1.866.840.3062

These days, there is no question that social media marketing is a major buzzword in promoting your company. Whether it be Facebook, blogging, Twitter, or Digg, people are investing a lot of time and money into making these sites work for them. In fact, according to a poll by e-Tailing Group in September of 2009, by the end of next year 96% of brands and retailers will be using Facebook fan pages as a community and social networking tool for their business. So the question is how can you use these sites to help you too?

Great question! All of the sites mentioned above can be fantastic sources (and to find out more about how Twitter can help you, watch our Twitter for Business video blog series about it in posts below!!) but we will explore some options with Facebook in this post.

The first thing to do is to set up a Facebook fan page for your business. Just follow the set-up instructions or if you want a more branded or interactive fan page, we can help by developing a custom Facebook fan page for you. Either way, with a fan page, you will have a venue to get whatever message you want to whoever “fans” your business.

It is a great idea to send messages to all your Facebook friends suggesting they follow your fan page and hopefully you gain more followers from that. Through your fan page, you can post exciting things happening with your business and upcoming events that are going to happen. Specifically, you can post messages about upcoming deals you may be having at your company.

For example, if you are giving a special offer to customers because your company is celebrating its five-year anniversary, why not tell all your fans on Facebook in hopes of a potential sale?

Messaging your fans could also be used if you want to host an event that you want people to attend. You can send them an invite to attend your event. All their Facebook friends will see the event as well and could greatly increase the awareness and attendance of your event than if you chose to stay away from Facebook. With how competitive businesses are now, you should do whatever you can to get noticed by the public.

The potential doesn’t end there! On your fan page, you can link back to your website and have your company telephone number listed. This not only gives people another way to reach your site, it can also help bump up where your website is ranked in Google searches and other search engines. It could be the difference that sends your company to the top of the charts!

The fun never ends when you join Facebook! Adding Facebook to your company’s marketing repertoire makes you more relatable. Your customer will see you as someone who is social and in tune with recent trends. This means you are using a venue that they feel comfortable using. They can see what your company is all about through Facebook before giving you a sale later.

Once you have tackled Facebook, you can take the basic principles you have learned to then further market yourself in other online social tools. From fan pages to messaging, higher rankings to higher customer usability, Facebook does it all. It’s time you start using it for your company and see your sales grow!