Marketing & Client Attraction for the Solopreneur & Small Business Owner
The people behind Facebook have been very busy. They continue to release new changes and I’ve noted a few of interest below.
Messages to your Fans
As of September 30th you’ll no longer be able to send an update to fans using Facebook Messages. This is because updates that go to Facebook Messages may end up unseen in the “Other” folder – this is very true, so was a very unused and ineffective feature. Your page wall is still the best place to share and to interact with your fans.
If you’re using Facebook and don’t yet use the tagging functionality then it’s time to step up your Facebook usage. I love the tagging feature!
If you want to mention your business in a post that you put on your personal profile, you can tag your Facebook business page. This then makes it super easy for your friends to click over to your Facebook page.
The growth in businesses joining Facebook is on an upward curve. If you’ve recently taken the initiative and set up Facebook, then take a moment to ensure you’ve setup a business page to promote your business and NOT a personal profile using your business name.
Personal profiles are for people, not businesses.
If you are a regular Facebook user, you’ve likely noticed the small advertisements that appear on the right hand side of your Facebook page. You may also have noticed that these ads are often related to your profile or interests.
This is not a coincidence! Facebook ads are very effective at targeting precise demographics, or a type of person relevant to the ad. This is made possible because Facebook collects data about people’s interests and demographics such as their age, location and relationship status.
For business owners, this means that you can use Facebook Ads to place advertisements about your products and services, or to promote your Facebook page, and target these ads to the exact people you want to reach – your target market! This really is the unique power of Facebook Ads.
Did you know there are over 600 million Facebook users worldwide? Did you also know that over 9.5 million of those users are Australian? With statistics like that, it’s no surprise that businesses of all sizes are now taking Facebook very seriously as a marketing tool.
While Facebook can be a very effective way of promoting your business, it is first and foremost a social networking site. Social networking is all about building relationships and having conversations with people online, just the same as you would in a face to face business environment. When you first meet someone at a business event you would naturally have a friendly chat and get to know them, you wouldn’t start out with blasting them with a marketing or sales message.
I’ve been watching with interest the fast uptake of ‘Social Media Marketing’ by business lately. It seems that every second business website includes an array of funky social media buttons and icons. Yes, even mine!
We can now follow, fan, like and connect with all these businesses. My questions is why would we want to? And when we do connect, how interactive are we truly? Do we really take any notice of their ‘social media marketing’?
Over the past few weeks, maybe months, I’ve started to doubt some of the strategies being promoted to small business. We’re being told to build our social media profiles or we will be left behind. And that we should connect with as many people as possible.
