Market your business for free on facebook

How to use Facebook for business

Facebook is part of the new business revolution, enabling businesses both small and large to reach vast amounts of people with their message. However a backlash against people using social media to ‘sell’ to their friends or followers is underway. What usually ahppens is that someone joins a group, drops a link to their website(which no one ever clicks on) and then leaves the group never to return.

Research shows that the average customer needs to have contact with a vendor approximately 7 times before they will seriously consider buying it. It is important that a person feels they can trust a product or vendor before they buy it, and that trust can be formed by repetitive contact and can take some time to build – this is where the traditional wisdom of ‘7 contacts’ comes from. For some people, this may be a leap of faith from “link dropping” but coaching and training can help…

The good thing about Facebook and other social media is that those ‘7 contacts’ can happen relatively quickly and if somebody accepts your friend request you already have an advantage over a ‘stranger’ advertising the same product.

But if you try to sell to people straight away you will lose the trust you are building with them very quickly!

So if you are planning to use Facebook for business make sure your emphasis is on networking, go into it with an open mind and be prepared also to prove yourself or your product to people the same way as you would have to with any other kind of promotional activity.

To show your business in its best light you need to make sure your ‘profile’ is suitable for business purposes, having a load of friends posting raunchy comments or pictures of you is not going to help your professional image!

Facebook is great for friends and family so you may want to get around this by setting up a separate profile for work, Rumours are that this is not allowed by facebook but evidence supporting this is thin on the ground. Of course use a different email address and password too.

Your profile picture should also be businesslike, but still friendly – no cameraphone shots of you with the Union Jack painted on your face at a rock concert! You should definitely use a professional to shoot some for you – and try to change around from time to time.

However do make sure that your business profile is not completely devoid of all personality, facebook is about building relationships with people first and foremost, and any good salesperson knows that people buy from other people. And their preference will always be to buy from people they know and trust.
Just think about what goes on there – is it material you would want a co-worker or a potential client to see? If it’s not don’t put it on there – and if somebody puts something on your wall or profile you are not comfortable with – get rid of it! (You can easily do this by clicking ‘remove’ on the top right side of each post).