Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Facebook Business Pages

Facebook is now so popular that business owners can no longer consider it as a site only people who want to connect online.
In fact, in September 2010, Facebook surpassed Google in regards to the amount of time users spent on their site. Facebook now states that members spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook! When you consider that there were over 33 billion searches on Google in the same month you have some idea how big Facebook really is. Everyone wants to get to page one of Google but when you have a captive audience of over 600 million active users isn’t it time that your business took advantage and had its own Facebook business page?
With Facebook’s incredible popularity across diverse age groups, integrated email applications, and now with the new Bing search integration. Now more than ever before Google has real competition and is in the process of having regular disagreements with Facebook. As a result of recent changes to include Bing search results on Facebook a user no longer need to visit Google for searches or log off to use an email application. All designed by Facebook to make sure that a member stays on the Facebook site longer and longer. Pretty soon they may be able to experience the Internet fully without leaving Facebook. Already more than 50% of the entire Facebook membership actively logs into Facebook every day, that’s over 300 million people! Facebook is now so important to your potential customers’ lives that it is essential for your business to have a Facebook business page where your prospects are hanging out on a daily basis.
If you’re not already convinced, let’s clear up a few things that we have found have confused business owners about Facebook. Firstly, a Business Page is not a personal profile, it’s a separate entity that shows exactly what you are good at.
Are Business Pages Also Called Fan Pages?
If you’ve been using Facebook for a while you may remember that Facebook used to call Business Pages – Fan Pages. Additionally, it used to be that someone became a fan of your Fan Page. Now they need to “like you.” By simply clicking the “like” button on your Facebook Business Page. Facebook may have changed the titles as they become more and more aware of their own global domination but a Fan Page is no different to a Business Page – they are one and the same.
All Facebook Business Pages start off with the set-up of a personal Facebook profile. You can’t just jump to the Facebook Business Page set up. This is because the email address and name that you use for your personal profile must be one connected to a person and not a general catchall email like info@mycompany.com. Ideally this should be an email address with restricted access. If you have an employee set up your Facebook Business Page account and the personal profile portion of your Facebook Business Page, you don’t want to connect the new account to the employee’s own personal email address. If the employee does ever leaves your employment, you could lose complete access to your Facebook Business Page, all of your accumulated fans, and potentially have no control over any of the content on your Facebook Business Pages after their departure.

Why Exactly Would a Business Owner Want a Business Page?
Facebook Business Pages provide a perfect opportunity to contact all people who “Like” your Facebook Business Page with one click newsletters, interactive discussion questions, creating a forum, setting up events and inviting fans to attend, and even the ability to create specialised welcome and shopping pages. Your Facebook Business Page operates like a mini website with a captive audience of 600 million potential customers
Creating Your Business Page Vanity URL
Once you have 25 people who have clicked that they “Like” your Facebook Business Page, you can select a short and easy to remember name to promote your Facebook Business Page on your website and business card.
Your Facebook Business Page goes having a long and meaningless URL to one that simply says www.facebook.com/yourbusiness. It is very important to understand that once you have selected your Facebook URL you will not be able to change the name, so select carefully.
Best Practice Tips for Keeping Your New Facebook Business Page Updated
Sometimes new Facebook Business Page owners get excited and post what seems like a constant flow of information on their wall. It is important to understand that what you post on your wall is posted on the wall of the people who have clicked “Like” on your page. We are able to handle all of the Facebook Business Page updating on your behalf. Facebook is not likeTwitter where the more posts, or “tweets” as they are called create greater responses. On Facebook Business Pages 5 to 10 status updates a day could get you blocked or hidden by fans when they feel you have inundated their wall with your daily or hourly updates.
Conclusion
We hope that this has helped to introduce you to Facebook Business Pages. If you haven’t set up a Facebook Business Page, now’s the time to consider it before someone else does. Facebook is only getting more popular and is actively seeking to encourage the business community into their website with demographic based pay per click advertising and the new integrated search with Bing.com. We would be more than happy to show you some of the ideas that we have used to not only create Facebook Business Pages for business owners. More importantly we’d love to show you what effect a Facebook Business Page has had on creating new business opportunities.
If you’d like a free, no obligation chat about how we can help establish your business with a Facebook Business Page of its own then send us an email and we’ll be more than happy to talk you through what’s involved
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