Facebook Business Strategies & Techniques

Presented by Julia Kinslow

What you’ll learn in today’s session

Differences between Facebook personal and business pages

Strategic ways to build your brand

10 ways to attract fans and keep them coming back

Ways to engage – what to post

Why use Facebook to leverage SEO?

Calls to action to convert Facebook fans into clients

LIVE demonstration:

◦ Discuss parts of a business profile

◦ Review samples of engaging business pages

◦ Tour Insights page – metrics to monitor fan interaction

◦ Facebook Ads – like PPC, easily manageable and can be highly effective in getting your brand noticed at critical times when your target audience is on Facebook.

Q&A

There are personal profiles

and then there are business pages

Facebook = a relationship marketing platform

A business page is a place to build a community where prospects and clients go for information and conversation. It is a forum in which to ask questions and to provide feedback on your brand and your services.

Where should you begin?

Start with a strategy

As in any marketing strategy, you have to outline specifics of what you intend to get out of it. Then, measure the results in order to know if you’re on the right track. If not, change your tactics.

1. Select 1-3 goals for your social media efforts that support your greater business goals and then identify 2-3 specific objectives for each goal.

2. Identify appropriate channels to support your efforts based on what you know about your clients and target market.

3. Develop a strategy for a social media execution that includes specific tactics you will take to meet each objective and goal.

4. Select metrics that are fitting and will track your efforts to measure and gauge the progress of your social marketing.

5. Execute, track progress, measure outcomes and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Establish goals around greater business goals

1. If your goal is to build regional brand awareness, your objectives might be to:

◦ Establish yourself as an industry thought leader

◦ Increase number of new leads

2. Select appropriate channels

◦ Facebook regional business page

◦ LinkedIn

3. Define tactics

◦ Add frequent status updates to Facebook and LinkedIn (use company blog or links to relevant articles)

◦ Review industry groups on LinkedIn, comment on 1-2 discussions per week or answer an industry question

◦ On your Facebook business page, ask an interesting question once a week to gather feedback from your fans

4. Establish metrics

◦ Number of new connections on LinkedIn and Facebook in Q1 and Q2

◦ Number of new leads in Q1 and Q2

Social Media Metrics Q1 Q2

Online Visibility (regional brand

awareness)Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun

Facebook (new fans) 25 30 50 8 10 50

LinkedIn (new contacts) 50 100 125 10 60 75

Number of new leads Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun

2011 - Actual 30 45 50 20 25 50

2011 - Goal 25 40 50 60 70 80

Execute: track your progress

Measure outcomes and adjust strategy

020406080

100120140160180200

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun

Online visibility (brand awareness)

LinkedIn (Contacts)Facebook (Fans)

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun

Number of new leads

2011 Actual 2011 Goal

10 ways to attract fans and keep them coming back

1. Determine your brand personality. Brands are not people, but the personification of brands helps prospects connect with them. Much of this personality comes through your own voice since people want to connect with individuals, not companies.

2. Use consistent dialogue and messaging to amplify your brand. When engaging with prospects and clients, it’s important that there is consistent dialogue and messaging that indirectly speaks to how your company’s services can be valuable to them. i.e., company blog and YouTube testimonials.

3. Define your target market. Be aware of demographic differences in your local market, such as age, gender and socio-economic groupings.

4. Know terms that drive action from your target market. Each prospect has their own psychological triggers that will drive them to act and seek out your services. Invest the time to test out various forms of copy and see what works with your market. Find the actual words that will make it more likely for your fans to take action, associate them with your brand and increase the bond with your fans.

5. Listen to your target market. Social marketing is much more about listening than talking at people. New media marketing has become a conversation that brands have with their prospects. Having conversations with your fans builds trust with your brand and if given the opportunity, your fans will actually tell you what they’d like your brand to provide.

6. Exclusive content that entertains, engages, informs, or simply makes the reader smile is great for keeping their attention. Encourage fans to upload their own photos or videos. Create a community around your business. Leverage the viral nature of the newsfeed.

