“Why bother keeping up with Facebook? What does my business gain from Facebook? It’s not ruling my income, so why should I waste time and money on it?”
Don’t get me wrong, those are plausible questions that nearly every business should ask itself. Naturally, there’s no use in investing valuable resources without a guarantee of ROI (return on investment). But what’s wrong here is your perception of Facebook’s purpose.
The world has gone social crazy
Mobile technology is overtaking the use of personal desktops because, let’s face it, they’re just easier and more accessible. Facebook is the biggest social giant out there and they’ve ruled the roost for years, and probably will in years to come with 680,000,000 mobile users, and growing!
But what most people don’t realise is that Facebook is not a direct sales tool. It isn’t a different version of eBay where you list your services and throw them in people’s faces. Consumers are smarter and businesses need to not only acknowledge that, but work with it.
People now need to be persuaded about a business’s authority, knowledge and personality before committing to a sale. Social media allows businesses to show their audience who they are, what they’re about, the valuable (and sometimes free) knowledge that they share as well as the support they can offer. I’ve written a nifty little 7 Step Guide for creating the perfect Facebook post to help you organically reach your existing fans, if you’re a little stuck on how and what to share and when.
The social aspect of Facebook for business isn’t about selling your services. That’s what their advertising services are for.
If you are social, then be chatty – not salesy
I think what most people struggle to realise is that Facebook for business has now become a pay-to-play platform if you want to gain any money out of it. By all means, you can make the most out of its’ free features and post great content to your hearts’ content, but Facebook now won’t guarantee it’ll make it into any of your fans’ newsfeeds, especially if all your doing with your content is selling.
We’re sad to say that the free services aren’t built to give you an income. We’ve all raised our shaking fists to Facebook – “how dare they not put my lovely, sparkly content in all of my fans’ newsfeed!” and our frustration hasn’t got us anywhere.
Like we have with technology, we as businesses have to adapt. Buttons on mobiles are just about a thing of the past (and what a great tragedy that is, I still don’t have the heart to throw away my dusty old Nokia *sobs*), cars are going to start driving themselves and rolls of film for cameras are now an extortionately expensive vintage accessory. Trends move on and change, and over time Facebook have adjusted their complicated algorithm to make it harder for businesses to organically gain traffic in a bid to stop businesses being salesy with their posts and to push you towards their paid advertising services.
Catch up on my previous article about the 7 Steps to creating the perfect Facebook post about how best to optimise your posts to organically reach your existing fanbase.
Change your perception
Facebook has nearly every demographic audience you can think of because there are now at least 1,310,000,000 unique monthly users. If there’s an audience for your product or service then you can bet that that audience is also on Facebook. That fact itself should answer every question of doubt that you had at the beginning of this blog. There’s no reason for your business to not be on Facebook.
Use Facebook to create a tribe, a group of special people in-the-know about your brand who support and follow your movements and who you share useful industry tips to. Become the brand they think of when they come across an issue relevant to your industry and be there to answer their questions.
The point of Facebook is to just be present.
People may not be in the right place to buy from you, or even consider your services, but by posting regularly, sharing industry knowledge and interacting with other brands on Facebook helps keep you top of mind to those who matter, whilst proving your authority within the industry.
“How the hell am I going to wrap my head around Facebook?”
I understand that Facebook can be incredibly difficult to understand, knowing what to do with it can be even trickier! I’ve recently attended some awesome training on Facebook Advertising and in light of this, I’ve decided to do a mini blog series about how businesses can use Facebook for themselves. This is the first blog post out of 5, in my next post I’ll be talking about the difference between a personal and business profile, image dimensions, importance of completing your “About” section and much more.
If there’s anything specific you’d like me to cover then just get in touch or comment below! Sign up to our newsletter (the beautiful big box at the top of this page on the right hand side) to make sure you don’t miss my next post.
