Steve MacDonald

Social Media Training For Small Business
Phoenix, Arizona

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The Top 5 Facebook Strategies for Small Business

Facebook gets a lot of hype in the world of social media. But does it deserve it for marketers? Absolutely yes! The tools, however, are not always well understood, and apply very differently to big versus small business.

Written Apr 11, 2012, read 2874 times since then.

The Top 5 Small Business Facebook Strategies listed below are shown in priority order in terms of the importance for your business. The order may surprise you, as well as what's on the list!

1. The Personal Profile

Your Facebook personal profile is your link to everything on Facebook. However, it is also the best opportunity for you to prospect and communicate one-on-one with others in the largest social network around. This is critical since social media connections ignite relationships that lead to new clients and customers. It's pretty hard to do this without great messaging capabilities!

The power of the inbox on Facebook and your ability to message back and forth is unparalleled anywhere else online. Many people check their Facebook inboxes more often than email! Plus, you have all the abilities to share updates, photos, videos, ask questions and more.

Additionally, you can share your status updates with any targeted list of friends. Not only does this mean that you don’t have to annoy your family and close friends with business related status updates, but you can direct updates that make perfect sense to just your target market niche.

Facebook personal profiles are easy to use, virtually everyone has one and the tools for communicating with prospects or existing customers are unmatched online.

2. Facebook Groups

This is the number one place that you can create community around your business. And it doesn’t have to be a big group with thousands of members. You can create small, intimate groups or scale them up to hundreds. However, you will soon see how the dynamic of camaraderie, family, support and trust start to be built around your business.

Like any business, yours solves unmet needs for people. In social media this means that you need to add value on an ongoing basis to attract new prospects, engage them and ultimately maintain their loyalty! This is where Facebook groups can really help!

A group of people that fall into your target market niche can all help each other (with your support). A Facebook Group strategy becomes the first place where you can provide value to customers and prospects alike...and others in the group help you do it! Where else in your business do you get help adding value to your niche? This just makes great sense. Groups are easy to start, easy to run, and will start creating value that doesn’t all have to come from you alone!

3. Facebook Search

Far more than half the population of this country is on Facebook. This means that anyone in your target market niche can be found there as well. It is an incredible opportunity to search groups, pages and updates to find your target market, engage with them and create a flow of new leads into your business.

4. Facebook Business Pages

Facebook pages can be an incredible opportunity to attract and engage people around your business. It is also the best way to get into the newsfeeds and go viral around Facebook.

WARNING! Unless you are a big brand with big resources, it is hard to get likes, posts and comments. A Facebook page is really another destination site online, and one that comes with expectations of ongoing activity and value that solicits interactions.

So if you are really the only one posting, with just a few comments and likes, it can be a real negative for your business. Consider when to start a Facebook page...when you can get enough people in, when you have the time to really commit to it, and when you have in mind an ongoing posting strategy to keep it active!

5. The Facebook Send Button

This is a fairly unknown business tool, yet it can be very useful. Once this Send button is installed on a blog, the reader can simply click, and easily send that post to their friends or groups on Facebook. Now think of this…put the send button on your own blog and use it to send the valuable posts that you spend so much time creating to friends and Facebook group(s) as well. There is no other way on Facebook to send messages in mass to a targeted list. And now your blog post will end up in their inbox. Brilliant!

Learn more about the author, Steve MacDonald.

Posted by Matt Lawrence, Seattle, Washington | Apr 12, 2012

You were right! I am surprised to see this list, as well as the order.

Yep - you need a personal page to do anything, I get that.

Your inclusion of the Group functionality caused me to go take a deeper look at the Groups I am in on Facebook. One is mildly active and one is not at all.

Looking at the features that are possible with Groups, I could totally see how (if done well) Groups would be a huge benefit to a small business.

Especially as the deep level of engagement in a small group is far more productive than a wall with no engagement. Glad you ranked it so highly.

I must say though, that I am skeptical of the Send feature. As I am hyper sensitive to spam.

(Which you, as a Biznik member, are hopefully thankful of!)

Biznik Director of Community
Posted by Steve MacDonald, Phoenix, Arizona | Apr 12, 2012

Matt,

Groups on Facebook can be used in so many different ways. I have members of the University that create groups in two week bursts. They are training/accountability groups that serve their role and then they are done. I have other members that use them specifically to mix their existing clients with new prospects (since a client's back and forth testimonial/praise carries a ton of weight). Others use them for specific products or services, long-term customer service, for events, etc. The Facebook groups are a business tool...and like a lot of tools much of their potential gets lost unless a little creative strategy is discussed in places like Biznik!

As for the Send Button and the potential for spamming people...remember that the message goes out to your Facebook FRIENDS and or GROUPS that are all composed of your friends by default. So right away it only goes to people that you have a direct, acknowledged relationship with!

Secondly, nobody considers something of value to be spam. So if you follow one of the golden rules of social media and only create relevant, valued content for your target market (the people who you would send this to), then it just becomes a really efficient way to share the posts you labored over into their Facebook message inbox.

I did a Facebook poll recently and asked our small business members where they get a better response rate...from sending Facebook message to friends, or emails. 69% said Facebook, and 29% said the same.

People live on Facebook. So if you can efficiently send your blog posts (which should be packed with value anyways) to friends and groups (of friends), then you have a winner. I wouldn't create a "3 Day Sale" blog post and have it go out via the Send Button feature, but I would my regular content...just in the same way that I automatically share posts onto Twitter and other social networks.

Matt, I love to have a good discussion around this stuff! Let me know if you have any other thoughts or comments!
Posted by Steve MacDonald, Phoenix, Arizona | Apr 12, 2012

By the way Matt, I love that you have the send button on all these articles!!! A great move for sharing with the right Facebook Friends!!!!!
Posted by Tracey Warren, Mountlake Terrace, Washington | Apr 12, 2012

If I might add something to the discussion about groups and spam. One of the downsides as I see it to using groups is when you add someone to a group, the default is for them to "receive notifications" and e-mails ANY TIME someone posts to the group, comments or likes. Unfortunately, Facebook has also added this "feature" to events.

Yes, those settings are easy to change - if you know what you are doing, but something to be aware of.

Social Media Strategist
Posted by Steve MacDonald, Phoenix, Arizona | Apr 12, 2012

Tracey, those constant email notifications can be annoying for sure if you don't want them every time somebody posts. The good news is that every email notification comes with a link at the bottom that allows you to "Edit Email Settings." Then a pop-up comes up with all the choices.

But you are right, if you do join a big Facebook group, all of a sudden it can be a big surprise!
Posted by Scott Kindred, Hollister, California | Apr 19, 2012

Great article and good discussion, too. Thanks, Steve.

I'm pondering the Send button info and also taking in your assessment of those of us with Facebook Business Pages who don't have a ton of likes & interactions.
Posted by Steve MacDonald, Phoenix, Arizona | Apr 20, 2012

Scott,

Facebook pages are a tough deal to really make useful. And if you look at the stats of how many people really see the updates in the news feeds (with good page engagements going on) it is very low. For the amount of time spent, I'd suggest using your personal profile with a good balance of personal and business on it until you are ready to jump into the page strategy!

Thanks for the comment!