As of October 2013, over 500 million people have a Facebook profile. And of those 500 million, 250 million log in every day. Facebook is the #1 way people today are connecting. So if you want people to connect with your business, the first thing you’ll need to do is create a Page on Facebook.
Identify your audience
The first thing you’ll need to keep in mind when you create a Page on Facebook is who you’re trying to reach with it. Obviously, your Page will be able to be seen by a bunch of different people, but what you need to determine is which of those people your business will be most able to connect with.
Some things to consider while identifying your audience:
- Who is in need of what your business has to offer?
- How old are they?
- Where do they live?
- What sort of promotions would catch their eye?
- What kinds of things do they Like and Share?
- Videos or pictures?
- Blog links or short statuses?
- Funny or professional?
When you first create a Page on Facebook, you’ll need to gain an audience. You should first encourage your current customers to like your Page, and don’t forget to like it yourself. You can request a URL like www.facebook.com/[the title of your company] to make your Page easier to find. Make sure to put this address on all your other promotional material: your business card, your website, any newsletters or emails you send out, anything. Soon you’ll have a number of people looking at what you post, which brings us to our next point…
Post compelling content
After you’ve built an audience and identified who you want to connect with, you need to determine what sort of posts your audience want to see. Remember, your Page is the face of your company, so you need to make sure your customers like what they see.
- Share what you’re genuinely excited about and your customers will be excited too. NEED
- Interact with your customers. When they comment on your posts, respond to them.
- Post often and post consistently. You can schedule your posts to appear at a certain time and date.
- Pay attention to which posts get a lot of attention and which ones don’t. Try to determine what makes those posts successful and apply the same strategies to other posts.
- If your customers express an exceptional interest in one of your posts, you can Promote it and have it reach an even larger audience.
Remember, when a person likes or comments on your Page, it pops up on all of their friends’ News Feeds, spreading the visibility of your company. So it’s important that have make good posts that people will interact with.
Advertise
Once you’ve learned how to connect with the audience you have, it’s time to reach out and find even more people who’d be interested in your company. One good way to do that is by creating Facebook ads.
You can do this through your Page’s admin bar or by going to the Ad Create tool. There, you’ll be able to craft an ad specifically to target a certain audience. You can choose to reach to a certain gender, to a certain age, people living in a certain location, single people, married people, people in a relationship.
There is also a large list of interests that you can choose to cater to. For instance, if you sell art supplies, you can choose to have your ad pop up on the News Feeds of people who are interested in drawing. You’ll want to make sure your ads (like your Page itself) have a specific target audience they’re marketing to, so that you reach out to people who are more likely to interact with your company.
Know what works
Above your Page’s admin panel, there is a button that says See Insights. This button is your best friend for knowing exactly how your audience is responding to your Page.
- Likes: you can see how many facebook likes your Page has received, when they were received, and how they were received.
- Reach: you can see how many people saw your posts, when they saw them, and whether or not they interacted with them.
- Visits: you can see how often each individual section of your Page was visited, and when.
- Posts: you can see when your audience is online and how successful each of your individual posts have been.
- People: you can see what types of people your Page is reaching, including their gender, age, and location.
You’ll want to check this often to see the specifics of what effect your Page is having, and use that information to tailor your future efforts to be even more effective.
