Tomado de: http://www.facebooking101.com/modules/business-on-facebook/
I'll get right to the point: you aren't going to get rich "networking on Facebook". You may get rich however by using the various profile features, applications, and most importantly, the WEB TRAFFIC that Facebook offers. This is a crucial difference, and one in which I will explain in more detail below.
Web Traffic: The Number One Reason to have a Business Profile on Facebook
- Active users: 47 million (as of October 2007)
- Monthly new user average: 4 million
- Daily new user average: 150,000
- Page views: Over 15 billion per month
- Searches: Over 500 million per month
- Search index size: 200GB
- Largest networks: London, UK 1,268,000 and Toronto, Canada 859,000
- Traffic rank: 7th
- Photos: 1.7 billion (which averages to about 44 photos per user)
"On March 2, 2007, a poll conducted by eMarketer.com of American youths in the United States discovered Facebook was the most viewed site among all respondents with more females aged 17-25 (69%) visiting the site than males (56%)."
So, to summarize the above statistics, there are a tonne of people already on Facebook, they like to log on allot, surf around the network and search for things while they are there. It's thought that the majority of Facebook users are in their early twenties to early thirties, although this is changing, with upward growth on both ends of the spectrum. So, while "college kids" might now be the bread and butter of the 'Book, that won't always be the case. If you are in the business of geriatric care, you might not find a huge market on Facebook at the moment, but for the price of admission (it's free to set up a Facebook profile), you just can't lose. And of course, as today's average Facebook user gets older, they will continue to use Facebook to stay in touch with their friends later in life...
Have you ever gone to a party, and you meet someone, who upon hearing that you are in the "whatever" business, proceeds to try and sell you on his own business ventures? Maybe you already are that guy (if so, please log off Facebook now!). If you don't already know, EVERYONE HATES THAT KIND OF PERSON. So don't be him! Using Facebook to annoy and randomly sell your business to strangers who are using the network for social purposes is not the best use of this technology. Rather, you should take a "Field of Dreams" approach... you know, a "build it, and they will come" marketing strategy to funnel web traffic back to your own web site.
Yes, marketing your business on Facebook is really pretty much the same as marketing it in any other online venue: you have to take a multi pronged advertising approach that reaches as much as your target market as possible, while simultaneously building consumer trust and positioning yourself as a expert authority on your topic area. In other words, to promote your business on Facebook, you have to build up your business profile, join and create relevant Facebook Groups, and selectively make contact with others in your field. You have to think about every action that you take with your profile, and if what you are doing is relevant & complementary to your business, or not. Doing so you will create a Facebook identity that other Facebook users will either find "randomly" in a search, or will have recommended to them as "the person to go to about this". And that's the person that you want to be!
4 steps to effectively Marketing your Business on Facebook
1. Register a new Facebook profile that will only be used for your business activities
Despite what people say about how great it is that Facebook is changing the face of modern business relations by mixing your business and personal activities together, this is NOT something that you want to do. Your personal profile, and your business profile should be kept completely separate... it's unprofessional to mix the two parts of your life together. Your customers won't want to subscribe to your news feed if your business updates are inter spaced with "I'm holding the baby" or "getting TP at the store". Mixing business & personal also dilutes your business message, and distracts people from your marketing efforts.
If you don't already have a "yourname@yourowndomain.com" email address (what! you should...), you can always register a new GMail email account, that is something like "SmithConstruction@gmail.com". Many people use Gmail addresses for their work addresses these days, so it won't seem that unusual. Facebook does not allow "fake names" to be used when creating a user profile, so don't be tempted to do so (you don't want to put all this work into a business profile that Facebook may delete one day because you broke the rules). If you already have a personal Facebook account that is under your first and last name, simply make a variation of this for a secondary business profile...."JohnSmith Work", for example. Remember, the first part of your user name is what will be visible in news feed & status updates, so make sure that you are comfortable with whatever the first part of your business profile user name looks like, as that's what is going to show up on the pages of anyone who is subscribing to your updates.
