In our previous issue, you learned how Facebook helps businesses attract new customers. Today, we will discuss more about creating a Facebook Fan Page for your company.

Any successful business executes a good amount of social interaction and social media management. You can’t have a thriving online business without having good rapport with your target audience and without presence from the vast expanse of the Internet.

A lot of business owners have proven Facebook marketing as one of the most effective ways out there when it comes to generating targeted traffic. Its effect to culture and everyday life is so astounding that simply having a Facebook page can literally make or break any starting company.

As we have discussed before, creating a Fan page is a good move for a starting business and even established ones in order for audience to easily relate to them. People look for official websites to evaluate a company’s credibility. However, a Facebook Fan Page, as long as it’s professionally managed, will do in case you have no website.

Talking about credibility, a Fan page is much more effective than a personal account in establishing a sense of official presence to the information you decide to place in your page. A profile page is less believable compared to a Fan Page. Decide on your business name as soon as possible and look for names similar to your own in the same industry as your company.

For example, if your company name is TASTY Ice Cream and you find a page with almost the same name in the same industry, then find a way to differentiate your name. Come up with descriptions like ‘TASTY Philadelphia Homemade Ice Cream’. This way, you are hitting two birds with one stone. You have just provided your business location. This will help your potential customers find out your geographical background. Not only that, you have also made your name sound different and more interesting than the other.

You can do this after you have created a user name. To get a user name, you need to have at least 25 Fans.

You can also gain credibility by answering all necessary inquiries in your profile. A profile that’s complete with background, short history, other contact details and store locations is essential. More than being complete, the content must also be creative. More often than not, people will want to be your Fans depending on how your profile is created. It should be your most important goal to have a strong following online if you want your Fan Page to bring you more customers.

When using Facebook for Business, part of establishing a good brand is by customizing it by adding store photos, product photos, notes and the like. Remember to be careful with what you are posting though. Using watermark to avoid stolen business photos is a good idea. Focus on the fact that you are building a brand here. Avoid posting content that are too personal such as personal photos and videos, informal company party documentation, internal problem discussions and others. Lastly, never forget to add your contact numbers and store addresses.

To get the most out of social networking sites, you can also consider tying up your Facebook fan page with other sites like YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

That’s it. Be sure to read your next issue soon. You will discover how to get people to like your Facebook business page. 

In our earlier issue, we discussed about how to use Facebook ads to bring your business to the higher level. In this issue we are going to talk about social media management for better search engine rankings and traffic.

There are a number of online marketers that claim that Facebook has grow to be more productive than Google when it comes to getting traffic. Whether this is true or not, it’s not shocking to know that many other marketers are jumping in the bandwagon to try out Facebook marketing for themselves also because this way is a lot cheaper and a lot easier to set up.

Look into these tips on how to get relevant traffic from Google directly to your Facebook business page.

Form Tons Of High-quality Backlinks

You will find a number of ways you can lead your potential clients and customers towards your page. This is one of the beauties of this social networking site. The more Likes that you have which totals to acquiring more Fans, the more links lead back to your Page. This is the onsite way.

In off-site optimization, you do this by building links outside your business page. These can be within article directories, other social networking sites, blogs and forums, and email among many others. Using of articles to set up backlinks is quiet efficient and cost-effective as well. Moreover, they can offer helpful information for your present and potential clients as well.

- Use A Professional Business Name

It’s fine to get a bit creative and fun with your updates. But bear in mind, this isn’t the case when it comes to your business name on Facebook. The primary goal is to supply a name that’s retrieveable for others. This maximizes your target keywords better. Also, remember that your name shouldn’t sound like a sales pitch so don’t stuff it with numerous descriptions. Less is more. For instance, if your business name is Jonathan’s Fruits Shakes, and there’s another business name that sounds similar, why don’t you consider changing yours into “Jonathan’s Healthy Fruit Shakes”

You should also do the same for URL’s. This new feature gives you the option to change your URL so it’s more searchable to other Facebook users. Again, you don’t want your URL to sound flamboyant. Go for something straightforward such as facebook.com/jeremiahsfruitshakes.

- Your Profile Should Be Comprehensive

What can be a more important aspect than your landing page on Facebook? From here, customers will come to a decision whether they want to read on and explore the other parts of your profile or not. So answer completely as much as possible. Present interesting content in your About Page.

