How To Achieve More Through Facebook For Business

Has your social media marketing strategy been letting you down? Are you beginning to feel sceptical about whether or not Facebook can even do anything for your business? Do you feel as though you are wasting valuable resources on social networking for very little gain, or have you taken bad advice from poor SEO strategists in the past?

If so, you may feel like giving up on Facebook – but don’t. Go back to the beginning, and if you put the right strategy in place it really can help you take your small business to the next level. Social media marketing is all about sticking with it and building up follower base.  After all, Facebook currently has over 400 million members and chances are a large number of those are amongst your target customer groups. 

Here’s how you can make Facebook work for you:

Home Page: The first and most important thing to do, if you’re going back to basics, is to create a unique home page that really sells your business as soon as a person looks at it. Your profile picture should be bold and include your company logo. The text next to your image should be kept short, snappy and to the point for those reading it on mobiles: try to sum up what your company is about in a couple of short sentences. Then further on down the page you can go into more detail about the background of your company, what you do and what makes you unique. Make sure you include an obvious link to your website to increase traffic, and if you have offline shops then it’s vital you let visitors know where to find you.

Maintain a Presence: You need to make the most of your Facebook page as, if you do it right, it can help you create a solid brand identity. Make sure you regularly share images, links, useful blog posts or videos that will be relevant or interesting to your followers. Also, don’t be afraid to be funny or a little irreverent with your posts: social media platforms such as Facebook are a chance for you to be a little more informal with customers – something you may not be able to do in day-to-day business transactions. 

Special Offers or Competitions: A great way to keep other Facebook users interested in your business is to offer regular incentives. Hosting competitions is a fun promotional exercise and there are plenty of tools to help you do this easily, such as Shortstack. Your Facebook page is also the place to advertise any special offers you may have on, with links to your e-commerce site so users can buy straight away before they lose interest.

Advertising and Promoted Posts: If you have some of your advertising budget set aside then Facebook, with is many millions of users, is a good place to invest this. With promoted posts, for example, you will pay a flat rate in order for a single post to reach a certain number of users. If you want to guarantee that your followers will see an important post, even if they are not on Facebook very often, this is the way to do it. If you want to boost your visitor numbers significantly, you also have the option of a standard ad in the side column of the Facebook site which include an image, copy and click-through link to the destination of your choice.

3 Free Twitter Tools

As business owners, we are only too well aware that to do social media effectively can eat up a fair bit of our time. But if you don’t have the budget to outsource your social media requirements to a competent freelancer or marketing company, then I can recommend these 3 free time-saving Twitter tools that could help your business gain an edge over the competition.

Commun.it

Commun.it is a relationship management tool endorsed by the likes of Social Media Examiner and The Next Web. It is currently used by high profile global companies such as Dell, Nike and Sony. The beauty of Commun.it is that it allows you to build relationships, manage followers and monitor engagement from one simple dashboard. The Commun.it platform provides suggestions as to who you might follow on Twitter and you can see at a glance who your top influencers are – and reward them accordingly.

The Next Web says: "Commun.it turns the status-oriented world of Twitter into a relationship dashboard, enabling marketers to effectively analyse relationships and gain insights.”

InboxQ

InboxQ is a great little tool which enables you to engage with more Twitter users using the power of questions. InboxQ’s research identified that around 100,000 questions are asked every day on Twitter. In addition, 59% of Twitter users are likely to follow a business or organisation which takes the time to answer their questions online.

InboxQ allows you to set up a campaign using industry-related keywords, so that when somebody poses a question relating to your chosen keywords, you will be alerted in real time. Not only that, but you can use InboxQ as a networking tool.

Let’s say you run a PR consultancy. You can set up campaigns for each of your clients using their specific industry keywords. When you are notified of a question that one of clients might like to answer you can simply retweet them the information. Which means it’s great news for you and for your client too. Smart, eh? You can download InboxQ via your Chrome or Firefox browser.

Buffer

Want to give the impression that you are always online, without overwhelming your Twitter followers? Then you need Buffer. Buffer allows you to create a pre-written stream of tweets into a queuing system which you can auto-schedule for delivery, so that they are fed to your Twitter community at regular intervals. Last September, Commun.it announced a collaboration with Buffer, so you can now integrate both tools from one interface promoting added functionality (and creativity).

Many businesses shy away from social media because they believe they don’t have the time or financial resources to do it effectively. But to keep pace with your competitors, if your customers or clients use Twitter, then perhaps you should learn to love it too.

