5 Ways to Use Facebook for Business
If you own a business, or are starting to freelance, or are even remotely involved in the business world, Facebook can be an incredibly powerful tool to promote your products or services and show customers who you are and what you do. Here are 5 ways to use Facebook for business.
Sponsored Posts
Facebook offers promoted (though they call them “Sponsored”) posts to help you publicize your information or events to people who don’t already like your page. Giving you the ability to target specific people in your area, or people all over the world, who have a direct interest in your offerings, is possibly one of the best ways to use Facebook for business. They make it incredibly easy to share information and get people to like you. Once they like you, they’ll see everything you post directly in their news feed.
The process of sponsoring a post is very easy and user friendly. You set a budget, target audience, and post length and off you go! They even show you their prediction of how many people your sponsored post is going to reach.
Facebook Insights
If you have a business page on Facebook, the platform gives you the ability to use “Insights” to see how well your page, posts, and audience reach is doing. Based on this information, you can determine the best time to post, your most popular type of content, your target audience, and much more. Then, you can use this information to refine your content to best suit what you know is working.
Analytics can be incredibly powerful if you take the time to analyze (pun intended) them, so use this tool for all it’s worth.
Instant Articles
I’ve mentioned this option in another one of my posts. Facebook Instant Articles is a monetization tool that allows you to publish content on Facebook, let them advertise for you, and then make 70% of the profit. If you’re managing a business blog, or producing content for thought leadership in your industry (a VERY good idea if you’re not already doing this), Instant Articles can give you a large advertising reach without having to do much work on your end.
The only downside I’ve seen here is that it can be kind of difficult to set up if you don’t have any publishing or web development experience, and you have to have 5 articles ready before you can get started. But, other than that, it’s definitely a game changer in using Facebook for business.
Live Videos
A large part of interaction today is via video feed, so use this tool for all it’s worth. Go live during business events, post instructional videos, share what’s going on around the office, etc. Your video can be saved for later viewing, but one of the best parts is you can see in real time who’s watching, commenting, and sharing your video as you stream. Giving your followers a more personal look at life as it happens lets them see you in a way they haven’t before, and can translate to new customers.
Scheduling Posts
Last, but certainly not least, is the ability to schedule your posts for a future time.
If you own a business (or are freelancing) you likely don’t have time to stop what you’re doing two to three times per day to post something relevant on Facebook. Through scheduling, you can plan days or weeks in advance (I do this all the time). AKA, set it and forget it.