Your landing page is also one of the pages where you can place keyword-rich text. Try to place in words that are most searchable in your industry, so Google and other search engines can easily pick them up. Try also to get positive customer feedbacks or testimonials. This will add expertise to your page and to your brand in general.

With all the benefits of using Facebook as a business tool, still it’s not recommended that you use a Facebook Fan page as a replacement for an official website. For the most part, it can be used to supplement information or to better communicate with customers that an official website cannot do.

Be sure you don’t miss our next issue of Facebook for Business.

In our last issue, we mentioned about how to use Facebook Groups for businesses. In this issue we are going to talk about the right way to interact with your Facebook friends & fans.

Although people are more or less aware of what appropriate Netiquette in social media management, the creation and development of Facebook has taken web interaction to a whole new level.

When it comes to Facebook marketing, there are a number of things you have to keep in mind when addressing people.You should evaluate the applications that you use. Whether you use your Facebook account for personal or professional reasons, one should always remember that the internet has an impact on the society. It may be too shallow but for some people, a Facebook account even becomes a basis of making or breaking relationships. You will also find some that rant about their bosses, spouses or in-laws online.

Listed here are just a handful of things you should consider when you’re dealing with your Fans and Friends on Facebook.

Know What’s Private And Keep It That Way

This may sound obvious already but it’s no longer unusual that a lot of people on Facebook forget this. You can post ‘What’s on your mind’ on Facebook wall and virtually anything you want to say. However, remember that posting these things may turn out to be a big mistake on your part. Would you really want your customers or clients find out that you puke at last night’s wild party? Or is that catty statement that was supposed to be an inside joke between friends worth the misinterpretation by others? Remember, the Internet is forever. Personal or professional contacts may stumble on these in the future. If your life is like an open book, consider the end result of you having to explain to them each and every action you made in the past.

When Using Facebook for Business, Stop Publishing those Game Updates

Unless you’re in junior high school, getting those cluttered game updates will tend to irritate prospective customers. If you admit that you play these games, well, at least don’t have the updates posted on your wall. To you, this may be simple entertainment. But for your potential customers, these may label you as unprofessional or even irresponsible. Of course, you don’t want to be seen this way, do you?

Avoid Posting Updates As If You’re Texting Them

?Hd a frikng gud tym at d prty lst nyt? just doesn’t sound well online. You’re not posting updates on Twitter which is limited to only 150 words so why go cheap with your words? The same thing goes for posting nonsense words or mediocre things. And you don’t always have to follow Facebook’s prompt ‘What’s On Your Mind?’ Although all Facebook users have the liberty to say anything they like, this thing can also be very irritating to many people over the long run. Obviously, you wouldn’t want to annoy your customers and clients.

- Choose Contacts Wisely

You need to remember that all news and information posted will appear on their wall. Even their Facebook friends will have the chance to view those posts. With this, you’d want to only include people who might be serious to your offer. Choose direct contacts if possible. You only have a 5,000 limit for contacts after all. If you’re running a Facebook page for business reasons, you shouldn’t be too quick in approving friend requests. It would do you good to do a bit of research about the contact. You can un-friend some people later on after finding out that they aren’t within your target audience.

Watch out for our next issue. We’ll talk about how you can provide something of value to your potential clients and customers.

Here’s How to Create a Facebook Page For Your Business

In the last issue, you learned why it’s important to create a business presence using Facebook In this second issue, you’ll learn how to set up a business page from Facebook.

It’s true that there are a number of confusions when it comes to using Facebook for business and personal use. Before, making a business page is impossible if you do not have a personal account.

But not anymore. Facebook now makes it possible for everyone to produce accounts for businesses, large or small. Simply because of this, it is possible to now develop a professional presence for your very own company on Facebook as well as store your private pictures separately.

When practicing social media management, it is important to differentiate the two though. Experts recommend utilizing a page as opposed to a profile is better where any business matter is concerned. The distinction in between the two is the fact that profiles are meant for people and pages are ideal for those who have a business, organization, celebrity status or some need of professional presence on the web. This way, it’s more suitable to name it as a Business Page.

For business it is best to start with a page straight away rather than converting your profile to a page later on as this is a more strenuous task on your part later on.

