We’ve all heard this, but it bears repeating: if you don’t honk your own horn every now and then, no one else will. Ask any successful entrepreneur. Sitting around and waiting for people to find you doesn’t work. You have to TELL people what your business is about.
It’s true that you don’t want all posts to be self-promoting. That gets old quickly and can easily drive followers away from you. Instead, develop a social network plan so that your posts have a good balance between personal, business and fun.
Facebook offers at least three different ways to reach your audience, and if you’re on Facebook for business, you should use all three. Using these three different avenues increases the chances that people in your target market will see something of interest.
Here are the 3 ways:
1-Optimize your personal profile
If you do a good job posting and communicating, prospective clients will review your profile. So, to get their attention, be sure to fill in ALL the space on your personal profile page as completely as possible …
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Add a bio: describe to your followers what motivates you and how unique you are
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Add Featured Images – A nice, visual way to get noticed with photos from lectures, workshops, talks, and more.
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Add your workplace information: link to your website, Facebook group and Facebook business page
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Link other social media profiles: in the About section >> Contact and basic information
Even though your personal profile is meant for personal matters, you can certainly announce your book launch, post photos from your recent trip to a masterminds retreat, or talk about the convention you attended where you met your favorite mentor. While these are business related, you are not expressly promoting your business through your personal profile.
2-Create a business page on Facebook
The standard rule of Facebook is that you use a business page to promote your business, while your personal profile is intended for personal communication. So to keep up with Facebook, create your business page and optimize it the same way you did with your personal profile.
Business pages have been criticized recently because users complain that they never see posts from the page in their news feeds, even though they have liked the page. While this is aggravating, don’t give up just yet. At the very least, you can add your website link and other contact information here and since it is a business page, you can talk about your business and promote your products every day, even multiple times a day, without penalty.
You can also run contests from your company page, as well as add a subscription offer to one of the tabs. Consider this page a quick overview of your business where your followers can decide if they want to go ahead with a query. Put a “Send Message” button on your company page to make appointment booking even easier.
3-Use Facebook groups to attract prospects
Facebook groups can be another great resource for chatting directly with prospects. Public groups are a good way to answer general questions about your experience or business. Closed or secret groups are best used for specialized discussion topics or memberships. Keep in mind that successful groups need daily interaction from your host, so they don’t forget about you. Fortunately, that’s easy to add to your general daily routine.
Remember this important note: finding clients is about building relationships. But that doesn’t happen overnight. Talk about your business, show your experience, contact your followers and when the time is right, they will remember your name because you dared to talk about what you do.