So you thought you had to be an “online business” to be a Facebook Guru? “Brick and mortar” stores can also harness the power Facebook can give small businesses. With Facebook, you can potentially connect to over 500 million Facebook users, engage with your potential customers and get them raving about your brand. The best part is, it is totally free to use, making Facebook one of the cheapest and most effective forms of advertising!
How To Use Facebook For Small Business
To start, you will need to create your own Facebook account (if you don’t already have one!). Make sure you fill out your profile with your real name and other details, – remember your profile is always about you, not your business. It violates Facebook rules to have a business profile (or more than one profile), so you risk getting deleted, besides, a personal profile allows your friends to find you more easily (and your friends will probably be your first business fans!).
You can create and manage as many Facebook pages as you like – Facebook pages are designed specifically for businesses and organizations.
Editing a Facebook profile.
Creating a Facebook page. Most small business owners would set up a ‘Local Business or Place’ page.
How To Make Sales On Facebook
Once you’ve set up a Facebook business page and you have a few likers, you can start making some money! At first, you can contact each liker and welcome them to your page. Ask them how they found you or what interested them. This allows them to tell you about their needs and enquire about your products. Never try to “sell” outright as it’s the quickest way to lose a liker!
Get to know your likes, ask questions relevant to your industry or provide useful information that your likers should find interesting, and reserve hard sell status updates for sales promotions or events only. The idea is to create a loyal fan base who will then purchase from you – because we would all rather buy from our friends! Involve your likers when making business decisions, ask them their opinions about new products, and invite them to debate issues relevant to your industry. Anything that makes them feel part of your brand’s community, builds loyalty to your product.
Try offering an exclusive discount for your Facebook likers, having a sale on your website and using Facebook to advertise it, or even uploading your product photos to a “Sale” album or similar on your Facebook page and conduct your sales from there (this is a popular method for businesses who trade solely through Facebook). You can also add “Shop Now” F-commerce apps to your Facebook business page.
These are just the basic steps for using the power of Facebook to create sales for your small business but there is a lot more to creating an effective Facebook page. Use these steps to kickstart your business on Facebook – it is easy once you get the hang of it, and soon you will have an understanding of what works (and what doesn’t) for your page.
What works for you on Facebook? Share your wins. Leave us a comment!
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