Check out this information on Creating a Business Facebook Page during Valerie’s show Promote Smart on BizTV.com
We all know that Facebook is the number one place to connect with friends and socialize online, but it’s features far exceed personal fun. It has become the major advertising channel for businesses because Facebook has morphed the “target market” into a “laser-targeted” market! An online advertisement that previous to Facebook would blanket 50,000 viewers, most of whom may fit a certain demographic that “should“ be interested in a particular product or service, now will laser target a smaller, more powerful number of those who have not only expressed interest in your product, but are members of associations, groups, fan pages, etc. associated with your product in particular. To make it simple, Facebook already knows what each individual subscriber likes, buys and where he or she spends their time. That might have some protection agency groups leery about privacy, but it also has businesses flocking to start and maintain Facebook pages so that their advertisement can be consistently in front of those who they know have a very high chance of becoming customers.
How can you use this “laser” to target your potential customer audience? Well, we must first start by acknowledging the fact that business and personal Facebook pages are not the same. A personal page is expanded by adding “friends”. A business page is expanded by accumulating “likes”. Your “likes” could consist of friends, customers, supporters or anyone else that sees value in your business. The more likes, the more popular your page. And everyone that likes your page, has automatically agreed to have your business page’s posts show up in their news feed.
Promote Feature
Speaking of posts, Facebook has added a new feature called “promote”. It is a way to keep a post at the top of the news feeds of all persons who have “liked” your page. You can promote a post without having to post it to your business’ Facebook page. This could be used to try out different advertisements and gauge popularity for example. The cost to promote a post varies, but by clicking the “promote” link, it will automatically tell you how much it will cost. A regular post on my business site costs $7.00 to promote. According to Facebook, “the post will run until they’re no longer eligible to be shown in news feed”. Major credit cards and PayPal are the accepted forms of payment.
Ads
Facebook makes it easy to advertise with a smaller budget. You can generate an ad that includes your business page’s profile picture, how many likes you currently have, the and the type of service you are with a “like” button for less than the cost of a pizza! You’re also able to target these ads to appear in front of people by location, age, gender, interests or connections to your business.
You can also create a custom advertisement with text that you create yourself. Again, you can set your own budget and is based on cost-per-click. Let’s say that Facebook charged $.20 every time someone clicked on your ad and you’ve set a budget of $10.00. Once those clicks add up to $10.00, you can choose to shut the ad down or increase your budget to cover the additional clicks. Simply click on the “Build Audience” button at the top of your business’ FB page and choose “Create an Ad” to get started.
Sponsored Stories
When your “friends” previously liked a post on your page, only their friends and the other people that have liked the same post on your page could see the initial like. Now, with Sponsored Stories, you can promote that someone has liked your post with a small fee. These are called “Sponsored Stories”. They work similarly to ads, except now another party is being used in the advertisement to show others their support of your business.
Custom URL
I absolutely hate to see when a business creates a Facebook page and they end up having a url that is 3,000 characters long! If you’re going to put your Facebook info on your business cards or website, that simply won’t do. Make sure to create a custom url for your Facebook page, it’s easy and free. Simply go to facebook.com/username. It will ask what you would like for your url, and if it isn’t taken, you’re all set. Remember, custom url’s can’t be reversed, so think long and hard about what you’d like yours to be before committing to it.
Insight
This area of your business page allows you to see the statistical data associated with the activity of your page. You’re able to see who is talking about your business, how many likes you have, how many people viewed your posts on what day, etc. This gives you “insight” on what was deemed most popular by your viewers and is a great tool to track your page’s activity levels. You also have an option to promote individual posts from this page by clicking the bullhorn icon to the right hand side of the post entry.
For more information, check out the following pages on Facebook:
Facebook.com/business/pages
Facebook.com/business/ads
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