Facebook business strategy

[Mark]

Just what are you supposed to be doing, business-wise, with facebook?

Many of the businesses I'm 'acquainted with' there just send out spam and I wouldn't want to go that route - ever!

Any tips?

[Ray Stewart]

Having played with it for a bit I am focusing on just my personal presence on facebook. I am probably totally wrong - but that is my view at the moment.

Regarding spam, I am being bombarded by emails from Thomas Power wanting to connect with me on ecademy. Stupid thing is - we already are (from my ecademy days a couple of years ago).

Honestly, apart from here - every other forum and social media site seems to be desperate for members to harrass each other constantly.

It might be my age (another damn birthday soon!); it might be my bewilderment at all the "essential" social media platforms popping up all over the place insisting you have to be involved if you want to be noticed; it might just be the need to do "real" work to pay the bills - but I am totally fed-up with all of them.

So, if people want to know about me - but want to find out without actually talking to me - there is a presence on facebook, twitter, linked-in, free-index... But my preference is for people to just ring me and we will see if we get on and can work together.

I know - dinosaur at work

[ChelmerWebDesign.com]

I started by setting up a normal account (which i dont think facebook like you doing for a business) and adding either friends or businesses in my local area. You can then set up a page, used to be called fan pages and now just pages you can invite people to "like" your page. Once you get to 25 fans or people who like you you can then create an url with your company name on it etc.... Once you have a group of followers you are able to message them etc..... They can also be customised with FBML similar to HTML but different. You can also view stats on how many new people like you and how many visits your page has had.

You are also able to ask other people to add their friends to like you the snag is you can only invite people that are friends already hence the starting with a normal account.

I personally think twitter and facebook are very good for targeting potential customers and making people aware of your presence as they know about you as soon as you follow them or invite them to like you.

As with forums I have found out some very useful information by checking out peoples advice links etc.....

Sorry if I have gone back to basics too much but thought it best to start from the beginning and how I started mine.

[Kontracta Matt]

I'm thinking the same as you there Mark. I've been bombarded with e-mails from SEO businesses harping on about how good Facebook will be for your business. Although naturally a sceptic and prone to deleting these e-mails, it did make me wonder whether it would be worth investigating.

My main problem is that I don't really want to link my personal page with my business page. I don't want any clients or prospective clients looking at photos of me that were taken after closing time and also I'm not wanting to ram my business down the throats of my friends; I'd rather socially network on Linkedin or some other dedicated site.

Also whilst another outlet like Adwords would be good, I don't want to be targeting the wrong market and therefore spend a big wedge on coming across as some oily smooth pedal merchant (which is regrettably my default opinion of some of the adverts that appear on my personal pages). So basically at the moment I haven't done anything but can't help but think that I may be missing out on something.

Then again, as Ray mentioned above, I've got to do the actual work part of my business at some point during the week rather than potentially racking up the hours on Facebook. (Although that did happen on occasion during a previous role!)

[Stuartchap]

Facebook is a brilliant B2C tool.

I think the main thing to remember is that you do not want to force people to like your page - they should want to be part of it by you giving them information and offers that they want to know/have. Also, when people do 'like' your facebook page, the last thing you want to do is send them inbox message after inbox message or spam their wall/news feed with stuff every hour of every day as they will no doubt leave your page/unlike it!

[3 MORE YEARS]

I would love to hear from anyone who has been able to use FaceBook effectively in a b2b market.

[pete]

Having a good setup is the first step, these guys have done OK

Desert Springs Resort Info | Facebook

[Emma Ewers]

Facebook Pages are not essential for every business e.g if your Plumber in Essex I wouldn't go down that route unless you are planning on become a guest speaker at the National Plumber Convention (is there one?!)...

Yake it slow and keep it simple at first, if you are setting up yourself.

The human element and asking questions is essential, they don't even have to be questions related to your business!

Sure use it as a promotional tool but as part of your marketing mix, some fans will want to learn more about you and your business, others will just want to interact and have a chat to keep in touch. Others are just lurking keeping tabs on the opposition! As long as you are rewarding the curious fans who want to learn more and interact with you, your fan page will grow.

Faebook works as a viral social network with users "liking" posts, writing reviews and clicking external like and recommend buttons across the web.

Adding widgets and links from your website and occasionally tweeting a link and why people should join is another way to grow your fans. People also forget printed media is another great way to get your fan page in front of people an did you know people can like you via text msg if their phone is connected? Great for conference speakers!

I'm not going to post links as my site is in my signature but you can find some useful tips under "Facebook" there too

Regards

Emma

[3 MORE YEARS]

Originally Posted by Ray Stewart

Having played with it for a bit I am focusing on just my personal presence on facebook. I am probably totally wrong - but that is my view at the moment.

Regarding spam, I am being bombarded by emails from Thomas Power wanting to connect with me on ecademy. Stupid thing is - we already are (from my ecademy days a couple of years ago).

