Top 5 Facebook Tips to help drive buissness you way

[NuBeginnings]

Facebook – Tip #1

If your Facebook presence is a ‘profile’ and not a ‘page’ you are at risk of losing it.

If you are using a Facebook Profile for your business, you are in violation of Facebook’s Terms of Service Agreement and therefore it can be deleted at any time by Facebook. Guess what? That also means you’ll lose all those connections you've spent forever making and friends that have joined you and ‘friended’ your profile.

Stop using a Facebook profile for your business page. Pages are for Business, profiles are for individual people (groups are for collections of people with a shared interest.

At the top of your Facebook business page next to your business name does it say “Add as Friend” or “Like”?

If it says “Like” then you’re operating a page.

If it says “Add as Friend,” you’ve got a profile, not a page and are violating Facebook’s Terms of Service Agreement.

Facebook have kindly created a useful tool to help you migrate your profile to a page.

If you have a Facebook presence as a business on Facebook it should be as a Page, not a Profile. Make the switch now and reap the rewards that are about to follow in subsequent articles.

Facebook – Tip #2

Understand why people ‘unlike’ you.

In today’s pick up/put down culture, fans of your Facebook presence (your business page, see the previous tip), can ‘unlike’ you in an instant. This effectively cuts the brand awareness and permission you have gained from that customer or consumer and stops you from communicating through Facebook in the future.

Worse still, it stops you being promoted to their friends through their profile; Remember, they’ve raved that they’re a ‘fans’ to their friends as soon as they clicked ‘like’; so now you have a dialogue with their non-diving fans also.

So why do people ‘unlike’ your brand? Here’s some insight provided by DreamGrow, and backed by the recent ExactTarget research conducted on Facebook (direct download: http://www.exacttarget.com/Resources/SFF8.pdf)

After clicking the ‘like’ button 51% of the consumers surveyed say they expect the company to send them at least a marketing message. The problem is, that 40% say they didn’t expect to receive marketing messages from the company. The 9% left over didn’t know what they expected!

This poses a big problem for you as a business, because you’re going to have to make a tough decision on which side of the fence to sit. Do you use the ‘like’ status as a sign that people want to hear from you or not?

I’d say that you start sending marketing to those that have ‘liked’ your business, those that don’t want to hear the message are going to leave, but so what? So, there are 40% of the ‘likers’ that are upset that you’ve sent them something, either the message you’ve sent is wrong, or they didn’t want to listen in the first place.

Next up is the statistic that 44% of men equate “liking” a brand with permission to send marketing messages, while 55% of women make this connection. Interesting findings, and indicates that women may be more suceptable to your marketing messages via Facebook than men, but not by much.

The top 3 reasons that people click the ‘unlike’ link on Facebook:

The company posted too frequently (Facebook 44%, Twitter 39%)

Too much marketing posts and I needed to get rid of some of it (Facebook 43%, Twitter 41%)

The content became repetitive or boring over time (Facebook 38%, Twitter 52%)

The news isn’t a great deal different for Twitter; with ˜27% of people following a brand just to receive a one-time special offer from them; something we’ll discuss a little more in the next article.

Facebook – Tip #3

Get yourself a Facebook username that points to your business page.

Vanity URL, Username, Facebook Shortname, there are many different ways of describing this feature of Facebook. One thing is for sure though; it’s a quick and easy way to point people straight to your marketing message from outside Facebook.

It makes sense to choose a name close to your business name, and then start using this in all of your communications with customers. To get started, head along to www.facebook.com/username and follow the instructions.

Remember:

A Facebook URL is like a username; once it’s taken, it’s taken and no one else can have it (without court proceedings of course!).

Choose a similar name to your business to help consumers identify you and aid you in Search Engine Listings. Choosing generic names such as ‘scuba diving in XYZ’ is likely to get revoked by Facebook and undo all your hard work.

You’ll need at least 25 people to ‘like’ your page before you can choose a username / short URL for it. So get inviting.

Don’t forget to use the link in your marketing collateral and email messages.

