Think about your customers, how do they want to connect with your business? What will they want to see and what will get them to engage with your company. What are your specific and measurable objectives? How much time or investment are you prepared to invest and what do you want to get out of it?

Depending on your company, a facebook page can build relationships, increase brand awareness, grow communities, increase sales by directing customers to your website, grow networks and engage in informal research.

www.facebook.com/smbmarketing

Resources > Getting Started > Create a Page

Creating Your Page
Creating a facebook page could not be easier, just go to www.facebook.com/pages/create.php and follow the simple instructions.

Now you have registered and uploaded a relevant photo, such as your logo, it will ask you to ‘invite friends’. The great thing about Facebook is that you can link with established customers, so each customer you have can lead you to more. Send a message via Facebook or an email to your prospects and customer databases asking them to ‘like’ your page. Add your Facebook page address to letters and emails to your customers, install social plug-ins buttons to encourage interaction and page ‘likes’ on your website.

Getting ‘likes’ is not a way of massaging your ego, it’s a great benefit to your business. When the customer ‘likes’ you, their comment will appear on their friend’s newsfeeds and walls, spreading your messages further and spurring others to get involved. Brand analysis say this is the most effective way to reach potential new customers. If their friends are recommending you, they are more likely to recommend you.

www.facebook.com/smbmarketing

Resources > Getting Started Guide : Pages

Adding Content
Your own website hosts information on what you do as a company, your services and your products. Facebook is all about who you are. People are talking with other people, not people to big corporations, they don’t sign up to a page to be advertised to but they do want something stimulating.

Compelling content that allows your customers to interact with you is key. Make them the first to hear your latest news and encourage discussions by posting a question or a comment. Sometimes even the most simple of posts like ‘this pizza does not have enough topping’ can engage a conversation of over a hundred posts. Let fans post directly on your wall, with any feedback or comments and always try to respond to what they say.

Add photos, blogs, podcasts or anything to keep them engaged. For example a car hire company Zipcars asks people to nominate their best trip of the week, best trip gets a free car hire. The London School of Business and Finance hosts a regular talking shop with comments on the big ideas of the day and gets big debates going.

Exclusive offers will always be popular. Think about discount codes, giveaways, tips, invitations to special events, anything that will get fans to engage and pass the message on to others. Create a schedule so you are updating on a regular basis, at least three to four times per week. This will mean people will keep coming back to your site and your company stays in the front of their mind.

www.facebook.com/smbmarketing

Resources > Optimization Guide : Pages

Monitoring Your Pages
What to do with the information you gather is important too. Using customers as an informal sounding board or like a free alternative to focus group is one easy way to engage your fans. You can stay connected to your page with on site notifications and emails of fan activity (to customise your settings in order to do this, click the ‘Edit Page’ button in the top right corner and select ‘Your Settings’).

Facebook also offers free tools so you can analyse who is visiting your page, where they are, and what they do on it. This means that you can develop a plan to get more fans and increase interaction. To do this, click on ‘View Insights’ and you can then export most of the information to an Excel or CSV file.

The thorny topic of when it all goes wrong is also critical. If you have got negative feedback, it’s going to hang around and put off potential customers. So act quickly, showing that you can resolve a problem can actually win you customers.

www.facebook.com/smbmarketing

Resources > Insights Guide