Social Marketing Minute: Why Your Small Business Needs Facebook

Us members of the WebPresence™ Marketing team love to share our passion for social media and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and how we use it to make our clients successful every single day. Each week, we will post a blog about what’s going on in the WebPresence office and give you some helpful tips to help grow your business’ online presence.

We get pretty excited about Facebook in the WebPresence Marketing office here at the Automated Marketing Group! We look forward to new updates with giddy delight, read endless articles on all things Facebook, and relish in keeping each one of our clients’ Facebook pages up to date and growing strong.    Why are we so excited about Facebook in particular?

Facebook is FREE Marketing

That’s right. It does not cost a penny to sign up and create an account for your business. Although social media should never replace more traditional marketing efforts, here’s why it’s an important part of your online marketing: Facebook recently passed their 500 million member mark and more than 146,000,000 of those members are in the United States. The largest demographic utilizing the social site is between the ages of 18-54. These statistics are HUGE!

Creating a page does not mean you will connect with all of these people, of course…but there there is a pretty high likelihood that your customers and potential customers are some of those 146 million active users. Facebook gives you a platform to engage with your customer’s one on one, something that will strengthen your online reputation.

More than Just Creating a Page!

The important thing to remember, though, is that people won’t just become your fan just because you create a page for your business! You have to work at it every day…that includes telling customers about your page and then give them a reason to keep following you!

Here are the Automated Marketing Group, we help our clients by doing multiple posts every day, running exciting contests, researching helpful money-saving information that customers want to hear, asking and answering questions from customers…and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We also help our clients become advocates in their community — we research upcoming events, communicate with the chambers of commerce, promote our clients’ favorite charities, network with other businesses, and work hard to make their page on Facebook the source for all community news and notes!

And of course, I haven’t even touched on maintenance…we’re constantly monitoring number of followers, updating their accounts, adding photos, keeping track of comments, updating company info and more!

I know it sounds like a lot of work, but when it’s done right, a successful Facebook page will help to build your online social community.  The big thing to remember is “done right”!  David Rogers, the President of AMG, explains why:

“If your Facebook page reads like a Technical Service Bulletin because it’s packed with so much technical information, it will never get read.  If it looks like your 12-year-old nephew put it together because he did, nobody will read or remember it.  If your posts are full of jokes you got in your email (and that everyone else got in their email in 2003), you won’t come off as the expert, and again, your Facebook page won’t get read or remembered.”

Whether you’re talking about customer newsletters or social networking or any other internet marketing, it’s not something you should hand to just anybody.  You’ll get the best results from professionals who manage social networking full time as part of your whole web presence — including Search Engine Optimization, Content and Localization!

If you’re hesitant to start building that community because of the time commitment involved, drop us a line on the contact page or give AMG a call at 866-520-3030.

Check back next week for another reason Facebook, social media and a professional presence on the web are so important for your business!