Market your business using facebook
July 2nd, 2009
How to use Facebook for business
Facebook is right in the middle of the new business revolution, enabling businesses both small and large to reach vast audiences easily. However a backlash against people using social media to ‘sell’ to their friends or followers is underway. The usual pattern is that someone joins a group, drops a link (which no one ever clicks on) and then leaves the group never to return.
Research shows that the average customer needs to have contact with a vendor approximately 7 times before they will seriously consider buying it. It is important that a person feels they can trust a product or vendor before they buy it, and that trust can be formed by repetitive contact and can take some time to build – this is where the traditional wisdom of ‘7 contacts’ comes from. For some people, this may be a leap of faith from “link dropping” but coaching and training can help…
The good thing about Facebook and other social media is that those ‘7 contacts’ can happen relatively quickly and if somebody accepts your friend request you already have an advantage over a ‘stranger’ advertising the same product.
But if you try to sell to people straight away you will lose the trust you are building with them very quickly!
So if you are planning to use Facebook for business make sure your emphasis is on networking, go into it with an open mind and be prepared also to prove yourself or your product to people the same way as you would have to with any other kind of promotional activity.
To show your business in its best light you need to make sure your ‘profile’ is suitable for business purposes, having your socialising friends posting raunchy comments or pictures of you on your holidays is not going to help your professional image!
Facebook is great for sharing with friends and family so you may want to get around this by setting up a separate profile for business, Rumours are that this is not allowed but evidence supporting this is thin on the ground. Of course use a different email address and password too.
The picture you use for your profile should also be professional, but at the same time friendly – no snapshots of you at a festival in your swim suit..! You should definitely use a professional to shoot some for you – and try to change around from time to time.
However do make sure that your business profile is not completely devoid of all personality, facebook is about building relationships with people first and foremost, and any good salesperson knows that people buy from other people. People will always buy from people they know and trust.
Consider what goes on there – Are you happy with a potential client seeing those photographs? If it’s not don’t put it on there – and if photos or comments appear on your wall that you have the slightest doubt about– get rid of them! (You can easily do this by clicking ‘remove’ on the top right side of each post).
Mail this post
Posted in 
Tags: 
