Action List: How to use Facebook to promote your business

If your main target market is consumers rather than businesses, a growing social media community such as Facebook could be one of the best places to reach them. With millions of users worldwide, Facebook offers a direct route to a large community of potential customers. Follow our steps to get the most out of Facebook

1.      Decide why you are joining Facebook and let that determine how you use it — for example, you could be using it to find local customers, build client relationships or establish your expertise.

2.      Register your free account by providing a name and an email address — you don’t need a personal page to create a business fan page, but it can be a good way to get people you know to visit it.

3.      Include details about your personal tastes and experiences — join a local network and post relevant links, before directing friends to your fan page.

4.      Set up a fan page for your business. Fill out the required information fields, identifying yourself by sector or by brand, product or business name.

5.      Use keywords that people are most likely to search for in relation to your product. It may help your fan page get listed in search engine results.

6.      Create a profile for your business on the fan page, including a link to your website, an overview of your company and a description of your product or service. Invite the same people you are friends with on your personal profile to become fans.

7.      Drive visitors to your fan page. Use other social networks, like Twitter, to post links to your Facebook page, put details of it on your website and all your marketing literature, and include a link below your email signature.

8.      Make your fan page a hub of engaging information — update your page regularly with items that are relevant to your business and reflect your brand.

9.      Direct people to your own website or blog from your Facebook page. Set your blog’s RSS feed so that you automatically publish snippets to your Facebook wall, to give fans a taster and encourage them to visit.

10.  Respond to questions and encourage discussion on your fan page. Each time a fan comments on your wall, each one of their friends will see what they have said, so it is an effective way to generate word-of-mouth marketing. You could comment on other businesses’ fan pages, too.

11.   Reward your fans by running competitions or making exclusive special offers.

12.   Consider placing an advertisement on the site. It could be money well spent as your advert will appear in front of a highly-targeted audience.

Cardinal Rules

Do:

• decide what your objective is
• create an engaging fan page
• use your fan page to communicate with customers

Don’t:

• be too formal or business-like on your personal profile page
• post irrelevant links or comments that could damage your brand
• ignore comments on your fan page

Popular content on social networking for small businesses:

• IT Donut offer: download your free social media toolkit
• Turning customers into a community using Facebook
• Ten tips for creating an engaging online profile

Find more articles, videos and tools on social networking in the Resources box.