Unless you have been living under a rock, it is not possible that you haven’t been asked by someone to connect with them on Facebook.
Facebook is all over the place. Love it, Hate it but you cannot ignore it. And why would you want to ignore it. If you are a start-up entrepreneur, there is nothing like Facebook to give it the boost it needs.
How, you ask, while there are many advantages, let me list the top five :-
• Visibility – Facebook has more than 250 million active users. A good percentageof those are your potential clients. If linked and networked correctly, a Facebook page gives your business a visibility that is almost impossible to achieve through any other medium.
• Customer Engagement – Facebook is the perfect platform to explain your service, understand expectations and acquire feedback. This also gives you the opportunity to connect with customers on a personal level that is impossible elsewhere. Even businesses like Coca Cola have a Facebook page, that must mean something. No one is actually going to buy a coke because of an FB page; why then, would they want a FB page? Simple, it offers a platform for customer engagement. Last seen, the official Coca Cola Facebook page has over 4.24 crore likes!
• Search Engine Optimization – Facebook pages feature in the top 5% of the Google searches for any topic. FB places your business right in the faces of the audience that is specifically searching for your services; this kind of optimization is what every online presence aims at.
• Promotion & Branding – Facebook is an excellent way of branding. You can promote your business through a Facebook page by recommending them to your contacts and then asking them for referrals. People generally warm up to these referrals as they come from someone they trust. By keeping the page interesting, relevant and updated, you can draw a lot of customer interest.
• Price – Yes! It is free. Making a page, holding contests, customer engagement, all the effort needed for turning interest into sale is free. Now, that’s something which should be taken advantage of.
It is however important to remember that your Facebook Page must be professional. You cannot look unprofessional, silly or have redundant information. It should also be managed properly. On-time responses, regular updating is all a part of the game. To avoid these blunders, many companies opt to have a social media expert managing the page on their behalf.
