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Facebook Marketing Company Sydney for Business

How to Create and Market a Facebook Page for Your Business

 

A large and growing portion of some of the most valuable companies and businesses are spending more of their time and attention on Facebook and less on other channels and media. Not only are Uni students and teenagers fully engaged in Facebook, but adults, professionals, and people from around the world now constitute a substantial portion of the Facebook userbase as well.

 

It’s been said that if Facebook were a country, it would be the sixth most populated nation in the world. Imagine being able to get your message in front of the Facebook nation free. That’s exactly what Facebook is offering companies with Pages: an online location for businesses, organisations, and individuals looking to market themselves to the Facebook community.

 

Not just for businesses, Pages can be created by not-for-profit organisations, public figures, entertainers, photographers, and professionals of all types. Facebook Pages are fun and easy to set up, provide a powerful set of online tools for engaging with your customers (or, as they are called in Facebook, fans), and easy-to-understand metrics to measure your success.

 

Every day, 3.5 million+ people become fans of a Facebook Page. That’s a lot of fans. Although popular consumer brands, such as Apple, Coke, and Skittles enjoy large installed fan bases, smaller brands, business-to-business (B2B) companies, consultants, and personalities can also build a loyal following by using Facebook Pages.

 

 

Building a Presence on Facebook - Facebook Marketing Company Sydney

 

Prior to online social networks, companies centered their Internet strategies on their Web site. Typically, advertisements and promotions focused on driving traffic to that site and success was measured by traffic metrics and conversions, such as how many forms were completed or how many items were purchased. Now, the market is throwing these companies a twist: With the growing popularity of social networks in general, and Facebook in particular, people’s online consumption habits are changing. For one, they’re spending a lot of time on Facebook. 

 

That’s why marketers like you can no longer be content to stay on your .dot-com islands. In response to the challenge, many marketers are adapting their Internet strategies to include these major hubs of social activity by using a mix of advertising, promotional, and word-of-mouth campaigns to drive awareness, traffic, and engagement. And they’re interacting with their customers in new and unprecedented ways.

 

Facebook has remade itself to satisfy marketers’ needs to take part in the conversation. They’ve managed to balance commercialism with its members’ strong desire for privacy while fostering an open, transparent environment where discussion flows freely between consumer and marketer.

 

 

 

 

Chasing the Changing Demographic on Social Media

 

Take a closer look at Social Media's recent demographics, as reported by Social Media Examiner, 2011. Clearly, Social Media is both broad and growing, highlighted by the following:

 

• A significant 90% of marketers said that social media was important to their businesses. 

• Facebook is growing in every age and gender demographic. Fastest growing segment: Women over age 55, up 175 percent over the previous 120 days.

• Facebook is also the top focus for people just getting started with social media marketing.

 

Facebook offers you the opportunity to get your message to all these demographics for free. What an efficient way to reach out and expand your customer base. 

 

 

Creating and Marketing a Facebook Page for Your Business

 

Facebook Pages are probably the best place for an organisation to hang on Facebook. Pages serve as a home for business entities — a place to notify people of an upcoming event, provide hours of operation and contact information, show recent news, and even display photos, videos, text, and other types of content. 

 

 

 

 

Pages also allow for two-way conversations between a business and its customers. In this way, Facebook provides a great feedback mechanism to learn about your customers’ needs. A Facebook Page is similar to a profile: joining as a fan is similar to becoming a friend of another member. 

 

Facebook Pages are publicly available to everyone, regardless of whether the viewer is a Facebook member or not. This last point is important because public availability of Facebook Pages means that search engines, such as Google, can find and index these pages, often improving a company’s positioning in search results.

 

So, let’s look at some of the ways that Pages can help you promote your business on Facebook. 

 

 

The Wall

 

The Wall tab serves as the central component of a Facebook Page and is similar to your personal profile. The Wall allows your company and your fans to upload content, such as photos, videos, and notes. These actions generate updates (called stories on Facebook) and often display as stories on your fans’ News Feeds. 

 

 

News Feed

 

A News Feed displays these stories and publishes any new social actions that take place on your Page. For example, an addition of a new photo to your Page is reported as a story on your News Feed.

 

 

Status Updates

 

If a company wants to push out a message, the addition of status updates is a welcome tool in the Facebook marketer’s toolbox. Like in personal profiles, Pages allow you, a Page administrator (admin in Facebook), to send a limitless stream of updates (short messages up to 160 characters in length), which, in turn, appear in your fans’ News Feeds. 

 

 

Discussions

 

Discussions are another standard feature that allow anyone to create a new topic of conversation and permit follow-up comments. Members can add to any discussion by typing their comments in the appropriate box and clicking the Post Reply button. 

 

 

Applications

 

Just like a profile, you can customise a Page with a host of applications (apps). Not all Facebook apps work on a Page, but a wide range of useful apps are available ranging from virtual business cards to RSS feeds from your favourite blogs and news services. 

 

If you want to view a directory of Facebook apps that can enhance your business Page, you can choose Applications➪Browse More Applications on the bottom left navigation bar. In this new Facebook apps directory, click Business in the left column to list relevant apps for your Page. (Alternately, you can get to the Application Directory by going to www.facebook.com/home.php?#/apps/index.php.)

