Most all businesses should have a Facebook page. Not to let people know that they enjoyed their steak dinner, or that they saw a rare spotted dodo bird on the side of the road, but to establish a presence. Facebook is in my opinion the best social media site out there. There may be better programmed sites, but Facebook is where everyone is “at”. So Facebook is for people to catch up on news or find out what a long lost friend is doing. You ask how that is relevant to you as a small business owner on the corner of X and Y in the city. Well here’s how.
The stats…
From the Facebook site itself I present the following statistics:
- More than 500 million active users
- 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
- Average user has 130 friends
- People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
So doing the math, people average about 40 minutes a day on Facebook. Facebook becomes an area of comfort where they interact with good friends, and check out old friends. Now enter you and your business. If you have a small business (eg a website design business) and have a Facebook page, you can interact with those who “like” you. Talk your friends into liking your page.
Why get your friends to like your business Facebook page?
It’s not your friends you care about. If they are your friends, they will buy from you. It’s the friends of the friends you want to bring into the mix. When people are looking up your Facebook “likers” they will see your posts (which go on their wall), and they’ll see that they like you. So if you have 100 people liking your page, and the average number of friends is 130, you are reaching out to 100×130 or 13,000. Every new person you get to like you is another 130 potential customers.
Other advantages of Facebook Pages
If you are somewhat active with your Facebook Page, you will get complete strangers liking your business. Maybe they are a competitor, maybe they like your product. Who cares, that’s more people to see what you do. So if you can post at least once a week, that’s fine… If you can post more, better, if you post less, then not as good. But you should have a Facebook page. When people are in their happy place on Facebook, they’ll do a search for you business. If they find you and you have some good stuff for them to look at, then you’re getting a potential client. If you are not there, then Facebook will find a competitor they can check out instead.
Conclusions
So even if you set something up and can’t do too much to it, you are better off than not having anything at all. Ideally, you canvas your friends to like your page, and then keep current. You’ll get what you put into it and more.
