We all know facebook as the tool to reconnect with family, friends, and other acquaintances. But, this just in, there are ways to use facebook to market your online business! We all know that starting an online business is difficult and requires a lot of time and patience. Your family and friends were probably some of your very first customers, as were mine. Because of this, we need to market to our friends and family on facebook, as well as other people that we haven't met yet. How do we do this?
Start by creating a fan page for your business! Your fan page operates as a business marketing tool where you can show new products, giveaways, etc. You can also keep your fans up to date on what is going to be coming up in your shop. To start a fan page, simply go tohttps://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php and follow the steps listed on the screen. It only takes a few minutes.
After creating a fan page, now we must promote it! First, invite all of your friends and family to like your page. Go tohttp://www.ehow.com/how_8131628_invite-friends-fan.html and follow the steps. You will have a lot of followers in minutes, if your friends are constantly on facebook like some of mine are. Now that you have your friends and family covered, lets use those Etsy teams to our advantage! Go to each individual team, click on the thread in the team that says social media links or facebook links and go through each of the fan pages. "Like them" with your personal facebook page and leave a comment telling them that you are a new fan from (your business name here) and give them a link to your facebook fan page. Most fellow Etsians will like your page back. A lot of them will like and share your posts, which helps you reach more people! You can also do this with Facebook Groups such as Fan Page Promote. Fan Page Promote lists several fan pages for you to "like" and in return those businesses will follow your fan page. Make sure you tell them where to go to "like" you! I also leave my other social media contacts (twitter, pinterest, tumblr, blog, etc).
Now that we have discovered the free way to build your facebook empire, let's explore the paid way. Facebook has its own marketing system called Facebook Ads. You can run ads for your business that will show up on the right hand side of pages who match the criteria that you establish during the create an ad phase. If they like your ad, they can like your fan page. Facebook Ads sometimes runs promotions, so make sure that you keep looking back at them, and sign up for their promotions so that you can get free ad space. You can also place ads on your posts. If you want a post to get to a lot of people, you can pay for facebook to promote your post to your fans and other random people. I personally have never used this feature, as it is new.
When posting on your fan page, make sure that your post is relevant to your business. Don't use it like your personal facebook page! You want to let your fans know a little bit a bout you and get to know your personality, but they don't need every detail. Try to stay positive, but you can always make jokes out of things that you messed up on or a bad day that you are having. I joked about messing up three batches of fudge before getting the perfect batch and received a lot of feedback. Know your audience!
Happy Sales and Happy Facebooking!
Natalee
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