To get started in Facebook for Business, you will have to go to the site and create a page. This really is extremely straightforward to do. You will find steps which you can follow from Facebook’s support center should you’ll need some help. http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=904

Select the first one.

Facebook will ask for a page name and whether you are the official representative of these entities. To stay away from the troubles of having your account deactivated because you violated the Facebook rules, make certain you have read the terms and conditions.

The web site can be really strict when it comes to numerous accounts so be careful not to mix your personal account together with your business page. Also, you’ll need to answer the basic questions in your Fan page as this is helpful in adding far more credibility to your site like the business background or history, business locations in addition to contact numbers.

The great thing about Facebook marketing is that it gives you the advantage of analyzing.Through these, you’ll be able to evaluate web traffic and account activity easily. You will also be able to interact with your prospective customers, create promos and learn whether these promos are helpful for increasing your sites targeted traffic and business sales. This is not offered in a regular profile page.This is something you can’t do on a normal profile page.

Also, a Facebook page allows you to take advantage of its ‘Like’ button. The Like Button will give you an indication of customer base. The amount of possible ‘Likes’ to your page is unlimited unlike in a typical page profile page where individuals are only limited to 5000 friends.

When using a business page, make sure you understand the importance of professionalism. You have to always work towards having an enthusiastic and updated page which will garner the respect of individuals. There will be times when you will be tempted to make your page more lively and interactive as it should be but always bear in mind that raising awareness to your brand is the most important thing. Each action or in this case wall post released should move towards an image of professionalism despite the site’s easily casual manner.

Watch out for our next issue. We will discuss about how Facebook can help you bring in new customers.

In our earlier issue, we discovered the methods on how to get individuals to like your Facebook business page. In this issue, we will take a look at how you can take advantage of promotions, contests, and giveaways to draw in more individuals.

Using a social media management site purely for promotions, contests and giveaways is a fantastic way to measure whether these said publicity tactics is working for your business. Based on the given stats provided by the website, you can determine how much traffic the tactics were able to create during its run.

This can be a double win situation too because making the promotion exclusive will get a new set of Facebook fans which is crucial to the growth and maintenance of the company’s social network page. Contests indulge more people to your page.

Now that you know this, let’s proceed to how you can implement Facebook marketing and begin making traffic-pulling contests and promos.

First thing you’d want to do is to be sure the updates and contest mechanics are only visible to your Facebook users. Be certain that you don’t promote it in your newsletters, social networks or even in the official website. You can however say that the contest is exclusive for Facebook users only. Also, it’s important that the mechanics are simple to implement. Overcomplicating matters would make contestants think you’ve set the bar too high and can discourage them from joining.

As an early warning, contests, incentives and promotions tend to be expensive as the applications needed to produce and run it are also expensive. For example, the application Wildfire has a $5 setup fee and charges $0.99 for each day the campaign runs. In addition to that, Facebook has demanding rules when it comes to running prize draws inside their network. Generally, a lot of different contests are not even permitted. You won’t be able to post an official contest in your Facebook wall.

There are some exceptions though. Any business that wants to run contests in Facebook must first purchase at least $10,000 worth of Facebook ads within just three months.

In order to cut costs, there are plenty of business applications which can assist you in creating a contest for your Fan page. Contests for Fan page is an application that was produced by Wildfire and can help neophytes in creating contests with photo, video, writing and visual entries. Additionally, this application is easily customizable. You can change the look of graphics ,control contest mechanics, deadlines as well as the level of response of people in your network. For better navigation, you can place in a contest widget in your Fan page in order for participants to link straight to a micro site. There are also other contest creator tools like Vertigo and Strutta.

To really get a lot of participants, make sure you offer incentives which people can’t resist. A company named Regus, for instance, offered a fully supplied office for the photo entry which showed the messiest work space. But you shouldn’t stop there. Think of prizes such as tickets to the most sough-after concert in town.

A profitable contest will generate a lot of leads for the company and will help them connect with their customers at a very personal level despite the online medium. For some companies, projects like these may need a large amount of effort. However, this can be among the list of most efficient methods to raise business awareness on Facebook.

Be sure to read our next issue of Facebook for Business.We will be talking about some tips on how you can earn cash on Facebook.