Facebook is here and from the looks of it, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Its cultural relevance and social media dominance raise the question of whether or not your business needs a Facebook page. Unfortunately, it’s not a simple yes or no answer. Without taking your business, target audience, and objectives into consideration, the best answer we can give you is “maybe.”
Now, we know “maybe” is not particularly helpful, and we want to be helpful. If you don’t yet have a Facebook page, you are probably already very familiar with the reasons against having it. For many small businesses, Facebook (and social media in general) seems like too much work. Maybe you don’t know how to use it, or you think you don’t have time to manage it, or you assume your customers aren’t on Facebook. All valid reasons. But, there are also a lot of reasons why you may want to consider Facebook for your small business. Since these may not be as well known, we thought it would be most helpful to look at these reasons and show you why we think a Facebook business page could be a good idea.
You get a customer, you get a customer, everyone gets a customer!
At the close of 2016, Facebook had 1.86 billion active users. Despite the rapid emergence of social media channels over the past few years, Facebook still reigns as the largest social media audience. And the more active users means the more potential customers for you. Of course, they aren’t all going to become customers, but Facebook’s extensive user base does open up new possibilities to find and interact with past, current and prospective customers.
The more ways to find you, the better.
We have a facebook page. Until recently, we rarely posted much. Currently, we have less than 100 people following us (and I am pretty sure we are related to over half of them). But, even with that minimal activity, if you search “Mackey Creative Lab” on Google, our Facebook page comes up as the 2nd and 3rd results, only beat out by our website. Having a Facebook page (as with other social media accounts) helps build your online presence. It gives potential customers another way to find you and interact with you. Plus, presenting the world with a consistent message across multiple online platforms grows your brand, increases its legitimacy and helps build trust amongst customers.
Nothing good comes for free unless your name is Facebook
Creating a facebook page for your business costs nothing. Sure, there are ways to spend money when using it — paid Facebook ads, hire someone to create graphics, photos or videos for your posts, and more— but just owning real estate for your business on Facebook is free.
Not only is it free, but there’s a good chance it already exists—even if you didn’t create it. That’s because when someone, anyone, checks into a place that doesn’t have a page, Facebook creates an “unmanaged” page to represent the location. This page shows up on Facebook (and possibly Google) when someone searches for you, displaying anything another user has posted as well as any business location or hours information they are able to automatically pull. So, since the page is free and it may already exist, investing a little time to “claim the page” and update it with correct information that’s consistent with your brand, will only help.
Want more website visitors? Get them from Facebook
The most important thing is to differentiate between why we use personal Facebook pages (sharing photos of our puppies, kids, and food) and why we use business Facebook pages (to not share photos of our puppies, kids, and food). On a business page, Facebook posts can, and should, be used to link back to your website. Put links to your website anywhere on Facebook that makes sense. The ultimate goal is to get users off of Facebook and onto your website. When done correctly, Facebook will help increase traffic to your website, which will help your overall search rankings.
There’s no such thing as TMI on Facebook
Should you decide to venture into some paid advertising through Facebook, you will be welcomed with the most sophisticated set of audience demographics available on the internet. Facebook advertising lets you sift through 1.6 billion users’ location, language, device, interests, behavior, gender, age, and education options to find the potential clients you want to target. The ability to target such specific demographics helps generate more qualified leads, making sure that the money and effort you cough up to post to Facebook is “well spent.”
For a small business, Facebook presents a cost-effective and simple marketing tool to try and build your audience. Ultimately, how much it benefits your business will depend on the efforts put forth in building your Facebook presence and how that incorporates into a larger digital marketing strategy. But, even if those efforts are small and you don’t have a larger digital marketing strategy, Facebook could still help some, and probably won’t hurt. Still not sure if you need a Facebook page? Or, are you convinced, but need help setting it up? Let us know. We can talk with you about Facebook as it relates to you and your business as well as help you to get it going.
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