Facebook For Business

As I admitted last week I am a little social network phobic, so for todays post I have called in assistance, via Folksy forums and thankfully Victoria of Little Wren Pottery has come to my rescue.  I will now hand you over to Victoria to tell you more about how to use Facebook for business.

Promoting your business on Facebook

As a small business owner one of the things you've probably heard people talking about are Facebook fan pages. Fan pages allow you to generate a following on the worlds most popular social networking site.

A fan page is connected to your personal Facebook account but it allows you to hide your personal details - like those embarrassing photos of you on your last holiday.

Anyway once you've got your fan page set up what do you do with it?

First your going to want to start furnishing your page with information. Be sure to fill out the 'info' page it'll allow casual browsers who don't know who you are to quickly grab the essence of what it is you do.

You might want to consider uploading some photos, these don't all have to be craft related. Since Facebook is about socially sharing photos and videos are the most popular communication tools on the site. When you add pictures to your gallery a message is automatically posted on your wall.

Adding an eye-catching banner image to your page can help pull people into your page particularly if its well designed. Try and treat this area as a free advert for you business. The maximum photo size is 200px x 600px.

If you banner doesn't look great as an avatar you can change the cropping position by selecting the pencil tool when you hover over the banner.

You can also customise the information on the left sidebar on your wall page if you add in http:// links to the text on your pages Facebook automatically converts it to a clickable link.

The next step is to start inviting people to join your page, the best thing about this is when someone 'likes' your page it appears on their wall for all their friends to see. Such is the beauty of viral marketing.

Interacting with your fans.

You'll want to try and build up a rapport with your fans, give them a reason to stick around. If you have other social media accounts try to make your wall posts different to your other venues.

Its more than likely you'll only get 10% of your fans actually wanting to interact with you but you need to be sure to respond to people. Part of the appeal of social sites is that you respond but you don't have to post messages all the time.

In fact its probably better that you take it easy with posting status updates - basically don't spam people and occasionally talk about something other than yourself. I've found that jokes are good Facebook ice breakers, try and treat it as you would a party where you don't know anyone.

Offering special deals.

You can offer Facebook specific promotions such as giveaways and rewarding people who 'like' you by setting up hidden pages.

To create a dynamic page you'll need to use FML static pages which will allow you to load HTML and CSS layouts directly into a Facebook tab. If you're web savvy you'll find many tutorials on the internet, if not then you could consider leaving it to a professional.

Hopefully you'll have found this to be an interesting starting point in managing your fan page, but there are many approaches and remember there isn't any 'right way' on the internet.

Article by Victoria of Little Wren Pottery - http://www.littlewrenpottery.co.uk/


Thank you so much Victoria.  Last night I created a Buttons & Bows page on Facebook and plan to upload photos and other details over the next few days.

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