(Read it as: why you should use Facebook and how to get started)
Let’s start this talk with a little bit of meditation. Close your eyes and think about the last time you used advertising to get new customers. How did it work? Which media channel did you use? How much did it cost you, and how was the return? Now open your eyes. What do you see?
If you see little change in your customers’ flow, your business may be suffering from what I call social media deficiency.
In the last couple of years, social media has caused big changes in customers’ habits, and many businesses—for lack of understanding—have chosen to ignore it. If you think your business has the social media sickness, and you are eager for an effective cure, I present to you the best medication: Facebook.
And why is Facebook the best med out there? Because Facebook is where your customers are (nope, it doesn’t matter what type of business you have!). Over 800 million people use the platform, and 50% of them log in on any given day. In other words, the chances of reaching your customers through Facebook are way bigger than any other marketing tool you can think of. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook’s creator) always says that the reason people use the platform so much is because it evolves around personal relationships, and I completely agree with that. Personal relationships are stronger and more powerful than any other relationship a business can ever have with its customers. So that’s why you should use Facebook to heal your business: to build a personal relationship with your clients and keep their loyalty.
To get started on Facebook, you need to understand the differences between a personal profile and a business page. A personal profile represents a person and contains this person’s information, like where the person lives, where s/he works and the person’s birthday. A business page contains information about a business (such as type and location) and offers many features to help you to grow your business. Both pages look very similar for now, but Facebook has rule out a new design for personal pages that is called “Timeline” (see example here: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1557140235&ref=ts) and soon the pages will look very different.
Also, it is good to know that you can’t create a personal profile for your business, but you’ll need one in order to create a business page. To create your business page go to www.facebook.com/pages and click on CREATE PAGE. Now you are going to choose which kind of business page you are in:
- Local business or place
- Company, organization or institution
- Brand or Product
- Artist, band or public figure
- Entertainment
- Cause or community
Click on your category, and then fill out the small form (category, place, address and phone). Click on GET STARTED. Don’t forget to check the little box “I agree to FACEBOOK PAGES TERMS.”
In the next step, Facebook will ask if you already have an account or not. Check the option that applies to you.
A- If you have a personal profile: login in.
B- If you DON’T have a personal profile: fill in the form (enter an email address, password and your date of birth) and click on SIGN UP NOW! Facebook will then email you a confirmation link. Go to your email, find the message sent by Facebook and click on the link to confirm. After you finish creating your page, you’ll need to finish creating your profile (for more info see the article Creating your Personal Facebook Profile)
Now you just have 3 more steps until you are done creating your business page. Step 1 will ask you to upload an image. That is going to be your business page’s profile picture, so I recommend you put your logo as a means of identification for your clients. In case you don’t have a logo, put a picture of your place or something that represents your business. It is really important to choose the picture well because that is what customers will see first on their pages.
In Step 2, Facebook will ask you to INVITE FRIENDS and/or IMPORT CONTACTS. If you already had a Facebook personal profile, you can invite your friends to be fans of your page. If you didn’t have one, ignore the invite friends option. In both cases, you can still import contacts if you have an email database and invite your customers to join your page. Personally, I’d skip this step for now and finish your business page first. You can invite friends or import contacts later, when your page is complete. Click on CONTINUE.
Now you are on the last step of creating your page. In Step 3, enter your business website (if you have one) and in the ABOUT field, write a little bit about your business. This field is really important as it is the first description about you that customers will see when they go to your page. You can write up to 250 characters. Click on CONTINUE.
Note that Facebook will give you 4 ways to complete your page: Invite your friends, Tell your fans, Post Status Updates and Promote this Page on your Website. You can click on each one of them and follow the instructions (or you can just wait for my coming articles where I’ll explain each item). You are done creating your page!!!!
You are going to notice that the page looks empty and not much is going on with it yet—that is because Facebook has tons of features that you haven’t explored yet. But don’t worry about it too much now—you have a diagnosis for your business’s sickness and have the best medication in your hands. All you have to do is administer it well. But that is enough for now. I’ll talk about it in future articles—stay tuned!