The Book of Mormon and Social Media

Following on from shows such as ‘Jerry Springer: The Musical’, ‘The Book of Mormon’ is one of the more recent controversial musicals to get the critics talking.  Developed over a period of seven years by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, with music from composer Robert Lopez, it is a religious satire which lampoons the ideas of organised religion as well as the conventions of traditional musical theatre. Originally released on Broadway in 2011, the show has now opened at London’s West End and has already broken box office records. It is also, as we shall see, a shining example of how Facebook and Twitter can contribute to the success of a modern-day musical.

In a nutshell, ‘The Book of Mormon’ tells the story of two young Mormon missionaries who are sent to a small village in a remote part of Uganda where a local warlord is threatening the population.  The two missionaries attempt to share the teachings of their religion with the locals but find it an uphill struggle. The musical officially opened in the West End on Thursday 21 March and took more than £2.1 million at the box office the following day. It seems that a controversial theme that gets people talking can often spell box office gold.

But what has also been at work here is the clever use of social media marketing.  Since the show’s opening, alongside the traditional reviews for the show have been a barrage of tweets appearing in press ads to accompany the release of fresh batches of tickets. Some of these were celebrity endorsements, some not, but they had the effect of turning the show into a roaring success by the time the reviews had appeared in the papers.

After all, sometimes all it takes is a well-publicised tweet from a well-known celebrity such as Stephen Fry to shoot a show into the stratosphere. In the case of Mormon, this strategy has worked to great effect. In this case, even drawing attention to negative reviews such as the rather one-star drubbing handed out by Quentin Lett can simply act as a bigger draw.

The great thing about drawing attention to tweets and Facebook comments in order to publicise a show is that, being totally free, it is something even the smaller fringe theatre companies can utilise. Those who may not be able to afford expensive national advertising campaigns to promote their shows may still be able to create a hit if their marketing teams are savvy about the ways in which social media can work for them.

Overwhelmed By Social Media? How HootSuite Can Help You Get Organized And Save Time!

If as part of your small business marketing you’ve already decided your business could profit from social media, but the whole thing is frankly so overwhelming that you don’t know where to start, help is at hand. Perhaps you’re already signed up to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Foursquare, but other than that you’ve done nothing with your accounts. Maybe you also have a WordPress blog you make the odd posting to every month or so.


The reality is, dabbling in social media doesn’t work . . . particularly if you’re in business. For businesses, social media is a kind of ‘all or nothing’ experience. And it’s extremely time-consuming, right? Particularly if you’re a one-man or one-woman business when there just never seems enough hours in the day generally.

Well now there’s a programme that can help you automate all your social media activity. It’s called HootSuite – and it’s brilliant for updating all your social media platforms at the same time.

Here’s an overview of what you get when you sign up to HootSuite:

The Ability to Manage Multiple Social Networks

With HootSuite, you can integrate all your social networking sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook and update them easily via a single manageable location. HootSuite also lets you update a range of other social networks through Ping.fm.

Control Your Team’s Workflow

HootSuite allows you to add multiple remote users and permit them to update feeds and tweets on your behalf.

Manage Twitter Feeds

Once you start following more than a dozen Twitter accounts, keeping up with all the constant feeds can be an almost impossible task. With HootSuite, it’s a doddle. HootSuite enables you to create lists of Twitter followers easily and stay tuned to their updates.

Upload Files and Customize URLs

HootSuite uses its own shortening function “ow.ly” which enables you to customize URL parameters. And when you want to share updates or files with your followers, HootSuite converts your content into a shortened link and embeds it into the file.

Pre-write Your Content and Schedule It For Posting Later

Another great feature of HootSuite is that you can pre-write content in advance and schedule it to be posted on your Twitter site whenever you want. This facility makes it easier to keep up with the demand for fresh content. With HootSuite, if you want to post a tweet a 3am you won’t have to set your alarm to do it!

HootSuite is iPhone and Droid App compatible

Compatible with the latest iPhone and Droid App, your marketing team can perform their social media functions anytime, anywhere.

Tracking Statistics & Data

Want to know how many clicks your tweets are getting and where from? HootSuite’s tracking system provides you with comprehensive data on all this and much more.

HootSuite is the perfect tool for managing your brand’s social media activity. It allows you to track backlinks and retweets and find out what people are saying about your business. HootSuite encourages greater and more efficient productivity and better interaction with your social media team.