooth system to things and helps you achieve things in a timely manner. There are various tools that let you track the maximum activity of your audience, so you can post accordingly to get the maximum response. In addition to this, your schedule should also involve the time you’ll use to come up with posts and concepts.

7)   The promotion

This deserves maximum time, focus and creativity. Brilliant pages bite the dust because of weak promotional tactics. Use emails, add social media buttons to your site, host contests, and most importantly, offer the audience some perks to like your page.

Facebook Insights

8)   The tracking

You need to know how much of an impact you managed to create. Use Facebook Insights to measure the fan engagement and visibility. In addition to gauging conversions, tracking gives you a clear and specific picture of how your page is performing and what areas you need to work on.

9)   The responsiveness

Communication is the very soul of social media, especially Facebook. Never let a comment, a wall post or a direct message go to waste. Prompt responsiveness is one of the biggest steps you’ll take towards establishing goodwill and a stronger base of loyalists.

Obviously, there’s no hard and fast rule to ace this. However, staying constantly active, creative and responsive pretty does the trick.