“Likes, Invites, Recommendations & Stories” – Marketing With Facebook
Now Facebook is HUGE – I mean properly gigantic! The Facebook community today is the same size as the entire Internet community was in 2004.
If you target consumers, you really have to have a Facebook Page for your business. If you have a storefront or office open to the public, you should also set your business up as a “Facebook place”, which means that your customers can check-in on their mobile phones – alerting all their friends that they have popped in to see you. In doing so, they helpfully provide a link for the (nosey or) interested to follow to discover your business in Facebook. Give your customers a good reason to check-in on Facebook and reward that behaviour.
The Facebook “Like” button is now one of the most iconic of all symbols in marketing. If one of your customers “Likes” your Facebook page they are effectively doing two things for you:
- They are publicly declaring their love for your service in a way that all their friends can see
- They are inviting you into their life
By inviting you into their life, they are agreeing to see your updates in their news feeds, at least to start with… If you annoy them it’s just as easy to “Unlike” you as it was to “Like” you in the first place! Take care to make their lives better – by offering them more fun, more interesting conversation, showing them interesting shots you have taken etc…
Many Facebook page owners are disturbed to learn that hardly any of their posts are being seen by their audience. When this happens it’s usually for a very good reason. Facebook monitors your posts on your pages and checks how often people “Like”, comment on or share on your posts. If these things don’t happen, your Facebook posts feature in less and less of the newsfeeds. In this way Facebook encourages us to create posts that people actually interact with, posts that add to the Facebook experience not posts that just create noise.
Facebook advertising is even more advanced than LinkedIn advertising. Another very good reason you want people to “Like” your Faceboook business page is so you can advertise to their friends. In Facebook we can use our Fans’ endorsements to persuade their friends to check us out. Our Ads can feature our fans’ names and even faces in our attempts to reach their friends. We nerds call this “social proof” and it is a very, very powerful form of advertising. People trust online recommendations from strangers so when they see endorsements from those they like and trust, the effects are multiplied.
Facebook pages are becoming even more versatile. Already marketers are spoiled for choice by the bolt-on applications they can add to their Facebook pages. Competitions, e-mail sign-ups and shopping carts are all relatively easy to add to your Facebook page. Recent developments mean that you can do pretty much anything you can do on a Web page on a Facebook page so some micro businesses focused purely on consumers – such as hairdressers – have given up having Websites altogether and just rely on their Facebook presence. Look up North Social on Google and take a look at their offerings in this sector to get an idea for what is possible with your Facebook Page.
In summary, if you are targeting consumers, Facebook marketing should be part of your skill set in 2012. At digital marketing agency Intergage, we have a team of Web marketing specialists who can help you create a Facebook marketing strategy . Call us today on 0845 456 1022 and find out how we can help you.
Posted December 15th, 2011
