Tag

how to use facebook for business

Facebook Promotional Guidelines: Are you breaking the rules?

By Social Media

In our business, if you care about your clients — really care about them– you don’t lead them down a primrose path. You don’t tell them it will be OK to do something even if “everyone else” is doing it. You don’t encourage them to break rules or laws; you don’t ask them to look the other way while you do so on their behalf. Facebook has very specific guidelines about promotions and contests. They are explicit. They do not want the liability of being in the middle of a contest, promotion or other rewards system. If you’re confused about what Facebook promotions are, read this page thoroughly: https://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php

Let me quote:

iv.    You must not use Facebook features or functionality as a promotion’s registration or entry mechanism. For example, the act of liking a Page or checking in to a Place cannot automatically register or enter a promotion participant.

Over and over again we see violations of this guideline.

What does Facebook say?

We reserve the right to reject or remove Pages for any reason. These terms are subject to change at any time.

That’s right. They can reject or remove Pages at any time, for any reason. Do you really want to be the consultant whose client pages are taken down due to an infraction?

 

Americans Spend More Time on Facebook Than any Other U.S. Website

By Social Media

About a year ago in a client meeting a CEO of a business I worked with said to me, “Facebook is just for kids. We don’t need to pay attention to that.”

Really?

As business owners and marketers it’s no longer possible to ignore the fact that Facebook has won the eyes and rapt attention of millions for hours every single week. Nielsen reports that Americans spend more time on Facebook than any other U.S. website. Facebook had more than 140 million visitors in May of 2011 alone.

Facebook attracts an astounding 70 percent of active internet users.

This may be stating the obvious, but it is not enough to simply have a presence for your business on Facebook. Your business, whether a consumer business or B2B should have a business page, but that’s not all. Your business should have a plan for updating the page with content valuable to your community. Someone in your organization should be responsible for generating and posting that content, for tagging and liking others’ content and pages, for generating conversation and for being responsive to the community that gathers there.

How are you managing your business’s Facebook presence?

 

I’m teaching a workshop, Social Networking for Business Growth this Wednesday — you should come!

10 Things to Do On Your Facebook Fan Page

By Communications

So many companies, retail stores, nonprofits, restaurants and small businesses are making a colossal mistake. They’re creating Facebook profiles for their businesses — not pages.

Here’s the difference: I am a person, so I have a Facebook profile. It looks like this:

FB profile

This is the Facebook page for the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport (client).
CHO page

It’s not easy to figure this out, since Facebook changes almost daily but what you want for your business or organization is an Official Page, as seen below on the right. NOT a Community Page, which is the choice on the left.

Official FB page

Once you’ve set up your official Facebook Page, here are 10 things you can do with it, to generate “likes” or fans and build your community.

1. Add all events and post them

2. Post photos from events

3. Ask the community questions

4. Introduce topics for discussion

5. Feature key volunteers/members

6. Provide educational material

7. Link to external articles and other content of interest to the organization

8. Pass along special offers to the community when available

9. Celebrate organization “wins”

10. Inform the community about legislation and advocacy action they can take when appropriate.