 

When creating a Facebook Page, use only those elements that either provide value to the visitor or represent the brand in a positive, audience-appropriate way. 

 

   

Who Uses Facebook Pages?

 

Facebook Pages are for public figures, businesses, and brands who want to establish a presence on Facebook and start interacting with fans. Pages can be enhanced with apps and provide an open forum for discussions and shared content. Only the official representative of the artist or business controls their Facebook Page. 

 

Facebook Pages provide a great opportunity for both business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) marketers to get the word out about their product or organisation. Here are some examples of companies who use Facebook now.

 

 

Benefits for business-to-consumer marketers to use Facebook

 

Business-to-consumer (B2C) marketers were quick to realise the value of Facebook as a branding opportunity. Entertainment companies, such as movie studios, book publishers, and music labels, were among the initial advertisers on Facebook and that continue to have a major presence.

 

Although well-known brands, such as Coke, Nutella, and Pringles attract millions of fans to their Facebook Pages, there are also more esoteric brands, such as Marshmallow Peeps and Bacon Salt, that are leveraging their Facebook Pages to drive engagement with customers and build interest in their products. Their marketing strategies take advantage of the viral power of Facebook, relying on fan participation to generate a stream of News Feed stories, which in turn creates word-of-mouth awareness and funnels new fans to the Page.

 

The challenge is giving people a reason to participate. Whether it’s sharing hilarious pictures of people in compromising situations or debating the benefits of salt and bacon as an essential part of a diet, consumer-facing businesses are interacting with their customers in entirely new ways via Facebook.

 

Here are the main reasons every B2C marketer needs to have a presence on Facebook:

 

• Facebook offers consumer marketers an excellent brand-building environment, thanks to its viral marketing capabilities.

• Facebook allows companies to interact with their customers to gain valuable consumer insights.

• A Facebook Page improves a company’s search engine rankings. 

 

 

Benefits for business-to-business marketers to use Facebook

 

Consumer marketers aren’t the only ones to benefit by having a presence on Facebook. Many B2B (business to business) marketers are also tapping into the social network’s business appeal by reaching out to their customer base where they live and play. From accounting firms like Ernst & Young, who launched a targeted recruitment advertising campaign to attract recent CPA graduates, to technology management consultancy BearingPoint, who sponsored a contest for best “Green Enterprise” idea, B2B marketers are leveraging Facebook’s community-oriented tools in exciting ways.

 

And why are they on Facebook? Because that’s where their customers are. For many B2B marketers, Facebook is another touch point, a new channel from which to communicate directly with their customers, partners, and employees — past, present, and future.

 

Many of the same benefits that B2C marketers enjoy on Facebook apply to the B2B world. From community building to providing a customer feedback loop to search engine positioning, Facebook helps build relationships regardless of whether an organisation is selling to businesses or individuals.

 

Here are the main reasons every B2B marketer needs to have a presence on Facebook:

  

• Companies are leveraging Facebook as a recruitment tool by reaching out and promoting positions via the Facebook Marketplace, industry-related groups within Facebook, and highly targeted Facebook advertising campaigns.

• B2B marketers are using Facebook as a feedback loop, giving the customers a forum where their voice can be heard and appreciated.

 

• Facebook offers B2B companies with disparate offices a centralised online hub to interact, share knowledge, and facilitate employee communications. 

 

  

Why Create a Facebook Page?

  

Both personal profiles and Pages have gone through several transitions and the distinctions between the two continue to blur. Capabilities once found only on profiles, such as status updates, the News Feed, and the Wall are finding their way onto Pages. These feature upgrades all serve to the marketer’s advantage. 

 

 

Pages versus Personal Profiles

 

Each Facebook member has a unique personal profile on Facebook. An individual can have only one profile per email account and that profile can only be created, maintained, and credited to that person. Often, people create both a personal profile and a more public profile using separate e-mail addresses.

 

A Facebook member can have multiple Pages, but only Pages created by the real public figure, artist, brand, or organization, or by an official representative of the entity. Pages are managed by admins, whose names are never revealed. You are the admin for your Page unless you specify someone else.

 

Finally, Facebook Pages have no fan limit, and can automatically accept fan requests, whereas profiles are restricted to a 5,000-friend limit and friends must be approved. 

 

Using a personal account for promoting business interests, or creating an unauthorized Page, may result in a warning or even an account termination. So, be safe, use your profile page for personal networking and your Page for business promotion.

 

 

How do I get started with my Facebook Page?

 

1. Facebook Pages   After creating an Account, just go to this link: facebook.com/pages/learn.php	2. Prepare Info   Start preparing your business  information and images for your Facebook Page.	3. Step-by-Step   Follow the Step-by-Step Instructions to set up your Facebook Page.

 

The Website Marketing Group's Social Media Marketing strategy provides insights and tools on how to harness the power of Facebook and apply it to your business. We mix active social media monitoring – measuring buzz around your brand – with proactive social media marketing – driving conversations to your brand. We can help create and market a Facebook Page for your business.

 

Contact us today on 1300 911 772 to get your customers talking about your business!