5 Tips for using Facebook Effectively
Posted on 11/15/10 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
You’ve been dubbed the social media marketing guru for your company, and you’ve been charged with setting up a Facebook Fan Page to spread the word about your business. Once you understand the basic mechanics of Facebook, these additional browsing and marketing tips will help you move quickly through Facebook’s extensive interface while being a successful socialite on the network.
1. Tabbed Browsing
Think of Facebook as a control panel that allows you to manage many things at once. Use it like you use Hootsuite- a social media application that allows you to manage many profiles in many tabs.
Like Hootsuite, your browser has tabs. Use them to switch back and forth between Facebook Pages, the News Feed, and your friend lists to ease your workflow. I recommend getting into the habit of right-clicking on things like profiles and applications and selecting “Open Link in New Tab” in the resulting options menu. This especially comes in handy when coding in the Static FBML app and previewing your design in a separate browser tab so you can continue working on your code without having to navigate back to the app.
2. Get to Know Your Fans
If you manage a Page, and you want to be truly social on Facebook, it will take thought, time, and genuine effort to be a personal brand there. Remember that most people are on Facebook to be with friends and communicate with one another like they do in real life social situations; hence the term social media. Very few people join Facebook with the sole intention of becoming a fan of their local dry cleaning business or even Coca-Cola. They are real people who spend their down-time (or working hours… tisk tisk) being social on the web.
You have access to everyone who has liked your Facebook Page since the day you started it. You’ll see 6 randomly generated avatars on the left side of your Page underneath the profile picture. Click the link that says “See all”, and observe the pop-up window that results.
People are listed in the pop-up window in the order in which they liked your page starting with the most recently joined at the top. Contact each one personally. Yes, to do this, you may need to overstep your privacy boundaries and expose yourself to total strangers. But as in real life, you’ll find it difficult to get others to give you honest feedback unless you open up to them first.
When doing this, many people begin to realize how out of touch with people they are. When in doubt, treat people on the web as you would in person. Introduce yourself. Here’s an example of something you might say to open the conversation with somebody new:
“Hey, I’m one of the partners with Threefold Studio. I’m our company’s lead project manager, and I teach courses with Social Media Studio. Thanks for supporting our page. Please tell me what your design interests are so we can make your online experience with us amazing.”
Be genuinely interested in what people have to say and follow up. Many surprising opportunities have arisen for us that would never have happened had we not simply asked how we can serve our fans.
*To do this, you may need to share your personal profile with strangers. Consider if this risk is worth it to you and remember why you started a Facebook Page. Facebook does give you the opportunity to conduct free market reseach, doesn’t it? This strategy may not work for all social media marketing strategies, but it will earn you a very strong fanbase. People like to know who’s behind the machine. It’s like being friends with Tom, the creator of MySpace.
3. You Choose Your Fans
By all means, suggest your new Facebook Page to all of your friends. If they like you, they’ll “like” your Page and congratulate you. Some of them may even provide you with some business leads or interested members. However, if your industry requires a very specific customer base, shotgunning every poor-old Facebook user in sight will not be an effective way of connecting people with your product or service.
If you’ve taken Social Media Studio’s “Learn Facebook, Twitter & Youtube” Course, you’ll understand the importance of organizing your contacts into lists. As a design business owner who offers services to all industries, I organize my friends into lists based on their professions, so I can easily find, tag and target whomever I need to get in touch with for a particular purpose. If you’re in the construction industry, you may organize your friends into lists like Architects, Planners, Engineers, etc… Someone in the dancewear business would be targeting Theatres and Dance Schools.
4. Stop Spamming People’s News Feeds and Inboxes
You might not even know you’re doing it. I mentioned earlier that most people on Facebook are there for recreation. Consider their potential need for your services as a bonus. If you ask them for feedback as suggested in the previous tip, I guarantee that not a single person told you they would love to be bombarded with dozens of messages about how amazing your services are. Apply this to Twitter as well.
If all of your fans are genuinely interested in you, you’ll have effective campaigns with them. Otherwise, if they’re comprised of everyone you know, your posts are most likely going ignored if not resented. You know what it’s like to receive email newsletters you reluctantly signed up for? After a while, they cloud your inbox, and you begin to dread checking your emails. Your spammy Facebook posts will have the same affect on your friends/fans, and suddenly the same people who congratulated you a couple months earlier are now slightly annoyed, and just like real life, most won’t say a thing.
5. Have Fun
Facebook is a recreational environment, and as humans, we love to be around one another. We also like to talk about the things we see and experience, which includes your brand’s effort to be a part of our lives. By being on the various social networks, you will begin to see very clearly what people are saying about you in a way that was not possible before. There’s little you can do to control it without going to great lengths to conceal or reverse it. When participating in this type of forum, learn to let go and truly appreciate the feedback that people give you. By taking this opportunity to be authentic, you will quickly understand the value that you bring to people’s lives.