7. Target influencers. Call attention to fans (put an @ symbol before your friend’s username) who have successfully used your services and may join or lead conversation around your brand.

8. Tag photos and status updates using @username and they will receive a notification of your post. Tagging your photos and updates are a way to increase the social and shareable features of Facebook.

9. In order for a page to be ‘Liked,’ it must be likeable first. This translates to quality wall posts and consistent engagement. Place a shout-out or reminder to your fans to Like status updates and instruct them to click the Share button right next to your message so that their friends will be alerted about the update, too.

10. Get a vanity URL with only 25 fans. This makes it easier for prospects and search engines to find you. Keep it simple including business name. You can choose a vanity URL at: http://www.facebook.com/username.

Ways to engage – what to post

Relevant content is king. Master the art of conversation around your services and demonstrate to fans why frequently visiting your page will be beneficial to them.

Post interesting questions on a regular basis to encourage your fans to engage. This activity allows visitors to see an active page of which they may want to take part.

Link to your company blog. Ad frequent posts that include information which is timely and relevant to your fans.

Upload raw videos and photos and they will immediately be posted to all of your fans’ newsfeeds to watch, comment on, and increase overall engagement.

Talk about local upcoming events, post them on your page, send invites to your fans and ask them to share it with their friends.

Be human. Share your activities, thoughts, clients’ successes, fun stuff about local sports events, post comments on other business pages.

Post meaningful quotes and tell your fans why it means something to you.

Why leverage SEO with Facebook?

Being “big” on Twitter and Facebook is important to search engines*

The complex algorithms and mathematical calculations that Google applies to its search engine technology are becoming more social as the search giant continues to work hard at being relevant in a fast-moving web.

Google and Bing recently commented how social media data influenced regular web search results. As we all know being found on the first page of Google in search results can drive a lot of traffic to your blog and website and research shows that nearly 90% of all clicks on links on Google come from being on the first page of Google.

Question: Do you track links shared within Facebook, either through personal walls or fan pages?

◦ Bing: Yes. We look at links shared that are marked as “Everyone,” and links shared from Facebook fan pages.

◦ Google: We treat links shared on Facebook fan pages the same as we treat tweeted links. We have no personal wall data from Facebook.

Question: Do you try to calculate the authority of someone on Facebook, either say via their personal wall or their fan page?

◦ Google: The treatment is the same as for Twitter where we do compute and use author quality.

In essence then Google and Bing do use consider your “social authority” on Twitter and Facebook to provide weight to search engine results and this will increase significantly over time as the social web grows.

So maybe it’s time you contribute to building your company’s Facebook and Twitter authority?

*Information courtesy of AllFacebook.com

Provide calls to action to convert fans into clients

1. The most important phase of the Facebook sales funnel is the action phase. Your focus is on generating leads and occasionally selling services directly. The first priority is obviously on building a community but you eventually need to drive fans to take some sort of action.

2. Drive prospects to your company’s website where you are more likely to convert them. Post a company blog, talk about important company announcements or upcoming offline events. Also, invite them to visit your website to connect with you on LinkedIn or other social media sites.

3. Add a Welcome tab. Adding a welcome tab provides a call to action for visitors to “Like” your business page and become a fan. This gives you multiple opportunities to consistently be in front of your prospects. It also leverages the viral nature of your fans’ personal news feed, allowing you to make more impressions to their friends.

4. Post information about your upcoming local events and giveaways they can get for bringing a friend. Take pictures, make commentary, tag participants and encourage them to share with friends to entice more to come next time.

5. Provide a Facebook page lead form. This is a simple form where users provide their name and e-mail address to obtain free content. This requires a bit of HTML code, but is a great way to develop relationships with those who may not be interested today, but will be tomorrow.

6. Understand Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Pay special attention to promotion and contest guidelines. If you violate their rules, they can remove your page altogether. http://www.facebook.com/terms.php

Questions?

Contact: Julia Kinslow

Phone: 614.395.2181E-mail: jmkinslow@ninedotscreative.com

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Helping you connect-the-dots to social marketing strategy