Facebook Marketing Strategies That Actually Make a Difference

Just because you’re adding more friends to your Facebook page doesn’t mean your marketing strategy is working. If you’re not having meaningful discussions with your friends, networking, and meeting clients as a result, you’re not using Facebook as well as you could be. This free tool has the potential to help you connect with clients around the world, but you need to learn how to actually use your Facebook page as more than just a place to feel popular and liked.

Get Others to Like You

Okay, it’s true—you do need to build up the friends on your business page if you want to increase your odds of seeing value from your Facebook account. There are a number of ways you can do this. The most obvious way is to suggest the page to all of the friends you already have. This will encourage them to sign up to receive updates from you and will help to encourage others to see what your page is about. After all, if someone’s friend “liked” your page, another person in his or her friends list might like you, too. Every week, you can suggest to your new friends to add you to their account. You do need to build up your numbers, but it’s not just a numbers game.

Have Something to Say

When you’re using your Facebook page, you need to look at this as an ongoing discussion with the people who are linked to you. As a result, you need to have something—something of value—to say. This is where your knowing-your-brand strategy comes in handy. If you’re selling yourself as a snarky housewife, you need to make sure that your posts are written in that style and that they are boosting the market you’re involved in. Each day, you will want to post something—anything—that relates to your audience and to the business you want to promote. This might include links to news articles about your market, or it might be status updates from you about your life, if that’s a part of your brand.

80/20 Rule

While you might be tempted to talk about just yourself, that’s not going to win over your Facebook friends. You need to spend 80 percent of your time sharing valuable things with your friends—interesting articles (that you didn’t write), links to news stories, status updates about your life, and so on—and you need to spend the other 20 percent of your time promoting what you have to promote. This way, you’re not overwhelming your friends, and you’re still subtly marketing.

Valuable Friends Add Up

Yes, the friends you know matter. You can’t just add any friends and think you’re going to get some value out of them. At first, you might just add everyone you know, but when you begin to refine your Facebook page, it’s time to seek out friends who are actually going to add value. This might mean that you join groups on Facebook who are related to your market and then slowly increase your friends from there. The more you connect with people, the more your business will be visible, but adding friends who are already interested in what you have to say is a better use of your time.

Facebook also offers you the opportunity to promote your business page by paying for ad space. But you will find that most of the time, the strategies above help you to connect with others who can connect you to profitable ventures. And who doesn’t “like” that?

By Adam Toren