While most marketers and online businesses have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon, some still aren’t putting the same effort into the tremendous free marketing opportunities available on Facebook. Facebook has more than 4x the US users, even if the demographics are roughly the same. Not every Facebook user is a Twitter user and visa-versa, so it makes sense to market with both sites wherever possible. In this article, I’ll explore the two primary free marketing opportunities and explain how you can use them to your greatest advantage as a small business owner.
Facebook Fan Pages
Setting up a Facebook fan page is a great way to retain and communicate with fans or customers. Fan pages can also save massive amounts of time, because they’re less invasive than an email. You wouldn’t necessary send out several email blasts just to remind people to come to your seminar or mixer, but a couple of quick Facebook posts (one or two a day) are perfectly acceptable. Don’t abuse the system though, if you post too much, fans will get annoyed and “un-fan” your page.
Unlike following someone on Twitter, becoming a Facebook fan is often a more deliberate, thought-out choice. Fan Pages are predominantly displayed on users Facebook profile. And, every time someone fans a page it says “John Smith just became a fan of Fan Page X” on friend’s news feeds, which can help your fan count snowball. However, when a user becomes a fan of something it is broadcast to his or her friends, so most users only fan things they really love. For all these reasons fan pages can be a superb marketing tool, but you’ve got to make sure you’ve got something to offer to turn users into fans. Some examples of great marketing posts would be:
- Special offers, sales or discounts on products or services
- Sneak peaks of new merchandise
- Great articles or advice related to your product or service
When you post an article or webpage on your fan page, it is displayed across all your fans news feeds (while group posts are not), with a link to your website, an article photo, and excerpt from that article or webpage. Oncemore, you can publish your RSS feed content automatically via services like Twitter Feed http://twitterfeed.com , so it can take no extra effort at all to post consistently.
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