During the past years, social media has made a dramatic impact on small and big businesses alike. It has taken word-of-mouth and put in on steroids. Instead of your customers spreading the word about your business at a dinner party, or to a friend, they can now reach all of their friends, acquaintances, and even people they don’t know in seconds with Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Google+ and more.

Facebook, in particular, has greatly helped small businesses and is continuously doing so. With more than 800 million active users on Facebook (50% of whom are on Facebook every single day), each user has on average of 130 friends. My head almost explodes when I try to do the math of figuring out the potential reach this can have when someone says something about your business, good or bad.

If you want to bring your business online, marketing on Facebook is one of the first places to start, up there with Claiming your business on Google Places

The best part is that it can have huge benefits at no cost. However, it does take commitment, time and attention, but if you cultivate it well, your customer base will grow.

Create a Facebook page

A Facebook page is the best way to promote your business online. You must have a personal account to create a page. To create a page, first login to Facebook, then go here.

Pages can be created for companies, small and big businesses, brands, celebrities, products and more. I suggest starting with one page so that you can give it the proper attention it deserves.

Make your page interesting by posting pictures and videos. Be unique and interesting. Post a profile picture that best showcases your business/product line.

Focus on increasing your fan base

This will be slow initially. When marketing on Facebook, start by promoting your page to your Facebook friends. You can also join forums and be active on other social networking sites to make your business presence known. You can put your Facebook page link in your forum signatures, email signatures, etc. Blog about it, tweet about it, whatever you can think of to get the word out there. And ask people to ‘like’ your page. You need a call to action; people respond to that. And over time you’ll find more ways to drive leads to your Facebook page.

Integrate Facebook with your other social networking accounts

If you Twitter, you can automatically have your tweets post on your Facebook page. To do this, login to your Twitter account and go to your Profile page. At the bottom will be an options to ‘post your Tweets to Facebook’.

You can also do the reverse – have your Facebook posts automatically tweeted. To do this, login to Facebook, and in the search bar at the top, start typing ‘twitter’. When the ‘Twitter’ app appears in the list, select it and follow the instructions.

If you have a Google+ account or LinkedIn account, you can link those up as well (and go ahead and join me while you’re there!). Use your judgement on what accounts to link together. On one hand, I find that people generally keep up with one or two social sites, but not all of them. So it’s good to be able to reach as many of them as you can. On the other hand, you don’t want to flood people with duplicate content all over the place.

Build strong relationships

Start by building a good relationship with other people. Never overdo your promotion by constantly talking about your business.

Focus on attracting quality followers, not merely gaining a huge number of likes in a short span of time. When someone likes your page, contact that person immediately. Build trust among your customers. Focus on creating a good connection with each of them. This way, they may also recommend your page to their friends and acquaintances. Word of mouth is still one of the best ways to promote a business, both online and offline. And online it’s completely turbo-charged and somewhere you need to be.

Get engaged

The Facebook page is created primarily to promote your business. However, don’t forget that it is a social networking site. Therefore, you need to interact and have fun with other users without constantly pushing them to purchase your products.

In order to keep the attention of your fan base, you need to find ways to keep them entertained. How do you do this? You can post entertaining quotes and statuses every now and then. You can start discussions and ask them questions to get conversations happening on your Facebook wall. Remember, you must give people a reason to keep coming back.

You can also offer incentives, like coupons and freebies. Reward loyal customers accordingly. If you make an effort to make your fans happy, they will definitely keep on coming back.

Remain committed

Showcase your product line by posting videos and pictures. Always make it a point to keep your Facebook page constantly updated with quality, relevant content. Tag your fans if you have new products available. Encourage them to tag themselves or friends with new pictures or videos in your page. This is one of the best marketing on Facebook strategies for product promotion.

Becoming an expert in Facebook marketing won’t happen overnight. Think of this as a learning experience. You will make mistakes along the way. Learn from them to develop your strategy. Always find ways to enhance your knowledge. Research is the key. Learn marketing on Facebook from the experts by looking at what other businesses are doing do attract loyal followers.

And remember, quality over quantity, both in the people that ‘like’ your page, and the content that you post.

I hope you find this helpful, and as always, send feedback to me at mail@evergreenhq.com or on Twitter @macmartine and @evergreenhq

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