A caveat: Yes, you CAN use your existing personal Facebook profile for business marketing if you really want to. The reason that this may be challenging however is that you will have to change your personal profile privacy settings so that business contacts cannot see all the personal information. And in order to do this, you may have to restrict the information that your personal friends can see as well, which you may not want to do. If you are never going to add a silly profile application, display a questionable "friend" or post personal wall posts, you might be able to get away with one Facebook profile for both your personal and business activities (because it's really just a business profile at that point). But for the myriad of reasons discussed above, I wouldn't recommend it. The very fact that Facebook does a poor job of allowing you to separate business from personal information is a reflection on it's roots: it's original audience was only intended to be college students. Perhaps one day Facebook will branch off into different types of user profiles (business or personal), but for now separating the two into separate accounts is probably your best option.
2. Add relevant Business Information to your Profile, and guide people back to your web site
Without walking through every step of how to add information to your Facebook profile, just keep the following guideline in mind:
Don't put any information on your profile that you wouldn't put on your corporate web site!
A Facebook business profile should actually be pretty bare-bones in most respects. You'll obviously want to put down your name, contact information and place of employment. In the "about me" section, you may want to put a short paragraph that quickly describes what business you are in, what you can do for potential customers, what kind of customers you are looking for, and what the best way to reach you would be. Don't forget to put a link here to your business web site, and invite people to click through for more information. If you write the link URL like "http://yourdomain.com" you will create a direct link that people can click on (and which will also help you for SEO purposes...it's another link back to your site). That's about all you need to put here actually.... just enough information for people to see who you are, what you do, how they can connect with you, and to be enticed to visit your web site.For your profile picture, you may want to have something like this:
- The large reference to your business web site url
- A large descriptive title that can be clearly read in a quick glance
- Some kind of image depicting your business activities in the background.
There are two reasons why you might want to create a custom graphic like the one above for your profile:
1. It's the first thing that people will see when they get to your business profile page, and it will spur them to visit your business web site outside of Facebook (they can click on the direct link you provided in the "about me" section).
Your profile graphic is visible in Facebook search results. If you've used your business keywords in your profile, you should be able to test this out now. Each for "city business" (i.e..., Ottawa Web Design, or Ottawa Plumbing, etc.) Did your profile come up in the search results? If not, go back to your profile description, and make sure that you mention these keywords. Notice how your profile image looks when it comes up in the search results. If you have made a large title and web site url, people will be able to see what you are all about before they even click on your profile. Not only will this increase the odds that they click on your profile image to learn more, but it's also another opportunity for you to put your business URL in front of them.
What else can you do to your Facebook business profile? If you can, fill your personal image gallery with images that are relevant to your business. Again, being handy with an image editing program helps here. Instead of just slapping a picture up and letting people guess what it is, you can add much more value to your gallery / portfolio if you comment on each image, IN THE IMAGE ITSELF, if possible. Adding text to your image, making all the images a consistent size, and perhaps going through a timeline or sequence of events ("these are the 6 steps that we follow when cleaning your rug"., for example), will tell the potential customer a bit more about yourself, and how you do business. Finally, in every picture, add the text "visit www.yourdomain.com for info" to the corner of the image....use every chance you get to funnel people away from your Facebook profile, where you do not have control over many things, to your own web site (where you have control over everything).
Additional Image Gallery tips:
- Give your images the best chance of being found by giving them file names that look like this: "keyword.jpg". Google Image Search is an important traffic stream that will bring more visitors to your profile that you should not overlook.
- In addition to adding text to your graphics, use the caption space below each image to write a very short descriptive sentence that includes your relevant keywords. This may also help for Facebook SEO purposes.
Additional small profile tweaks:
2. Under Privacy settings, change the search criteria so anyone can find your profile.. you want as many people to find you as possible.
