Howdy!
Continuing you on from my passionate rant about the benefits of Social Media for your business on yesterdays ‘Accelerated Results and Group Accountability’ Class, I thought it would be apt today to share with you some of the key reasons Why I am so passionate about this craze we know as Facebook and How you can use it Now to positively imnpact Your Business!!
Facebook is a social network, it is one of the fastest growing social networking platforms of this era with hundreds of thousands of people logging in every minute to check out what’s going on in the world around them.
So why should a business allocate any resources creating and maintaining a Facebook page? Becuase even if your members have no ‘initial’ intention of ‘buying’ anything from you, the relationships you establish, the community you create and the education value you give here in countless ways will mean you have an underlying trust with your audience, and also a strong degree of credibility.
- Capture a broader audience and widen your brand exposure
Creating a Fan Page provides your business and brands with another branding outpost on the Web where prospects, customers, future employees, vendors, and even the media can find information about you and your business and the products and services you provide. Facebook Fan pages are different to your ‘personal profile’ in that they are able to be viewed by every one. This is called ‘public-facing’. This means that your audience or people seeking your services do not need to be logged in to view your fan page -so even more people have access to the information you post. - Drives Traffic to Your Website
Fan Pages have no restrictions on driving Facebook traffic to websites. In fact, Facebook encourages you to link to your website from your business’s Fan Page. Redirecting even a small portion of Facebook’s huge amount of daily traffic to your website could significantly improve the amount of qualified traffic on your site.
3. Improves your SEO
The more content your provide to your audiece and the world wide web surfers the more Google will reward you. Google loves content that is updates regulary. So by linking your website and facebook together and updating the 2 regularly with new content you will improve your SEO. Likewise, the more people that visit your website the higher your ranking will be on Google.
4. Stack the Free in Your Business
A Facebook Fan Page is Free! In minutes you can have a branded Fan Page where cutomers can and other brand advocates can post to your wall. You can also share photos and video, ask and answer questions, and interact with your community. The other great thing is that managing discussions on a Fan page is easier that launching and monitoring discussion forums or message boards on your own domain.
5. Facebook gives you a direct connection to your raving fans!
Your Fanpage means you have a direct pipeline from you to your fans. In one minute you can send a message to everyone, or target individuals by a range of demographics. You can also advertise your upcoming events! Using the Events App, you can schedule upcoming events or promotions you have going. The best news is all this and more is Free to your business!!
6. Strengthens the bond – build the relationship spectrum
By having a presence, creating a community and giving your audience valuable content you can significantly deepen your relationship. 90% of your audience may not go to Facebook with the intention of ‘shopping’ however they do expect that businesses and organisations have an online presence they can access. By not selling toyour audience and instead giving them content and contact information, when they are ready to ‘make a purchase’ they will feel comfortable with you becuase you have built a relationship based on high value and trust.
7. Bing on the Brand Evangelists
Facebookers do not want to be sold to. Instead they are after high value information, content and/or entertainment. Furthermore facebookers are more likely to recommend or ‘rave’ about a company, brand or product to their Facebook Friends when they perceive it to be of ‘value’. If oyu establish strong relationships with a number of vocal or influential ‘fans’ who themselves have plenty of connections you can gain valuable brand evangelists who authentically market and sell on your behalf.
8. Listening and observing has the potential to improve your business
Each time a fan interact with your page you are presented with a wealth of information. This is becuase over a social media platform as opposed to face to face, your market is more inclined to share with you information about products and services they like, good and bad experiences they’ve had and their unfulfilled needs. This information is invaluable to your business becuase it means you can gather information and evidence to improve your business its products and services.
9. Analyse your market and become a better business
Facebook provides a lot of tools known as page insights that can be used for market analysis. The Page Insights dashboard can facilitate the analysis of marketing and communication by revealing data related to interactions on your Facebook Fanpage. (Comments, Wall posts, and “Likes”); discussed posts, reviews, and mentions; Fan demographics (gender, ages, geographic location/distribution);etc. These tools mean you can develop custom information for your audience, generate talking points they are actually interested in and support even more your businesses word of mouth growth opportunities.
10. Its Fun!
Still not convinced a Fan Page is worth setting up? Think pof it as an opportunity to learn something new, to challenge and stretch yourself, while providing your audience with even more value and opportunity to connect with you. It free, and its Fun!
One more thing…. think about this, what would be one little piece of action you could take today that would bring you one step closer to Accelerating your business even more? Take an hour to take some action and stake your free claim early to establish your business as the industry leader before the competition has a chance.
To Your Success,
Kim Rowe
National Student Liaison
