Social media and inbound marketing are increasingly important assets for businesses to get found by and engage with potential buyers on the web. People have gotten better and better at ignoring marketing messages and instead go to Google and social networks for answers to their questions. The question for you is: will you be there to answer it.
Facebook is a tool for connecting people with those around them. And, as with any social media tool, you have an opportunity to use Facebook to expand your online footprint and engage with customers directly. But yes, it can be difficult to figure out what you can and should do!
Why Should You Care?
Facebook has 1.06 billion monthly active users, 680 million mobile users, more than 50 million pages and 10 million apps.
Think your customers aren’t on Facebook? There are tens of thousands of regional, work-related, collegiate, and high school networks. More than two thirds of Facebook users are outside of college and the fastest growing demographic is those 35 years and older. While Facebook started off as a community for college students, it has expanded far beyond that and you will be hard-pressed to find a demographic not yet represented among Facebook’s 200 million users.
Business Goals for Using Facebook
- Get found by people who are searching for your products or services
- Connect and engage with current and potential customers
- Create a community around your business
- Promote other content you create, including webinars, blog articles, or other resources
Personal Accounts vs. Business Accounts
On Facebook, Profiles are meant for people and Pages are meant for businesses. To fully engage and leverage Facebook’s features, you should create a personal profile. Do not create a personal profile for your business. Facebook is building significant new functionality for businesses, and all of this functionality is only available to Pages.
There are a few key differences between Business Pages and Personal Profiles:
- Pages allow you to designate multiple administrators, so that you can have multiple people help manage the account, and if one of your administrators leaves the company, you can still have control over the Page.
- Pages are, by default, public and will start ranking in Facebook and public search results.
- Pages are split into different categories (local businesses, brands, musicians) that help you get listed in more relevant search results.
- Personal profiles have friends, which require mutual acceptance, whereas anyone can become a fan of your Page without first going through administrator approval.
- Pages have analytical tracking so you can see how many interact and share your posts