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How to Make Your Facebook Page Work!

facebook-logoGetting visitors to your Facebook page isn’t that hard.  Using basic Social Media techniques, connecting with people – on Facebook as well as Twitter and anywhere else you can – will get people visiting your page.  Once they get there though, the trick is to get them to keep coming back.  Facebook, like all social media, is about interaction and building relationships.  So to make the most of it, you’ve got to grab and hold people’s interest long enough and significantly enough so that they want to interact with you and your company.  How do you do that?  Glad you asked!  Below are 5 ways to make sure your Facebook page is working hard for your business.

1. Say it with pictures. People love to look at pictures, so use them to tell your story.  If you have a store or products, take pictures of them and post at least weekly.  If your business is just you – if you’re an expert and are blogging, writing, speaking, etc. – then post pictures of yourself doing what you do.  One great idea, if it suits the kind of work you do (restoration, web design, cleaning, etc.), is to post before and after pictures of your work.  Posting pictures regularly will help your fans get to know you, and you’ll be able to showcase your work too.

2. Say it even better with video. It’s no secret that if people love pictures, they really love video!  So take the picture idea, and turbo charge it by adding videos to your Facebook page.  Keep them short (3 min or so), and make them informative, fun, and instructional.  Remember, the goal is to get people coming back.  If you post videos that help or entertain, you’ll accomplish that goal.

3. Create a custom landing page. In case you haven’t heard, you are now able to create custom landing pages for your business.  This tells your page visitors you’ve got your stuff together and gives them an overall positive impression of your business – if it’s done right.  To make sure it’s done right, you have a couple of options.  You can learn FBML (Facebook Markup Language), or you can hire it out.  If you know HTML, you can probably learn FBML, but if you don’t want to take the time or aren’t interested in learning it, check out sites like Are We Connected or Social Identities.  For a great example of what a landing page can look like, check out Vaynerchuck’s page at Facebook.com/gary.

4. Offer something special. Any time you can make people feel like they’re part of an exclusive club, you’ll get people wanting to be in on it.  So consider offering sneak previews or discounts exclusively to your Facebook fans.  This definitely gives them a reason to keep coming back.  Not only that, but they’ll be likely to pass on your page to their friends.  People love sharing the inside scoop!

5. Engage! This is probably the most important tip of all.  Again, social media is about engagement, interaction, and building relationships.  So monitor your Facebook wall and engage with your followers.  If someone asks a question, get on it right away.  If someone posts a compliment or (God forbid) a complaint, address it appropriately.  The more people see you being a part of the conversation, the more they will want to jump in.  And if you can make it light and entertaining, many will just come to watch.  But don’t think that’s not valuable.  People who start out as observers often end up as buyers!

Remember, these pages are a great marketing opportunity – if they’re used properly.  So there you go.  Five fairly easy-to-implement ideas to make sure your business’s Facebook page is all it can be.  Do you have a Facebook page for your business?  Share it below.  We’d love to take a look!

Matthew Toren
 

Matthew Toren is a serial entrepreneur, mentor, investor and co-founder of YoungEntrepreneur.com. He is co-author, with his brother Adam, of Kidpreneurs.org, BizWarriors.com and Small Business, BIG Vision: Lessons on How to Dominate Your Market from Self-Made Entrepreneurs Who Did it Right (Wiley).

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