Facebook presents a unique opportunity to connect with and educate your target market in a way that your website and even your blog can't match. The trick is coming up with meaningful content that people will want to share, and that brings them back again and again.
Start with posts linking to upcoming webinars, events or new content. This keeps your fans up to speed on your brand and the type of content you produce.
To help companies measure their marketing impact, Facebook's Insights metrics tool now allow advertisers to differentiate between people who organically like a page, make a comment, install an app or share something, and those who come as the result of an ad.
Look at how much time everyone spends, what that costs, and we know hard ROI--how many leads we generate, the average costs per lead.
5 Reasons a B2B Company Should have a Facebook Page
- Business leaders and CEO’s ‘are’ on Facebook
- It improves your companies chances of being found by search engines
- It provides an environment that can spread your ideas to people who ‘like’ your company Facebook page by just posting an update such as news, photos, videos and your latest blog post to your Facebook page
- It collects and captures feedback about your products and services
- Provides another communication channel ( 2 or more is always better than one)
Ask questions that will incite conversation, share fun nuggets of information that your followers will appreciate and even show a little love on holidays like Valentine’s Day. Remember to keep your brand as human and personal as possible
5 Applications for B2B Marketers Facebook Fan Page
#1 Contact Form – A simple to use application for building a contact form on your fan page. Form fields can be customized and form submissions are emailed to a designated email address.
#2 FBML – While our understanding is that Facebook is no longer supporting FBML specifically, this application will still allow marketers to add custom content via FBML and HTML on their fan page, including contact forms, welcome messages, and promotional campaigns.
#3 RSS Graffiti – A simple way to automate, customize, and integrate RSS feeds from your blog, Twitter, and other RSS feed sources.
#4 YouTube – Use the app to maintain favorite videos (not just from YouTube), images, links, etc. and decide which ones to publish on your wall or your page’s YouTube tab.
#5 SlideShare – Add your company or individual SlideShare presentations on your Facebook Page.
4 Tips for B2B Marketing on Facebook
1. Become an Industry Resource
You're keeping up with industry news and maybe even writing about it on your blog. You're likely running educational webinars or speaking at industry conferences. You're also engaging with customers, helping to solve their business problems and maybe even documenting the process with case studies. This means that you probably already have a large number of resources to share. Why not funnel this content onto Facebook and make your Page the go-to place for insights and information on your particular industry?
2. Engage the Community
You can use Facebook to engage directly with your customers and make them part of your marketing efforts. For example, you can ask customers to share their successes on your wall and get feedback on new product features. You can encourage them to recognize great service people and reward them for their input with a discount or other promotion. You can also solicit customer references for case studies and media opportunities and find out who's doing something innovative with your product
3. Expand Beyond Your Wall
Applications for Facebook let you do more than post on your wall. If you're selling B2B products online, you can set up a shopping tab on your page to drive traffic to your e-commerce site and encourage viral sharing of your products
4. Lighten Up
While many of us use Facebook in our day-to-day business, the vast majority are usually there to have fun and engage with friends. So no matter how serious your product is, inject some humor and levity into your page.
Image Credit: By _Max-B via Flickr