DISCOVERING HOW FACEBOOK CAN HELP YOUR BUSINESS
. Personal page : You’re here to market your business, but sometimes potential customers want to know the people behind a business. Facebook gives
you the arena to give your business a personal touch. The standard Facebook page is open only to friends you approve. You can post personal
information and invite friends to view your profile. You can send messages privately or publicly and use a Facebook feature to chat online. You can
comment on information on the walls of your friends, and your friends can comment on information posted on your wall.
People who are not your friends can view your contact information and the other information you include on your Facebook page, but they cannot view your updates, or any multimedia you upload to Facebook. If you don’t want potential customers to know the intimate details of your life, you can change your account’s privacy settings so that only friends can view your contact information.
. Customization : Your Facebook page doesn’t have to look like everyone else’s. You can customize it by adding photos and videos and applications – such
as polls – to enhance your profile.
. News feed : The newsfeed – which only you can see – shows recent posts by your friends or people who like your business page.
. Wall : Friends or people who like your business page can post messages on your wall (which is part of your page) and share them with your posts
a comment on your wall, they are notified by email whenever someone else updates the comment. Your wall is also updated whenever you add a video
or photos to your profile. You can change the manner in which you are notified by choosing Account → Notifications, and then choosing which event
triggered an email notification from Facebook.
. Business Page : The page, where you can promote your business or individual products, is a useful way to disseminate information in a highly public
manner. Any Facebook user can like your business page. The downside is that you cannot see the profile of people who like your page. The upside
is that there’s no limit to the number of people who can l like your page and you don’t have to approve every person who likes your page (as you do
with friends of your personal page).
You can customize your page using applications, just like any other Facebook user. You set up the account as the official representative of your business, but you can assign administrator privileges to someone else in your company so that you can hand off Facebook responsibilities.
. Advertising : In addition to setting up a business page, you can promote your presence on Facebook by using ads. If you’ve spent any time on Facebook,
you’ve seen the ads in the right column. You can place ads there as well.
FINDING PEOPLE TO LIKE YOUR BUSINESS PAGE
If you have a personal account with Facebook in addition to your business page, you can ask your friends to like your Facebook page by following these steps:
1. Log into Facebook. Your personal page opens by default.
2. Open your business page. If you have created a custom URL for your page, use this to navigate to the business page. Alternatively, you can type
your company name in the search field and click the icon to open your business page.
3. Click the Suggest to Friends text link directly beneath your avatar. Your Facebook friends appear in another window.
4. Click the friends to whom you want to send an invitation. A check mark appears near the friend’s avatar.
5. Click the Send Invitations button. Your invitation is sent to your friends.
After you send the invitation to your friend, be sure to ask them to recommend your business page to their friends. In addition to asking friends to like your Facebook page, you should promote it in your other online media as well. Include the URL to your fan page in your email signature and any other correspondence you send. You can also send an email to everyone in your address book to announce your Facebook page. Another possibility is an online press release. You can also add a badge to your web site that, when clicked, directs your site’s visitors to your Facebook business page.
USING A PAGE BADGE TO PROMOTE YOUR BUSINESS PAGE
If you have a web site or a blog, you can add a Facebook badge to your site to promote visitors to your Facebook business page. This is a helpful way to cross-promote your fan page.
To add a badge to your web site, follow these steps:
1. Launch your favorite web browser and navigate to www.facebook.com/facebook-widgets/index.php. The Facebook Badges page appears. You
have options to create a badge with your Facebook profile and contact information, create a badge to show off your Facebook photos, create a badge
to show the pages you like, or create a badge to promote your page.
2. Click the Page Badge link. The Page Badges page appears.
3. Choose the source for your badge. If you have an existing Blogger or TypePad account, click the applicable link and you’re redirected to the applicable
site. Follow the prompts to sign in and add the badge to your site. If you have your own domain, click Other that opens a window with HTML. Paste
the code into your web site. If you don’t know how to edit web pages, ask your web designer to help you.
4. Add the badge to your web site. Your Facebook badge is visible to everyone who visits your site.
USING SEO TO GET YOUR FACEBOOK BUSINESS PAGE NOTICED
Follow these tips to optimize your Facebook page for search engine optimization (SEO):
. Use keywords in the information about yourself or your business. When you write information about you or your company below your avatar, pepper
it with the keywords people would use to find a company or service similar to yours on the internet. Be as specific as possible while still creating a description
that’s grammatically correct and well written. Pull out the list of keywords you acquired for your web sites.
. Use the Info tab on your page to include more keywords and metadata about your business. When you create a page for a business, you can
include a company overview and a mission statement. If you create a page for a public figure, you can include personal information and interests. Add
keywords to the text in the sections that people would use to find a similar business or service. Remember that each tab has a unique URL, which makes
it easy for you to add your Facebook URL to an email signature or create a link on one of your other web sites.
. Add URLs in your wall posts. Whenever you write something on your wall, add a link to a page on your site where users can find more information.
The additional link adds relevance to your web site in a search and gives your business page more relevance – number of links is one criteria search engines
use in ranking pages.
You can add a URL by clicking the Link icon underneath the Publisher text box. No search engine can see a URL you enter in this way. Always add URLs directly in your wall posts, for SEO purposes.
. Embed hosted videos. If you have videos at a hosting service such as YouTube or Vimeo, use the Facebook Markup Language (FBML) application to
create a new tab and then embed a couple of videos in your page. A URL serves as another inbound link to your Facebook page.
. Add keywords to photo captions and event listings. When you add photos to an album on your Facebook page, include keywords in the captions you
create for your photos:
. If you’re a wedding and event photographer posting a photo of a recent event, include your name in the caption as well as the town and city in
which you live. You can also add keywords when you post an event on your Facebook page.
. If you’re announcing a webinar, include keywords related to the subject of the event as well as any application URLs.
. Create more inbound links for your business page. Search engines rank pages according to the number of inbound links they have. Whenever you
create a blog post, be sure to include a link to your Facebook business page. You can also include links to your Facebook page on your web sites and
include the link in other social media outlets you use, such as Twitter.
. Draw as many people to like your page as you can. When a Facebook user likes your page, this information is listed on the fan’s page complete with
a reciprocal link to your business page, which acts as another inbound link for your page.
. Encourage fans to comment on your posts and like them. When a fan posts a comment or clicks the Like icon. Facebook links the user’s name with
your business page, which gives the page, in essence, more relevance and popularity.
USING FACEBOOK INSIGHTS
Facebook provides you with a method of tracking your business page activity. As the page owner, you have access to the Insights feature (located in the left column of your business page), which tells you how many people like and how much interaction they’ve had with your page.
To view detailed information about your business page, follow these steps:
1. Log into Facebook and navigate to your business page.
2. Scroll to the Insights box on the left side of the page and then click See All. Information about your page appears, in the form of graphs. You can
find the following information in your Insight graphs:
. A breakdown of activity during the previous week. As time goes on, you see how many new subscribers you have and how many have unsubscribed. You
also can see when a former subscriber decides to rejoin your ranks.
. The number of interactions per post, the breakdown of active fans, and much more. To analyze a specific metric, choose an option from the Choose
a Graph drop-down menu.
. A spike in the number of new fans. When you see this type of activity, note the type of activity you posted on your fan page that day. If you posted
about a new topic or uploaded a video or photo album, you know that your fans like this type of material.
Keep writing posts in this vein, or upload similar material to increase your fan base.