Facebook Like Pages - A Guide for Small Businesses
Facebook like pages enable small businesses to compete toe to toe with large corporations, if not in scope, then definitely in potential for exposure with its over 500 million members. If you have yet to explore Facebook's strengths as a platform for marketing, promotion and customer engagement for your small business, then here are a few things you need to look into.
What Can a Business Do with a Facebook Like Page?
With Facebook's latest enhancements on like pages, the line between personal and business-oriented social networking just got fuzzier. More than ever before, building a page for your business is a cost-effective and practical measure to reach out to both existing and future customers, build loyalty and interact with them in ways much like you would with Facebook friends on your personal account.
For example, you can augment your marketing efforts by developing an audience and growing their familiarity, trust and preference for your offerings. Using your page as the official platform for introducing your latest products or services is also easier by using Facebook's robust photo hosting tools, events creation, notes, discussion areas and many other features. Getting honest and immediate feedback are made possible through comments, wall posts, fan reviews and likes. You can do market research, extend your customer service lines, provide valuable content, network with complementary businesses and even directly engage in e-commerce.
What Do You Want To Do?
Increasingly, the question with regard to Facebook like pages is what activities, among many, should you aim your focus on. Certainly, not all the activities mentioned above can and should be applied to your business page just because it's possible. As a small business, you may not necessarily have the luxury of an in-house design team or retained agency, robust server resources to host your Facebook content, and dedicated staff to monitor and moderate your page round the clock.
These limitations underscore the need to sit down for a bit and identify what you want to get out of it so you don't waste time and resources by trying everything just to see what sticks. Define your focus and stick to it, until it's time to reevaluate and expand further.
How Do You Develop An Audience?
A Facebook like page is much like a TV show where ratings and audience involvement are crucial success factors. In short, you'll want to get as many likes as you can for your Facebook page and keep them engaged. These likers are your audience, and every time they go to your wall or see your posts on their Facebook streams, they need to see the page's value and benefit to them. To get to the point where you get a high number of fans posting messages on your wall, liking your posts, and participating on discussion threads takes some time and considerable effort on your part, especially for a small or localized business.
However, this doesn't necessarily mean back-breaking and wallet-raiding efforts. Many tools are already available and provided for free by Facebook to get you started. Direct your focus on enhancing your page to include rich content and features such as videos, contact and order forms, fan exclusives and a great-looking and enticing landing page, also known as a reveal tab. These things are possible with custom Facebook pages, which you can create on your own with some software and a web hosting account.
What Can a Business Do with a Facebook Like Page?
With Facebook's latest enhancements on like pages, the line between personal and business-oriented social networking just got fuzzier. More than ever before, building a page for your business is a cost-effective and practical measure to reach out to both existing and future customers, build loyalty and interact with them in ways much like you would with Facebook friends on your personal account.
For example, you can augment your marketing efforts by developing an audience and growing their familiarity, trust and preference for your offerings. Using your page as the official platform for introducing your latest products or services is also easier by using Facebook's robust photo hosting tools, events creation, notes, discussion areas and many other features. Getting honest and immediate feedback are made possible through comments, wall posts, fan reviews and likes. You can do market research, extend your customer service lines, provide valuable content, network with complementary businesses and even directly engage in e-commerce.
What Do You Want To Do?
Increasingly, the question with regard to Facebook like pages is what activities, among many, should you aim your focus on. Certainly, not all the activities mentioned above can and should be applied to your business page just because it's possible. As a small business, you may not necessarily have the luxury of an in-house design team or retained agency, robust server resources to host your Facebook content, and dedicated staff to monitor and moderate your page round the clock.
These limitations underscore the need to sit down for a bit and identify what you want to get out of it so you don't waste time and resources by trying everything just to see what sticks. Define your focus and stick to it, until it's time to reevaluate and expand further.
How Do You Develop An Audience?
A Facebook like page is much like a TV show where ratings and audience involvement are crucial success factors. In short, you'll want to get as many likes as you can for your Facebook page and keep them engaged. These likers are your audience, and every time they go to your wall or see your posts on their Facebook streams, they need to see the page's value and benefit to them. To get to the point where you get a high number of fans posting messages on your wall, liking your posts, and participating on discussion threads takes some time and considerable effort on your part, especially for a small or localized business.
However, this doesn't necessarily mean back-breaking and wallet-raiding efforts. Many tools are already available and provided for free by Facebook to get you started. Direct your focus on enhancing your page to include rich content and features such as videos, contact and order forms, fan exclusives and a great-looking and enticing landing page, also known as a reveal tab. These things are possible with custom Facebook pages, which you can create on your own with some software and a web hosting account.
Facebook Like Page Software
To make your life easier I recommend you check out Like Page Maker. It's a very affordable and easy to use piece of software that helps small businesses and independent entrepreneurs to create, design and publish customized Facebook like pages in a few clicks.
So check out http://www.likepagemaker.com and watch the demo video.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gary_O'_Brien To make your life easier I recommend you check out Like Page Maker. It's a very affordable and easy to use piece of software that helps small businesses and independent entrepreneurs to create, design and publish customized Facebook like pages in a few clicks.
So check out http://www.likepagemaker.com and watch the demo video.
Click here to get facebook fans!
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