With over 750 million active users spending over 700 billion minutes on Facebook each month, Facebook is a valuable marketing tool for businesses. It's scale and reach means that you can effectively influence customers, whoever and wherever they may be.

 

Facebook provides a range of marketing tools - Pages, ads and social plugins -that can help you achieve this and deliver real results. Here are some tips to how to succeed with pages:

 

Set Up Your Page: Once you've created your Page, the next step is to make it represent your products and business's mission

• Photo: Use an eye-catching, recognisable photo of your business's name, storefront or popular product
• Info: Write a short blurb that clearly describes what your business is, and include helpful links and contact information
• Wall posts: Add updates, photos, videos and links about your business to your Wall. These will show up in News Feed, where your fans and their friends can comment and share
• Apps: Enhance your Page with custom apps that can let you share your menu, stream video, and more

 

Create a Page Strategy: Having a plan will help you create an authentic, consistent "voice" for your page, so your fans know what to expect

• Set some goals: Use your goals to shape the content on your Page to ensure it is useful and relevant
• Share exclusive content: Post photos, videos, menus or other "sneak peaks" about new products and events
• Check your page daily: Set aside 5-10 minutes each day to post updates and respond to comments
• Create a Conversation Calendar: This will help you remember when,where and what to post
• Responding to Wall posts from your customers and updating your Page on a timely basis, allows you to keep in touch with customers just as you would when they're visiting your physical store location

 

Build Your Community: There are a number of ways to increase awareness and bring more people to your Page

• Use what you have: Add calls to action such as "Like us on Facebook" on in-store signs, emails and business cards
• Run Facebook Ads and Sponsored Stories: Reach your ideal audience, as well as their friends, to drive word of mouth marketing at scale
• Get the Like button on your website: Make it easy for people to like your page, even when they're not on Facebook

 

Learn and Grow: Check the metrics on your Page Insights Dashboard regularly to learn:

• How your Page is performing
• What day of the week most people visit
• How often people comment
• Which posts are most engaging
• How to improve your Page strategy

 

This really is all you need to start making the most of your Facebook business Page. For more detailed information on creating your Page or marketing on Facebook in general, visit the Facebook for Business site at www.facebook.com/business [1] orlike the Facebook Marketing solutions Page(www.facebook.com/marketing [2]) to get regular updates on the latest tools available to you on Facebook.