You may have noticed that I haven't talked much about Facebook Applications, and how they can help you in your Facebook marketing efforts. Other then applications which add video clips or large images to your profile, most applications will probably not help you much in promoting your business on Facebook. I haven't yet found a Facebook business app that seemed worthy of installing. New applications are being created all the time however, and so I could easily be proven wrong on this...3. Create & Join Relevant Facebook Groups (with Traffic Funneling in mind)
One of the great features about Facebook is the ability to create your own groups on any subject that you feel fit. For the purposes of marketing your business, on the Facebook, I recommend that you create a new Facebook group called "YourCity YourIndustry". For example, I am a web site designer based out of Ottawa, Canada, and I created a Facebook group called "Ottawa Web Site Design" . You group could be "New York Locksmiths", etc. Don't worry if there already is a similarly-named Facebook Group, as yours is going to be better. :) The key thing to remember here is that is is very important to include your city location in the name of the group for searching purposes (why? because local search is Hot! Hot meaning lots of people are using local terms in their search queries...)
Here is the text that I put in the description box for my new Facebook Group:
Ottawa Web Site Design |
A group for local Ottawa web site designers & developers to advertise their services. If you live in Ottawa, and work in the web development field, please drop in to say hello and to let us know in what area you have specific expertise! Visitors looking for web design help in Ottawa are welcome as well....you can browse the group members, or visit the web site below for more info. |
That's a good question, and it has an interesting answer. By creating this Facebook group of "local whatever", I am helping to create both a venue for people who work in this industry, and a simple directory of sorts where potential customers can find someone local in this business. It's true that someone might find your business profile when searching for "cityname yourindustry", and that may be good enough for you, but you will have a much greater chance of "meeting" that potential customer if you create another doorway through which they can find you... and which in this case the Facebook group you created. As the creator of this new group, you will have the administrative control over the direction of the group, and why people are there in the first place. On my group, I stated in the group description that the purpose of the group was to allow local web site designers to advertise their services, and to help local clients find web design help. While web design related discussions will surely arise on the group wall, I don't really want to spend all day administrating what is being said or engaging in lengthy discussions myself, as I know that for the most part, this will not generate new business for me. With my new group, I more want to create a specialized "mini-directory" for local people in this field... the online equivalent of a wall of business cards in the entranceway to your neighbourhood local diner.
Don't forget to upload a picture to your profile group, that like your business profile, has a large title and prominent link back to your site. Don't over make the mistake of over emphasizing your own company both in the profile graphic or in the group description...if you make it too focused on yourself, other people won't see the incentirve to join, and your group page won't be as good as it could be in the long run. Just being the group admin is good enough, as it allows you to place a discreet link back to your business profile in a very visible location at the top of the page, that any visitor can click on if they want.
4. Using News Feeds & Status Updates to subtly advertise your business news
You can use the status updates / news feeds feature to subtly promote any recent business developments or specials that you are having. The key word to keep i mind here is "subtly": your news feed updates will appear on your friends profile pages, along with all their other friends updates, most of which will be personal in nature. Sending out a status update that looks like "SALE $99 SPECIAL SALE!!!" will not win you any admirers. You can however get away with one-liners such as "finishing up latest project" "developing new tool to..." "sold another house in...." etc. Having a business profile means that people will expect this sort of thing from you. The people who look at your friends profiles are seeing you for the first time however, which is why you want to make a good impression on them.
I hope that this short article was helpful to you in learning how to promote your business interests on Facebook. Facebook is a great source of web traffic that should not be overlooked, and if you set up your business profile and create groups in the manner described above, you should be able to direct some of those people back to your main web site. Now that Facebook has opened up it's content to be crawled by Google, Facebook profile pages and Facebook group pages may become pages with a high to moderate Google PageRank, which you can take advantage of when you link back to your own site. Also, while at the time of this writing Facebook's search function is just a tiny box in the corner of the page, they may eventually create a separate portal page that looks like this:
Is this what the new Google will look like?
Tomado de: http://www.facebooking101.com/modules/business-on-facebook/