Honestly, apart from here - every other forum and social media site seems to be desperate for members to harrass each other constantly.

It might be my age (another damn birthday soon!); it might be my bewilderment at all the \"essential\" social media platforms popping up all over the place insisting you have to be involved if you want to be noticed; it might just be the need to do \"real\" work to pay the bills - but I am totally fed-up with all of them.

So, if people want to know about me - but want to find out without actually talking to me - there is a presence on facebook, twitter, linked-in, free-index... But my preference is for people to just ring me and we will see if we get on and can work together.

I know - dinosaur at work

A sane person at last. . I find FaceBook very difficult to use a b2b tool. I also just have a personal page. With not many friends. I find most of these social networks not that great for me. I find Twitter useful and simple to use. doesn't consume too much time. I am trying out eCademy. I'll see how it goes.

[casssimplyb]

An effective Facebook fanpage for B2B is difficult and you have to be careful you don't spam (potential) fans of your brand.
We publish our business advice articles on our page but also try to engage directly with people who like us.
We include links to our page on several online platforms, our e-mails and on our website.
Try to integrate facebook commenting on your site.

And last, but not least, try to offer something unique for your Facebook fans. I have offered some free business advice guides that were availabe in the office. This was appreciated by a lot of followers on our page.
It doesn't have to cost a lot, but simple things can make a difference.

[clairejarrett]

It definitely works for me B2B, and I would estimate between 25 and 50% of my new leads are coming via Facebook, Twitter, or people who follow me on both. I think the key is to have a very unique niche so people think - aha! I need to talk to you when they have a need in your area, or know of someone who does. I've also used FB to build a large referral partner / affilliate list who are a great channel of new leads for me.

Definitely worth connecting with Nikki Pilkington via FB as she knows what she's doing!

My fan page on AdWords Training is here if you're interested in seeing it from a B2B perspective?

[James Hunt]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post here, so be gentle

I use FB as another channel to publish my blog. Not everyone in my 'network' will be subscribed to my RSS but, they will see my wall updates.

Whenever I blog, it gets fed to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn - 3 very unique social sites, but all connected to people that exist somehow within my network. I dont add randoms and I dont add spammers.

I get in the region of 7-15% of traffic via Facebook, compared to 1-3% from Yahoo and Bing, so it definitely works.

One thing to bear in mind tho, is that any Social site will only be as good as the level of engagement offered. Dont just broadcast your message to anyone that will listen, you have to get involved and generate discussion.

[Emma]

Welcome James. Help us get to know you by posting an intro.

[MikeC]

Business-wise, you want to use facebook as a place to establish and build a community.

Holding competitions on facebook is a brilliant way of engaging with your customers.

I agree, you don't want to spam your consumers, which is why you have to have a balance of participating in the community, and marketing in the community, to the community. The thing to remember when marketing though is to do so in a way that is non-invasive, and very much offer friendly. You are offering what people want!

[office chair]

Very difficult in my case to be non-invasive and market on facebook effectively. An office furniture page is what it says on the tin.
Running competitions was mentioned: what sort of competitions?

[jonnop]

Competitions/draws and prizes connected to your brand or product work well. For example, you could ask a question with entrants needing to visit your website to obtain the answer and the prize could be say a desk lamp like the one in your avatar. Simple draws when you reach a certain amount of fans work well too. As @MikeC says engagement is the key with Facebook (and social media in general). A massive underused but simple way to do this is to ask questions. So in your case you could ask about what people think of those unusually shaped office chairs etc.

[office chair]

I am building a facebook page, but I am not convinced that facebook is an effective tool for marketing our particular business sector. I wonder if anyone is having success with it?

[jonnop]

@office chair - Here's case study for an office furniture supplier that uses Facebook and Twitter, although no hard metrics - Social Small Biz Case Study: National Business Furniture | Social Small Biz

I can give you some metrics from a client of mine Fertility Flower whose Page can be found at Fertility Flower | Facebook. We created the Page 2 months prior to the launch of their online business and most of the marketing effort was concentrated on that. In the first week of launch they had 300 membership sign-ups. The Page worked because as you can see from the content and comments, the fans are engaged.

[jonnop]

@office chair - Here's case study for an office furniture supplier that uses Facebook and Twitter, although no hard metrics - Social Small Biz Case Study: National Business Furniture | Social Small Biz

I can give you some metrics from a client of mine Fertility Flower whose Page can be found at Fertility Flower | Facebook. We created the Page 2 months prior to the launch of their online business and most of the marketing effort was concentrated on that. In the first week of launch they had 300 membership sign-ups. The Page worked because as you can see from the content and comments, the fans are engaged.

[Emma]

Hi Jon. I'm confused! I thought you couldn't create a page solely for business use? Mark piggybacks ours onto his profile. Can we separate it?