Tips for using a Facebook business page

Grass Hopper

What are peoples tips on getting the most from a Facebook "like" page for their business.
What are the do's and donts??.
What gets up your nose that other pages do??.

I'll start with somethings I consider to be good and bad.


Do;

• Post only content that has a relevence to your busines-there is a reason people clicked the like button,they like your product or have an interest in what you do
• Add a little humour more often than serious content in your status updates such as a Youtube link etc.This in turn will gain status likes and shares which puts your business infront of other possible "likers"
• Reply to every comment posted to the page wall regardless how pointless the question or comment seems.Nothing worse than finding a new page which interests you only to find the page creators have not bothered to interact with the previous posters/potential customers.This does not look good

Don't

• Post more than 2 updates per day-a sure recipe for people reaching for the unlike/hide button defeating all your hard work getting them to like page in the first place.
• Use your like page to affiliate yourself with any one brand/group i.e football team etc.This only serves to alienate you from your "likers" who do not share your view on the matter.
• Bad mouth rival business' on your page and do not tolerate posts which do.It looks unprofessional on your part and never does anybody any good.

These are just somethings I practice myself and find they work....I think.
Looking forward to hearing others tips on same

TonyStark

I think the first thing is to understand the whole mechanics of Facebook and use them to your advantage rather than try to copy the status quo. The first thing you should understand is your market, if you can understand who they are then you are well on your way to creating a campaign that really does work.

Firstly, a tag links a person, page, or place to something you post, like a status update or a photo. For example, you can tag a photo to say who’s in the photo or post a status update and say who you’re with. Tagging people, pages and places in your posts lets others know more about who you’re with, what’s on your mind and where you are.

When you tag someone, they'll be notified. Also, if you or a friend tags someone in your post and it's set to Friends or more, the post is visible to the audience you selected plus friends of the tagged person.

When someone adds a tag of you to a post, your friends may see what you’re tagged in on Facebook. The tagged post also goes on your profile (timeline). As you can see there is a huge potential to spread links and for information to be passed between large groups of users quite quickly and that using this technique.

In a study from Facebook they found that even though people are more likely to consume and share information that comes from close contacts that they interact with frequently (like discussing a photo from last night’s party), the vast majority of information comes from contacts that they interact with infrequently. These distant contacts are also more likely to share novel information, demonstrating that social networks can act as a powerful medium for sharing new ideas, highlighting new products. It provides us with the mechanism to propel some of the content to a wider than normal audience.

The trick here is to leverage this interaction. At this stage I've done this with many clients so I see this on a day to day basis as one of the core principles to success.

I disagree with replying to everything that posts on your wall, your wasting your time. I'm not saying don't reply. But reply when you think you add value and engagement to the conversation. The trick is to leverage social media to generate new likes and to put a value on a like. A misconception is that a like is a guaranteed conversion, instead it should be looked on as a step towards a conversion. The question you need to ask yourself is how many steps does it take to get a conversion.

If you want some more tips and pointers I'm pretty open to taking a few DM's on the subject and one or two ideas in relation to successful campaigns.

Bagel

Grass Hopper , you have captured most of the ones I'd say.

I'd add also that a pet hate of mine is when someone links their twitter feed to their facebook so you get a lot of # type comments. It comes across as lazy and irrelevant to me . Especially if it is something like "#FF check out #friendstwitteraccount! ' that is relevant and meaningful to twitter users but is meaningless to me!

Grass Hopper

Bagel wrote: »

Grass Hopper , you have captured most of the ones I'd say.

I'd add also that a pet hate of mine is when someone links their twitter feed to their facebook so you get a lot of # type comments. It comes across as lazy and irrelevant to me . Especially if it is something like "#FF check out #friendstwitteraccount! ' that is relevant and meaningful to twitter users but is meaningless to me!

Good point Bagel,I could imagine tha could be annoying.
While I dont have a Twitter account I do have a Youtube a/c and have refrained from linking it to Facebook for that very reason.
Although probably all the people who have liked my page use Youtube regularly I'm sure random comments appearing on their feed would become annoyng quickly.

Any other tips anyone?????????