We hear so much today about Social Media, but there is the constant question – How can I use Social Media to market my business. With more than 350 million users and more traffic in the UK than Google last month, we cannot ignore Facebook as a social media site and marketing opportunity. Remembering that social media is not the place to blatantly and endlessly pitch your product or service otherwise you will probably be ignored, what you need to do is to build relationships and enter a conversation with your prospects. There are a few ways to do this, but it is important to be seen as helpful and genuine to gain the interest and trust of your audience..
- You can interact with them to find out what help they need
- You can post helpful information, advice or links that solve a problem
- You can create valuable new content addressing the needs of other users
- Rather than sharing details of your product or service, you need to share helpful information that get others interested enough to ask how you do that.
Some features on Facebook that you can use include:
Pages
In Facebook Pages are the right place to promote your business. Facebook describes pages as “a public Profile that enables you to share your business and products with Facebook users.” This is the place to write about your business and not on your personal profile; people can then become a Fan of your page which in turn lets their friends know that they have become a Fan of your page via their News Feed. This helps to spread the word about your business and if you have helpful information on that page people will want to visit and return to it.
Events
This is the place to let your audience know about any events you are planning or involved in,
- A promotional event – no matter how large or small.
- A seminar you are running locally which can be promoted.
- A product or service launch event can be marketed using this method and this is a great way to gain added attention.
The best thing about creating an event on Facebook is that it can go viral and attract lots of attention.
Advertising
You can create paid ads in a very similar manner to Google Adwords and pay per click (PPC) or impression (CPM). As well as targeting your ads to a geographical location, you can also attach them to certain social actions. For example if you are a wedding photographer and want to promote your business to people who are getting married, you can set your ads to show to females between 24 and 30 whose relationship status shows them to be engaged. Once you have established your social networking goals and have a strategy in place to accomplish them, Facebook is certainly a place that cannot be ignored. It is not the right place for every business to target but there are many useful internet marketing tools there that can get great results for your business.