Once you’ve chosen a username, you cannot undo it. It’s linked to your page forever (really forever) and you cannot unlink the name. So choose wisely, sleep on it, think again, then make your decision.

Facebook - Tip #4

Facebook Page Images (that square picture in the top left of your page profile).

The great news is, that picture doesn’t have to be square and boring. The image is limited to a width of 200 pixels, and a maximum file size of 4Mb! but other than that you can do what you want with it. We’d recommend keeping the file size low in order to speed up loading, and try not to creep past 500-600 pixels tall or the image will scroll off most users’ screens.

If you’re looking for some inspiration, then check out these cool examples of business pages taking the profile image customisation to the extreme;

http://www.facebook.com/gap

http://www.facebook.com/psdtuts

http://www.facebook.com/urbanoutfitters

http://www.facebook.com/mostfamousmonkey

Facebook – Tip #5

Spread the word

The previous articles showed you how to setup your presence on Facebook, but many of your customers will first come into contact with you through regular mailings, postal drops, and your website page or forum.

Make sure you are using the Facebook ‘like’ button on your blog, website, and email links, and include the Username for your Facebook page in all correspondence with customers and potential customers.

You can use the Facebook username on email signatures, written correspondence of any kind, business cards, Christmas cards, congratulatory emails, sales receipts, and pretty much anything else you can think of. Most people use the recognisable Facebook icon to link through to their Facebook profile, and all of these can be accessed and downloaded from Facebook directly.

[Quillan]

If you have a Facebook 'page' and it is linked to your website the performance of that Facebook 'page' will effect ranking and search results placement. Google for instance looks at the Facebook 'page' activity, the more activity the higher up you go, the lower the activity the lower you go so if you can't get enough people to 'Like' your website you could actually find your website lower down in the search listings than before you even started. Facebook won't tell you this because in some ways they are not interested in peoples websites so much so you have to have a look at Google and how it evaluates social network sites that connect to your website and it's quite technical.

A lot of B&B type business's get tempted to use Facebook and fair play but don't forget you need to 'drive' your Facebook page by getting people to 'Like' your website which can be quite time consuming and lets face it we are all busy enough this time of year and don't really have that much time. So think long and hard then come up with a campaign before you go rushing off and setting a Facebook 'page' up, think about what you want it to achieve, do you think you can get it to do that and most importantly do you have the time.

Twitter is another tools you can use but again the same rules apply and if you can't get enough people to twitter with you it can effect your website ranking.

These type of sites work really well for some types of business but not for others. Personally I think Trip Advisor is probably one of the better ways of drawing in clients if your looking for 'outside' websites to help you that are free. Google Ads is another good system and targeted right can ensure you come up on the front page of every Google search but then you have to pay.

[NuBeginnings]

There are many factors that can push your rankings up and down, I think many people miss out as they don't understand the cyber world fully thus there website comes up on page 20.

I still don't fully understand google and they are constantly changing the way websites are ranked.

You are correct you have to drive your face book page other wise its a waste of time but if you don't put the effort in its no good wondering why your empt in the winter. The idea is to be full all year round and not just in the summer.

By getting people to like your page,hopefully pushes you up the google organic listing but also there friends will also see your page as they have liked it.

Trip Advisor is a good tool, but people who look at your B&B on TA are already in the market for a holiday. The idea of the face book page is to get your page in front of more people and to tempt them to come and stay with you.

Google add words great tool and can guarantee your site coming up on the first page however it is expensive and also requires a good working knowledge of add word marketing and can be expensive I know as we spend far to much with add words.

As I said in a previous post video is a tool and worth a 1000 words......

g.

[Quillan]

Full all year, now there is a dream. [;-)]

You don't have to spend a fortune on addwords, you just have to understand how it works. You can also talk to one of their advisers directly who will help you with your advert and target it correctly. Bing and Yahoo offer the same type of service and you can play one off against the other, get some deals and a technical chap to sort it out for you FOC.

