Making Facebook Work For You

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Does your business need a Facebook page? Do you have a Facebook Page for your business but have no idea how to use it? Do you keep hearing that everyone is on Facebook, but you don't know how to effectively make it work for you?

Setting up a page on Facebook isn't hard to do. Making it look FABULOUS takes some tweaking. Building an audience and maintaining a presence takes a lot of work!

When you're a busy small business owner, Facebook and Twitter can take a back seat to more urgent daily business. It can feel like a drain on precious resources that are already spread too thin.

But when used effectively, Facebook can be a powerful tool for your business. You can attract new customers, boost sales, and you can get valuable feedback from your customers with a few clicks of your mouse.



In January, Facebook announced "graph search" - changing everything and making social media even more important for small businesses.

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From venturebeat.com:
Facebook’s new graph search is going to allow Facebook’s billion-plus members to easily and quickly find the best local businesses – according to their friends, and other locals. Restaurants, dentists, doctors, or carpenters: Facebook will highlight the services and businesses that your friends like, use, comment on, and respond to. Facebook has a billion-plus members who have uploaded 240 billion photos and created over a trillion connections between themselves — and with businesses.

Graph search is a big deal — and a big shift for local search.

Local businesses have already jumped on the social bandwagon, but now it’s not just about presence. And it’s not just about doing it because everyone else is doing it. Now, it’s about maximizing social visibility — social media optimization — just as smart businesses have worked for years on search engine optimization.

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No likes? It’ll be hard to appear in social search. And while fake likes from users in Kazakstan might make you look good on the outside, they won’t translate to business because they won’t be truly local. Lots of likes but no interactions? Again, it’ll be hard to gain visibility when local people search for the best businesses. Facebook will be looking at a wide variety of social signals when determining what to show users in response to their queries.

What’ll work?

“Being active, having good content, and participating regularly are all key,” Lyman says. “It’s now beyond the like … you need to engage your customers somehow and get them to participate. Increasing your engagement will increase your visibility, so interactivity is the key.”

In other words, local businesses that have been dedicated to growing a loyal, responsive fanbase by both doing great work and being active in engaging local people via Facebook are best positioned to win at the new social media optimization.

Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/15/small-business-of-america-double-down-on-facebook-now-to-be-part-of-the-new-graph-search/#Z9QSPiXiKFVCgeZw.99

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