Leveraging Social Media to Grow Your Business[1]
Creating a great front door… that links Your website… links to youtube, and that makes you “googleable”!
You need to be a fan, a friend, and a fool to market yourself today.
Your front door is your website!
Leveraging social media…
After you sign up for a facebook account…
Target Your Profile
Go to Settings and their you have a ton of choices to make about your account. You will deal with settings, networks to join… you will need a valid email to join a network…mobile… i.e whether or not you want to receive sms texts to your phone. … language settings, and payment settings for buy adds and sending gifts. Once you have finished this you will have made the choices about who will see your information. I suggest that you make yourself as public as you can.
Creating Groups
“Thou shall not bore, and thou shall not offend”
Go to the Info tab…
Click on my groups or groups tab.
Click on create a new group tab.
Now you can create a group with your company name if you wish or group that is relative to what your company does. However, Holzner suggests that you create a business Page instead of a group. Groups are for discussion and entertainment and information. Pages provide general information for and about your business and what you do.
You will want to search groups to see if your group name exists already before you create it. I have thought about creating a group called… I love Jesus, but I hate Christians. This group would be a lot of fun for discussion and sharing my faith.
You will have to decide…
Name
Network
Type of Group
Office
Address if desired
Click the create button to create your group.
Invite friends to join your group.
You will want to manage your group as you go.
Creating Pages
Go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php in your browser. You will have to be signed in first.
Once you are there follow the prompts. Choose your category (new business… etc. and create a new page)
Now you can begin to build your new page. Click on the Edit my page and follow the prompts.
Settings, Wall settings, Moblie, Applications such as discussion boards, events, links, notes, photos, video, and any other applications you wish to create.
Now once you have created and edited your page you can link it to twitter and other social media sites to tie yourself to the front door of your website.
Hosting your own Facebook Events…
Once you have a group or page you can create events that each host.
You go to manage your group and create an event. The event links people to your front door. Now the thing about events is that they have to fit with what you are doing or they will be viewed as spam.
Go to your wall… Click on the calendar icon and create an event that others can come to. Now for the chamber you could create your event and have it hit all your fans, friends, and their fans and friends. Then people sign up for the event as to whether or not they are attending.
Follow the prompts.
Links. Use the links for on your page as administrator to give people greater information on what you do.
You can also link your facebook page with a little work to videos… nothing over 2 minutes is acceptable so keep that in mind.
Play with the applications
Down on the left hand side of the page at the very bottom there is an applications button. When you click on a who list of applications will come up for you to pursue.
Some of note are marketplace, polls, gift, links, and notes. You can also use the “browse more applications” button at the bottom to research greater possibilities for networking yourself with your social contacts.
Practice developing your advertisement
Go to your profile click on it. Go to info click on it. On the right hand side there will be a “create and ad” button click on it and follow the prompts. This is a great tool if you have a marketing budget that allows you use it.
You begin by creating a short tag line and marketing campaign. Just follow the prompts. What is so great about this application is that it allows you to target your audience. For example our audience is 25-45 single, married, with children living in the south shore of Hillsborough County. Our add just says, “Come as you are!” Just follow the prompts. When you get to the end you choose how you are going to pay. You can pay by the click or by the thousand. You designate how long the add will run and how much a day you have to spend.
Links
I believe the key to making this work is a great web page to send people to. I want to encourage you to send people to your website, and to make everything that you put into print, handout, be an arrow to your front door.
A well done video on what you do is a must today. We are media savy people and we know when something is done well.
Go to the applications button.
Go to the links button.
Add the websites, blogs, and youtube links that you have to your facebook page. Here you can actually learn how to share your links and videos with others.
Round Table:
I want you to spend some time being foolish by creating a great group for your business.
Take the next couple of minutes discuss the importance of media to your business. What is your next step in leveraging media to grow your business?
[1] Facebook Marketing; Steve Holzner: Que Publishing, Indianapolis, Indiana 46240
