Facebook Marketing for Small Business: Part I

You are probably asking yourself, why is she talking about Facebook marketing when my business is facing potentially debilitating changes from Medicare, audits and online retail competition? That’s exactly why we are going to discuss it. You cannot keep your business under a marketing rock while the ways to communicate and build your brand are rapidly changing all around you.

The Basics
Facebook is a revolution in personal communication and relationship development. Businesses of every size and type are learning how to embrace this phenomenon to engage and attract new customers. Why do you need to be using Facebook marketing?

• 901 million monthly active users at the end of March 2012.
• On average more than 300 million photos uploaded to Facebook per day in the three months ended March 31, 2012.
• An average of 3.2 billion “likes” and comments generated by Facebook users per day during the first quarter of 2012.
• More than 42 million pages with 10 or more “likes” at the end of March 2012.

Source: newsroom.fb.com

Study some business pages. Think about your business and whether or not a business page is right for you. You need to set goals such as: increase store traffic with coupons; obtain customer awareness of Medicare changes to engage support; create a dialogue with customers on healthy choices (give out low sugar, low fat recipes); and share caregiver tips and tools. Someone will “like” your Facebook business page if there is a compelling reason to follow your business, receive information and comment. Helpful, engaging, entertaining content is critical.

It’s easy to set up a business page. You will need to set up a personal Facebook account and run the business page from the personal account. You can select others to also be administrators for posting (go to www.facebook.com/pages/create.php). Be prepared to post regularly. Interesting content and continuity in posting are the triggers for people to share your information and build your audience.

Misconceptions

• Facebook is cheap marketing. Yes, it’s free to set up, run promotions and share information. But for small business owners it costs you in time to post promotions, issues and information pertinent to those who “like” you.

• It will bring hordes of new people to my business. Yes, it will potentially reach many followers and new customers. But it takes time to build a following.

• I can just post when I want. No, you need to have a strategy for your postings and a schedule to remain in the feed of your “liked” audience.

• All I need to do is post on Facebook for marketing. No, Facebook is just one communication media vehicle to reach your audience, like print, mail, TV, e-mail, Web, YouTube, etc. All your communication efforts work together to create the marketing momentum. Remember that it takes five to seven communication touches before your message might grab your potential customer’s attention.

• My target audience does not use Facebook. Do you know this, or are you stereotyping? Your employees are on Facebook. Caregivers (female, 40-plus and older) are on Facebook. Ask your customers, don’t assume.

We will continue our discussion in the July issue of HomeCare magazine, covering the opportunities that exist and common missteps to avoid.