Facebook for Business and Bloggers

It is official Facebook is the most popular website in the United States and with over 400 million users worldwide the ability to use this service for free is a very attractive business prospect.  It is possible on Facebook to target  demographic groups and segment the visitors you can interact with, the service is full of 1000′s of little networks.  MySpace differs from Facebook in this respect as the age and demographics are a younger audience.

This section explains the advantages to business and bloggers including methods which will help to get your message out to your audience.

Added Functions for Business

Facebook offers business the opportunity to create a Fan page.  The fan page can be specific to a business, a person, a product or service.  This page allows you to add:

• an rss feed (see video right), which will update with your blog posts,  this saves people having to visit your website to see the blog which has benefits as updates will show on your fans wall and will be visible by their friends and contacts.


• ability to add lots of information about the business, mission statement, additional social networking accounts, what the business does, owner information, product information.


• Photographs, video – from previous events, staff members etc


• Update your page using your Mobile (cell) phone


• Promote your page with Facebook Fan Box which allow fans to subscribe to you page which allows for speedy updates (become your own best fan).


• Send Fan updates – send messages straight to your fans.


• Add to Favourites option – Allows people to add your site to their favourites


• Discussion Boards – Create topics for your Fans to discuss with you.

To create a fan page at the bottom of your Facebook page click advertising >> pages (at the top) >> create a page (green box) >> choose your options, name your page >> create page.

Don’t forget under settings you can change your personal profile, if you want certain people to see certain things you do need to adjust your settings.

Focus on one business page more pages = more work to manage unless you want to focus solely on one product and you have the resources.

Tell the world about your Business Page

Now you have a page let the world know, you have to let your contacts know you exist.

• Join your targeted audience in Facebook Groups, don’t rush in talking about products be polite, have a conversation, ask questions, give advice become a valuable member of that group.  Other people will be listening and searching through your conversations.


• Be natural and personal, show some personality.  Don’t forget to put some personal information on your page to gain trust.


• Send Friend requests to contacts with a personal message (i.e. we met at the so and so event).


• Talk chat interact, every interaction with you will be covered on the wall/news feed of the people you talk to.


• Use your existing network, use your blog, Twitter, e-mail signature it’s likely people are already on Facebook but dont know about you.


• The more fans get for a particular term helps on Facebook to get your page viewed in Facebook Search


• Try and use your Keywords for the name of your page as this will show in the search engines.  This page name cannot be changed.


• Personal Profiles with pages people are fans of and Business Pages rank in Google Searches.


• You have a Facebook url (web address) show it everywhere


• Non-Facebook members can see your page but cannot interact with you.


• With customers try to get them as fans unless you know them which may allow they being friends.


• People may not read blogs, but become interested by reading your updates on Facebook

Creating a Facebook Group

If you believe you can attract people to a certain cause, it is worth trying to create a group.  A page is more suitable for a business but it doesn’t hurt to create a group around a topic of interest not solely the business.

See Dave Taylor create a group

Facebook Advertising

In addition to your Business (fan) page you can also use Facebook’s paid advertising.  To get started you will need to be a member and be logged in to begin:

• decide  what you want to advertise; products, company website, blog, Facebook business page, Facebook group.


• read terms and conditions before starting an advert because your ads may get rejected


• prepare an image (it’s possible to use images with adverts.)

Target Your Audience

The beauty of Facebook advertising is the ability to target and specify attributes for people who will view your ad.  You can define your targeted group:

• geographic location, country, state, and city


• male or female


• education


• workplaces


• relationship status


• keywords – any words that you think will define your audience, interests, music, job titles (very useful option)


• birthday


• connections – fans of your page

Once you input the information Facebook tells you how large your potential audience will be.  For more on advice on Targeting see Facebook Help

Set your budget

The next option is setting your budget, Facebook ads are similar to Google PPC as Facebook determines the ad position on a page based on cost and what Facebook determines is relevant.

Go for PPC as Facebook Ads have a low click through rate, this means lots of people will see you ads and you will only be charged for the people who click on them.

For more on advice on Targeting see Facebook Help

Analysing the Success of your Facebook Page

Facebook Insights

To help measure your success there is an integrated analytics service called Facebook Insights.  This measures data from your business page and your Facebook Adverts.

Quote from Facebook – Facebook Insights measures user exposure, actions, and behavior relating to your Social Ads and Facebook Page. By understanding activity and performance, fans and ad respondents, and trends and comparisons, you are better equipped to improve your business on Facebook and elsewhere. Insights is a free service for all Facebook Pages and Social Ads.

Business Page
Insights allows you to view how people are interacting with your business page enabling you to measure many variables including the number of fans, page views, discussion topics and overall engagement within a set time period.  Remember the more fans the larger the audience and potential customers.

Ads manager
Lets you track the number of impressions and number of clicks depending on date and ad variation and it’s possible to group ads and categorise them.  You can track the click through rate and Cost per Ad.

See Facebook Help for more on Facebook Insights

Web Analytics (e.g. Google)

To also keep track of your Facebook campaign look at the amount of referrals your Facebook page or Facebook Ads have sent to your company website or blog.  You should already be using analytical (i.e. Google Analytics) software to measure your campaigns.

Remember a good level of traffic coming from Facebook to your site is great but more importantly for your boss is the conversion level.  Conversion rates from Facebook are usually high as visitors already know some information about you and have a level of trust which means they are further in the buying cycle.

Facebook applications

To help improve your Facebook identity, become more efficient and have a Facebook page on steroids, check out this 30+ Apps for Doing Business on Facebook article for some very effective Facebook applications.

Hope that gives you some idea of how to approach and start your Facebook Business page.  Enjoy!!