Running A Successful Online Business | Facebook Marketing

January 30, 2013

If you run an online business chances are you own a Facebook fan page where you do some marketing to promote your online business. You may also set aside some time each day to connect with your fans by asking questions, sharing sneak peeks of your work, etc. If you’re like me, you constantly try to find the best way to engage your fans in discussion.

These few steps/tips will help you optimize your Facebook marketing so it better serves your business.

1. First and foremost understand the components of Facebook marketing

We connect with our friends and family on our personal pages. Much of the same is expected we do from our business pages as well.
We market our online work from our business pages. We do that by connecting, engaging with our fans and in the meantime provide (hopefully) great content (great content is always free and something our fans find exceptionally useful and will come back for more!)
We advertise our posts on Facebook in an attempt to have them be seen by most of our fans and their friends. Gone are the days where your posts could be visible by everyone who likes your page. Now a days, like with any other outlet you must pay for advertising if you like to be seen in the newsfeed. I must confess, I wasn’t a fan or it in the beginning, but quickly learned to adjust to it and embrace it as it benefits my business.
We pay attention to insights – also known as feedback received on the content you provide. Pay close attention to insights and you will get a pretty good idea on how your page is doing.

2. Create a stellar profile.

This is the first impression you leave to everyone visiting your page. You wouldn’t want anything short of amazing, right? Here is what you need to focus on:

Profile Picture (aka avatar) – Choose a professional picture (200×200 – sized down to 160 square). You should be smiling (people like happy people!). A simple yet recognizable image is best.
Cover Photo – This should reflect your brand and business. It should measure 851 x 315 pixels and could be a collage of your best selling products or a snap shot of your studio space. You can add text here but you can’t add links or websites. Every time you update your cover photo you increase your page’s visibility. I tend to update mine every season to reflect any new products I like to spotlight.
Username/URL – This should correspond with your business name. You should have something like www.facebook.com/lepapierstudio instead of a bunch of numbers…Read more on this here.
Custom Tabs – These little rectangular boxes can help you stay connected with your fans, turn random visitors into fans, fans into leads and potential buyers. They can be as simple as a text box. I recommend spending a bit of time here to come up with something pleasing to the eye – remember people like to click cool images.

3. Show up on newsfeed.

With the recent changes on Facebook only 4% of our fans can see our status updates. Insane right? How can you manage to show up on the newsfeed? First you have to understand how it all works.

Facebook uses an algorithm called “EdgeRank” which determines what people see on their newsfeed. What effects Edge Rank? There are a few things:

Attraction. This is measures by how much people like your brand based on their most recent interactions with you. Likes, comments and shares play a major role and increase your visibility on your fans’ newsfeeds.
Weight. This is effected by how much people like your updates. The more the better as Facebook used this to measure up whether your updates should be shown to your fans.

What can you do?

The best thing you can do is to create engaging and fresh content and share it with your fans daily and sometimes a couple of times a day. The best way to do this is through photos. We all love visual things and can’t help it to click, like, comment on what is cool! Another way to engage is by asking questions that require a short answer. Remember short is the keyword here. Fans are busy people just like us!

4. Create an event and share it with your fans.

This could be an actual physical event, an online event or even an imaginary one:) (Good luck with this one. I still can’t figure out how to wrap my head around it!) Increase the visibility via advertizing or by asking your friends to share it on their wall. Last year, I put out an announcement for my local fans to come out at the Michigan Avenue Apple store and listen to me speak about the use of technology in my business. A few locals showed up and we connected after the event. I even made a few new friends!

5. Use Facebook App on your mobile phone.

If you’re running an online business, you already know how important is to stay on top of social media. You must be reachable and always available to answer questions and connect with your fans/customers. My iPhone Facebook app helps me do just that. It can be addicting though. So to limit myself from constantly checking it, each day I set a timer for 20-30 minutes for all my social media activity. I rarely check Facebook on weekends.

What if you’ve done all of the above and still need some help moving forward? Glad you asked the questions. I have an answer for you…

6. Advertise!

Businesses (mine included!) don’t get the same interaction they used to on Facebook. We all need to spend some money to reach out to a wider audience. Facebook does a good job with the options they offer for advertizing. You get in front of your ideal customers and only pay when they click on your ad. Here is a good article on advertizing cheaply and ethically and all the available types of Facebook advertizing and how to use them.

8. Integrate Facebook to all your online presence.

If you have a Facebook page for your business you must link all your other online platforms to it. You can achieve this by doing the following:

Add a Facebook button on your blog/blog post, as well as a like box on your website.
Link your blog to your Facebook so that each time a new post goes live, a link to it appears on your Facebook page. White you’re at it make it easier for people to comment on your post directly from Facebook by installing this Facebook Plugin.
For behind the scenes and sneak peeks I link my Instagram page to Facebook. Do this where applicable and keep it business like. A few personal pictures are fine though.

Last but certainly not least, remember that Facebook like any social media won’t be around forever. What we all need to do is drive fans/potential customers to an email capture page. You don’t want to lose any of your fans. After all, you’ve worked hard to gain them!

I hope you found this post useful. If you have any tips or advise on Facebook marketing please share comment below. I would love to hear how you used Facebook to benefit your online business.

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