You may have thought of using Facebook as a marketing tool for business since there are hundreds of millions of people using the platform, and it’s a great platform to leverage to reach multiple thousands of people with your marketing message.

Facebook started out as a personal social networking tool. But marketers and the coders working on Facebook later realized the power it could give you business. Following is a few tools and tips on how to use Facebook for business.

Facebook Updates.
Facebook utilizes various different tools to get discussion going and connecting people together. Let’s see how those work:

•  Facebook status – A post that appears on people that ‘liked’ your pages’ feed. Previously broadcasted to everyone, they are now shown only to people you choose to see it through privacy settings
• Interacting – Friends & contacts can comment statuses or ‘like’ them, and recently, Fb added ‘tagging’. So you can place an @ in the beginning & tag op to 6 people. They are notified the same way as other notifications appear.
• For professionals – Potential customers & interested parties can casually interact on an update, making it more convenient and conversational.
• For businesses – Almost anyone can join in conversations, making casual promotion of your product/service/company easier, increase the number of ‘likes’ and comments on a status increases its search engine position.
• Branding -  You need to monitor your page carefully, that you keep your status posts enthusiastic and professional at the same time.
• Be careful – Before posting: ask yourself if this will help the business reputation in the long run or is it mere entertainment?
• Optimizing – This makes your status more searchable for potential customers. A good feature to use is Fb status ‘tagging’. This allows your post to appear on other companies pages when you tag them – exposing you to customers viewing related pages. The same principle applies to community pages.
• Interaction – Sometimes we get spoiled by using tools like Hoot suite etc. A page with RSS served content is boring. People want to see interaction.

Attracting new customers.
Besides a website, it’s important to be involved in social media, because it makes you visible, enhances your brands ability to be recognized and greatly increases your traffic. You should use social networking sites like Facebook as leverage because it’s more accessible to people. Let’s look at some reasons how Facebook could be used to attract new customers.

•  A Facebook business page gives your business that personal touch so that people can see that you’re transparent, real and reachable. They realize that you care for your customers and even the potential ones.
• Facebook is a great tool to use to interact with customers where they previously couldn’t do so. Feedback and reviews of products and testimonials are now possible, because FB is easily moderated, retaining the best feedback and hiding the rest. This is obviously worth gold and it adds a touch of authenticity to your business.
• People that are tired of email lists and online ads usually go to Facebook for answers. With a FB page you have access to 500m users without having to buy access to expensive email lists.
• Interactions aren’t limited to updates as apps allow you to upload photos, videos and write notes. A business Facebook page allows you to customize your settings to be viewed by everyone, and allow your fans to post photos, videos or links.
• You could even raise the level of engaging your customers and audiences like launching a poll, hosting a competition or doing a small survey. Customers feel empowered and they feel they have a say and ownership somehow in the process.
• Other apps allow you to host promos, specials, discounts or exclusive deals. This is a great way to gauge the effectiveness and activity of the FB users on your page.
• Mastering Fb as a business tool will allow you to have fun with your customers, allowing you to stand out head and shoulders above the rest.

How to advertise without spamming.
Facebook is a great way to leverage as a free advertising platform, outside of their ad network of course. Here’s how to set up your own free campaign and strategy:

•  You can choose who to target on the payment platform, but who better than your fans, because they are targeted already.
• How you keep your brand visible to your fans and friends is through status updates, photos, notes and group discussions. These should be enthusiastic and informative.
• Make sure you don’t succumb to spamming by barraging your customers and potential customers with the same, useless, uninteresting message. Feelings of being spammed could be eradicated through proper targeting. You can control who see your messages if you look at people’s profiles. This is a little intensive, but very effective. Check out groups people belong to as well to find some you are related to.
• Another way of sharing content is through a personal message, which seems less spammy, but will be if you just say: ‘Check out this great deal!’ Remember that a relationship has to exist before you can do this successfully.
• If this is too intense, then look at having apps developed on your behalf. They work wonders on engaging your customers.

 Combining Facebook and Twitter.
If you adjust your professional outlook, Twitter and Facebook can work together for you. Where Twitter has been widely known for its professional appeal, Facebook pages changed the game completely. Here’s what is possible:

-          With a Fan Page, profiles can be professional and used for business updates. Facebook can bring a social and emotional impact to your product.

-          Twitter allows fast and easy updates. Micro blogging has never been so easy and could target a different market that can help you watch what competition is doing.

-          Allowing these two to work hand in hand, you have the opportunity to get more prospects. You want to reach the plethora of people that engage on both platforms, but you also want to reach those that use each platform exclusively.

-          Some things that are not postable on behalf of your company are: posting personal issues, business problems, disagreements etc.

-          Things that are permissible and good for you are the following: project updates, product launches, useful links, updates from the official website, any news from events, conferences or meetings attended, sales, promos, incentives and potential collaborations with clients are more preferable inclusions.

-          It is also good to infuse some personality to your Tweets and page updates. Don’t just talk about products, services or company business. This will annoy followers and will bore them even more.

-          You can find various apps online today that allows you to manage and even integrate both platforms. This way, you can be sure of the consistency of the news given.

-          By being consistent in posting relevant content you can effectively make both platforms work effectively for you and drive traffic to it through marketing efforts like contests, exclusive news articles and more.

Improve our results with videos.
Videos online are one of THE BEST ways to promote your business. Here is why videos are so effective:

-          They have novelty that static websites haven’t had for decades. Through creative means, they could help you positively publicize your business. Look at Justin Bieber and see how Youtube brought him to the attention of Usher.

-          You want your videos to be significant and professional. The content of your video depends on the purpose of the video. Will it help your brand be seen in a positive light?

-          Valuate before you post. You need to ask a couple questions: Will this video assist in achieving my goals? Will it help customers navigate our product better? Will it give me an edge over my competitors?

-          Knowing that Youtube is a great place to have your videos distributed, you’ll do well to pay attention to Facebook as a great way to leverage a community.

-          I have found to upload your video onto Youtube and then sharing the link works better than loading it up to Facebook. I don’t think FB is really geared toward that. Talking about integrating platforms, there are also ways for you to share your video on FB immediately after it has gone live. Try and keep your videos short as people don’t tend to watch longer ones so much.

-          Make sure your video is of high quality. It will say something about you and your brand.

Now that you have around 5 power ways to use Facebook for business, leveraging some well-known tools and also using some more advanced ones, you can get your business visible and engaging in no time.

Your Turn.
Has this post been helpful? Have you used any of these methods for business before? We’d like to hear of your experiences in the comments below.