Put Facebook to Work for Your Business

I watched a truly awful movie called Sharknadoon on TV the other night. It is a movie about sharks and tornados combining to create carangage in Los Angeles. Sharks swimming through city drains, flying through the air and even biting through car roofs. And, the main character's name is Fin! It's such a bad movie that once upon a time, it would have slipped into oblivion, but not in 2013. This movie went viral a few months ago when it got millions of shares on social media.

As a small business you won't get that sort of reach on social media (although there's no telling which Youtube video will go viral. Understanding how to use social media can help you convert a lead into a customer. Now that is something that every small business owner will want to think about.
Facebook is a good a place to start because it has such a wide reach. Everybody is on facebook, aren't they? It helps to know a little bit about what you are doing before you start, so here is a brief introduction to how to get Facebook working for your business.

What's the Buzz About the Newsfeed?

The Facebook Newsfeed is the list of status updates, photos videos etc from people and pages you follow. It is the most important page in Facebook and is constantly updating.

It helps if you understand that most people who Like your page won't actually come to the page. They will see your updates in their own Newsfeed. You've got stiff competition there because it is
vying for attention with updates from their family, friends, celebrity pages and so on.

Are you surprised to hear that not everyone who likes your page will see your posts? The number who will depends on how engaged your audience is with what your post. When we talk about engagement that is the people who like, comment and share your posts. As a rough guide, if you have 100 fans, about 16% will see your updates, but this can be more or less, depending on the level of engagement.

If Facebook is going to show you a post it will likely be in the first couple of hours. If there is activity in the post, it will continue to show up in the Newsfeed. If there is no interaction it will disappear quickly, so without engagement your posts sink pretty quickly.

Like, Share, Comment; Just Do It!

It's safe to say Facebook puts weight on all forms of engagement - likes, comments and shares. There is some indication that sharing links in Facebook can help with your Google ranking, so that is one more thing to keep in mind.

Facebook keeps a tally of the last 50 pages or people that someone interacts with, so they are more likely to see content from these 50 pages in their Newsfeed. Apply this to what you post you can see that one of the keys to success is to create and share content that encourage people to interact with you. This will help to keep your page visible in their Newsfeed. When people engage they are saying "This is important to me".

Are you beginning to see why engagement is important?

Response times in interactions are something else to think about. An average response time from a small business or brand page is 14 hours, but people expect a quicker response than that. Aim for a faster response and it could become part of your competitive advantage.

Some of you may be thinking about the low engagement you currently have on your Facebook page and wondering how to jump-start the page. Click over to our blog to find out how to use promoted posts to kick-start your Facebook engagement,