Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

Should you use Facebook for your Business?

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Everyone is on Facebook these days, so they say. It is thought that in excess of 400 million people use the website, so it could be a great way of reaching a great number of potential customers. Many businesses have set up Facebook Fan Pages that give customers a forum to talk about their favourite products or services. On February 24th 2010 Google announced via Twitter that it was now including public status updates from Facebook Pages in real-time searches. That means if your Facebook page is open to the public Google will pull your status update instantly into it’s latest search engine results. This is indeed an effort by Facebook to compete with Twitter’s ability to be up to the minute relevant on searchable content.

This sounds like a great way to get content about your business immediately onto Google. So should you invest time and effort into promoting your business with a Facebook Fan Page?

Of course, why wouldn’t you want to use a free service that can reach hundreds or thousands or even millions of potential clients? Many small to medium businesses benefit from having people following them on Facebook. Some usually start off by having the people they know become fans at the start. The friends of these friends can see that they are a fan of that business and the company builds small scale viral recognition.

Provided that a business can give people a reason to become a fan – e.g. a high street boutique may offer exclusive discounts, while a nightclub might announce events, offers, who is DJing at it’s venue each night. If you can offer information that people might want to have then you could gain potential business.

However there is a lot that could go wrong with using Facebook as means of publicising your business.

If you read an article on Outspoken Media you can find out about American reality TV show Tabatha’s Salon Takeover. It followed small salon owner Nikki Mallon of Brownes & Co. portrayed on national TV as a cold hearted boss from hell. Most likely edited to make her look worse than she probably was. It was a PR nightmare. The Brownes and Co. Facebook Fan Page was ransacked with negative comments from outraged viewers of the show. Unfortunately it took them 12 hours to moderate the damage done and they have garnered some much unneeded notoriety.

Now whilst this is an extreme case, and probably very unlikely to happen to your business, it is worth noting that as fans can comment on your page, you will need to allocate some time and resource to answer any queries your fans might have; take part in discussions and of course in some cases act as a moderator. If you can give people a good reason to “Become a Fan”; by all means use it as a tool to promote your business. Just remember to manage it, as your brand’s reputation could be at stake.

Tags: Facebook, Social Media
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