I didn't quite get the point of "are already in the market for a holiday" and "tempt them to come and stay with you" the latter would imply that they also are looking for a holiday (be it themed or not) else why would they stay anywhere? The problem we all have this year is cheap all inclusive holidays, cruises even, everyone is struggling in the industry and the 'big boys' can cut to the bone and offer really good deals. Go have a look in the French travel agencies, there are some amazing bargains.

Of course the most important thing is to have a well optimised website, dies not matter how good it looks providing it's done right you should get to top of page one, just look whats there already and they are not what I would call the nicest looking websites in the world.

[NuBeginnings]

In my opinion people who are looking at trip advisor are already in the market for a holiday.

If they are viewing your B&B on trip advisor then you have a good chance that they may book with you, that is if you don't have to many negative comments !

I have never found google helpful, as for big or Yahoo. Its good to have a wide spread on your marketing campaign but google is statistically the number one search engine.

Quillian have you ever negotiated with google?

[Quillan]

[quote user="NuBeginnings"]Quillian have you ever negotiated with google?[/quote]

When I pulled my adword adverts they came to me and asked why, they made me an offer and free support which I accepted.

[crossy67]

Interesting thread.

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

[quote user="Quillan"]

If you have a Facebook 'page' and it is linked to your website the performance of that Facebook 'page' will effect ranking and search results placement. Google for instance looks at the Facebook 'page' activity, the more activity the higher up you go, the lower the activity the lower you go so if you can't get enough people to 'Like' your website you could actually find your website lower down in the search listings than before you even started. Facebook won't tell you this because in some ways they are not interested in peoples websites so much so you have to have a look at Google and how it evaluates social network sites that connect to your website and it's quite technical.[/quote]

Unless things have changed in the past year, Facebook has 'nofollow' code in it so google will not take into account the link in calculating your pagerank and overall ranking within google. However, it does not affect other search engines such as Bing and Yahoo etc.

But you will still get traffic via facebook if you're lucky.

A good free way of driving traffic to your site free of charge is to write keyword generated articles. Use the keyword tool in google adwords, find low competition keywords that have a few hundred hits a month and then write 400 word articles on it, submit them to ezinearticles.com with two links to your site. Once the articles have been published, publish them to your site as well to add more content. You'll get more traffic and quality back links to your site.

[NuBeginnings]

Make sure your article is original content i.e you have not just cut and pasted stuff from all over the web other wise your ranking could also go down !

The more blogs sites word press etc and key words you use the better however each blog must be different even if it is your own content.

The purpose of the above is to try and make sure your web site is shown when someone types in a key search term.

So for us our key search term is weight loss boot camp yours may be Luxury B&B Calais.

What ever your key words try to make sure they are relevant.

[Wilko]

Hi

THis is a little off thread but re Facebook.

When i look at traffic through my site I have recently noticed that I am getting hits from F/Book.............whenever I click on the link it goes to F/Book but says page not found

eg http://www.facebook.com/l.php

It would be interesting to know what people are saying. Does anyone know how to find out. I am not a member of F/Book, though my Mrs W is but she never posts.

Thanks for any insite.

Rgds

W

[AnOther]

What is 'Facebook' [Www]

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

[quote user="Wilko"]Hi

THis is a little off thread but re Facebook.

When i look at traffic through my site I have recently noticed that I am getting hits from F/Book.............whenever I click on the link it goes to F/Book but says page not found

eg http://www.facebook.com/l.php

It would be interesting to know what people are saying. Does anyone know how to find out. I am not a member of F/Book, though my Mrs W is but she never posts.

Thanks for any insite.

Rgds

W[/quote]

That particular link is like a bridge between facebook and the website that is being linked to an external site (yours in this case). It will not display.

You need to know the page before that 'bridge' in order to see it, but likely you will not be able to see it anyway, as it will be someone's facebook account.

[Wilko]

Thanks Richard

W

[osie]

I have started using a site called http://nibbler.silktide.com/. It helps to make your website nice and visible.

It has suggested using facebook and other social networking sites.  Hence I decided to setup facebook and the google 'plus one' button.

Tripadvisor is also great.  I use it if I go on holiday and so it makes sense for the business to use it too... Although the French are still lacking a bit behind alot of Americans/English find us with it.