Facebook is a great place to communicate with your friends, family and customers because it is a place where they are already hanging out. Let’s talk about how to use Facebook to grow your business.
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Training:
Before we jump into HOW to use Facebook for your business, let’s first cover some basics.
Facebook Terms and Conditions
When you first sign up for Facebook, you agree to only have 1 Facebook account PER PERSON, not per email address. I know several people who have more than one account, and they are simply in violation of the terms they agree to when creating those accounts.
What’s the harm in that? Well, if / when Facebook discovers this, their accounts (ALL of them!) will be deleted WITHOUT WARNING. This means that all customers, parties, pictures, groups, fan pages, friends, messages, etc. are just GONE – for ALL the accounts!
So, if you are using Facebook for your online parties, to keep in contact with your customers and communicate with them – this would be DEVASTATING!
Another place that consultants like to do their business is on a group. Groups can be a good place to communicate with your best customers (like a VIP group), but is something that can be abused really easily. Since a friend can add you to a group, all it takes is a few people adding a bunch of friends who don’t really want to be in the group into it. As those friends start seeing group posts and notifications, they get frustrated and report the group as spammy and BAM! – Facebook penalizes you! I recommend that if you are going to use a group for your business, you keep it to an exclusive “invite only” type group and that you ask permission before adding people to the group.
How can I use Facebook for my business?
Facebook knows that we want to be able to use its powerful platform for our business, so it has made ways that we can do just that.
1- Groups – and not the kind you are thinking of. You can actually group your friends, customers, hostesses, etc. into friend groups. Then when you post, you can select the groups that see that post. That way, your friends and family can see pictures of your dog or kids, but your customers and hostesses don’t.
2- Fan pages – This is THE place to conduct MOST of your business on Facebook. This is where you should be creating your online parties, posting about your parties, new jewelry and business opportunity. This is where you stay in contact with your customers!
Some people want to keep all of this on their personal Facebook timeline, but Facebook wants you to keep business stuff on fan pages. Occasionally, you can still post business related stuff on your personal timeline too but the majority of anything business related should be on your fan page.
3- Another place you can post about your business is in Facebook groups. Be sure to do your homework before going to blast a bunch of groups with the same message. Make sure that you are posting in groups that allow you to post about your business and that you aren’t posting too much. Another good rule of thumbs it to change your post from group to group rather than copy/pasting in to a bunch of different groups. Facebook could flag you for spam if you post the same thing into too many groups or if you post too quickly.
Another reason why fanpages are a good idea is because of the insights that they offer. Facebook tracks the interactions of your page with the people who like and visit it and make that data available to you so that you can continually improve it! You can tell what posts work best as well as the day/times that your posts are most viewed. Insights are only available on fanpages.
Fanpages are also public and indexed by search engines like Google and Yahoo, personal profiles (or timelines) or groups are not. This means that as you are building your business on Facebook, you are also building it up in search engines as well which is just another great way people can find you and your Paparazzi Accessories business!
Show Challenge:
If you already have a fanpage for your business, post something everyday this week on your page. Things like new products that are available, a different way to wear something (like the scarf necklace), a Style Snapshot, joke or even an inspiring quote. (Visit the Paparazzi Accessories Images and Graphics section for more ideas and things you can post!)
If you don’t have a fanpage, start one today!
Show Notes
How to use Facebook for your Business – Printable Show Notes