How Can Facebook Help Your Small Business?

You might be thinking Facebook is a social networking site not a shopping networking site, then how Facebook could help your small business?

Well! There is a way how Facebook can really help your small business to take off. This is the reason why companies are creating and maintaining a Fan Page on Facebook? Isn’t it right?

It really does not necessary that everyone on Facebook would buy your product however the relationship that you build with the community is really going to expand your business online in a great way.

So here are I tell step by step procedure that allows you to use Facebook to expand your Small business.

Step1: Create a Frontier Where You Can Spread a Word about Your Business

First thing you need to do is creating a fan page of your business on the Facebook. A fan page on Facebook help you to develop a brand on the Internet, so that customers, employees, businesses and media houses can know about your company.

Hence, give extra care while creating a Facebook Fan Page. Your banner image must reflect your business and people should be able to relate with it.

Fan Page is not like profiles, where only members can access, it is for everybody.

Step 2: Getting Traffic to Your Fan Pages

Once, you have created a Fan Page now you got to pull some traffic. In fact, this is the most difficult part because how you are going to do it.

Well! There are dozens of methods that you can engage with but only few works the way you wanted.

You can turn Facebook members into Fans, Fans into customers by cross promoting your Fan Page and Website. So use all the methods to get traffic to the Fan Page and divert it to your website.

Step 3: No Running Away from SEO

Yes! You cannot run away from SEO if you want genuine organic traffic coming from Google search engine. Google has Social Search feature that allows ranking pages and profiles from Web 2.0 sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn etc.

Hence, if your Facebook fan page has a lot of followers and comments then it is quite possible that it could be ranked on the top of Google search results. Therefore, you get huge traffic to your Fan Page and website.

So you need to care about SEO otherwise you are missing something.

Step 4: Build Your Own Followers and a Community

One of the great things about social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter is that you could get people to follow you. These are your own followers that could be future potential customers.

You need to get a following and build a network of people that admire and understand the business you are promoting.

It is not hard to get a following if you create good content and update it on regular basis. Someone must read the comments by your followers and respond them back.

Step 5: Ask Your Employees to Connect with Your Fans and Followers

You can use your employees and other staff members for spreading a word about your business. You can even hire a dedicated social media manager who can connect with not only Facebook fans but also other social platforms like Twitter & Google+ to grow your business.

They connect with your Facebook Fans and other followers. Your employers can send them messages to individuals or groups by country, state, city, gender and according to their age group.

Use the event app, and schedule special events, promotions and send invitations to few selected Fans or members who live in the city or near the venue where event is going to take place.

Your employees could be a great help.

Step 6: Improve Relations with Your Future Customers

You must keep in mind that your fans and followers are future customers. Hence, you have got to convert these prospects into customers.

You don’t always have to sell something to your followers. You can help them by giving some tips and solving their problems. You can connect with followers and ask what they need, you can offer them solutions and they might like it.

Step 7: Develop a Brand for Your Business

Facebook gives you an amazing opportunity to develop a brand for your business. Branding is very important if you want to expand your business.

In fact, only 25 percent of people on Facebook buy something, others are just for fun. So these others could help you building your brand. You can get your followers to spread a nice word about your company and its product.

Hence, your followers and Fans could help you to develop your brand and expand your business.

Step 8: Find Out What Your Followers are saying

Eventually you have to know what exactly your followers and fans have to say about your business. Do they like it or they expect something better. Well! You have to find out to improve your business.

Ask them what they feel about other products in the market. So you can get what they have to say about products of your competitors.

Facebook Fan Pages include the Discussion tab and it encourages discussions among your followers.

Step 9: ROI Analysis Tools

Facebook has Page Insights tools and dashboard that allows you to analyze the marketing and communication things by exposing data. These data are related to interactions with your followers and fans like Comments, Wall Posts, Likes etc.

You can analyze all the parameters like Fan Demographics – age, gender, country, location etc to know more about them. If know more about your followers then you could create a marketing strategy that is much targeted.

You can sell products more effectively if you know the exact demographics of your followers.

Step 10: Keep an Eye on Your Competition

Finally, if you had to succeed then you must know what others are doing. You must know their strategies how they are marketing their business.

Go to their Fan Page see what they are doing about building their brand. If you think that they are better than you then learn from them and incorporate into your page.

Likewise you have to follow everything about your competitors. You can remodel after them and use their strategy.

You don’t have to fear your competitors, you just have to learn from them and implement it. Hence, keeping an eye on your competitors is very important on Facebook.

So these were 10 steps that you can take to expand your business using Facebook. In fact, not just Facebook but other social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn etc can be very useful too.

Follow these 10 steps one by one and you will see how with the help of social media platform like Facebook your business expands on the Internet.