One of the simplest and most effective ways for a small business to engage with its network and the wider community is through an interesting and different Facebook Page.
These differ from a personal Facebook profile and even the Facebook groups of old and are what Facebook prefers businesses to use. The Facebook Page has a similar look and feel to a Facebook profile but with one very important difference: users don’t have to be signed up as a Facebook member to view your Facebook Page. This means you could treat this free service as another website or online presence.
You can upload photos, write notes about your business, schedule events and publicise them – basically all of the features of the Facebook profiles but in a format that you can send out to everybody!
One of the first things you should think about doing for your Facebook Page is obtaining a custom URL address. When you first set up your page, the URL will be quite long and complicated, something like this:
http://www.facebook.com/#/pages/TheBowditchGroup/197681511604?ref=ts
Not very user-friendly or easy to spread around to your database hey? But once you accrue 25 people who ‘like’ your page, you can change the URL to whatever you want to, for instance:
www.facebook.com/TheBowditchGroup
You can see how much easier this will be to include in emails or on business cards and so on.
One word of warning with picking your own custom username like that: once you decide what it is, it can’t be changed so make sure you are confident that’s the name you want.
Two examples of those using this platform very well in attracting and interacting with their customers or fans is Coca-Cola and Ashton Kutcher. By including games, competitions, live video feeds and other widgets, they both provide a very interactive experience that makes people linger longer and of course have a better customer experience which they are more likely to tell other people about.
Facebook’s Best Kept Secret
Also, recently Facebook made it possible for users to configure their Facebook Page more by using their own programming language to create large blocks of user-configured content.
By using this you can include images, video, banners and so on and all on tabs in the Facebook Page which you can even rename whatever you like.
You do need a little bit of coding knowledge (or know someone who does – me!) to make these changes but they can be very impressive and give your Facebook Page an even more professional look. I use these custom tabs to promote competitions, current specials, when I am hiring and so on. They work especially well if you make them the default tab that people land on when they log on to your Facebook Page but before they have ‘liked’ it.
Some examples of Facebook Pages that I have built which utilise this custom tab feature include Real Time Research, Bubtree Fertility Clinic Brisbane and, of course, The Bowditch Group.
If you would like to see how I can help your business’ social engagement strategy through making an effective and engaging Facebook Page, call me TODAY on 02 4324 2594.
This article appears in full in my book, The Business of Being David – How to use social media to make your small business big. To read the sample chapters and to purchase your own copy, click here.
Do you have an engaging or different Facebook Page you would like to show off? Let us know in the comments below.
