The Small Business Facebook Marketing Quick Reference Sheet is intended to act as a guiding reference of all the things you should touch on to get started creating a strong presence on Facebook for your business. I have also made this reference sheet available for download.

Facebook Marketing is about your Page

• If you don’t have a Page on Facebook for your business. Make one. Pages on Facebook are Profiles for Business (or you can think of them as public profiles).
• Make sure people can find your Facebook Page by naming it something people will search for
• Your Page is where your brand lives, and what you will be branding.
• Your Page gives you access to your fan’s Live Feeds. The Live Feed is where all Facebook users see what’s being shared. So every time you share something, it shows up on their Live Feed when you share it. Remember. Facebook is real-time.
• The goal of your Page is for people who aren’t fans to become fans
• The goal of your Page for people who are fans is to become loyal advocates who buy

How To Brand Your Facebook Page

• Customize your Facebook Fan Page through the Custom Tabs that act as custom ads. There are plenty of resources online and people (like myself) who can assist with this
• Create a profile picture that is branded and sells your Page. Don’t just brand it with your logo. Put your URL and a reminder to your non-fans to become a fan. (How to do this)
• Write a snappy description that exudes your brands personality
• Add Applications to your Page to make it more sticky like YouTube, Promotions, or your own custom app
• Make your Page more interactive and engaging by having videos and pictures readily available for people to view

Facebook Marketing From your Page

• Marketing with your Page happens through posting updates on your Page via the “Share” button
• Make the content you share interesting and relevant to your fans
• Change up your content types. Don’t just share status updates or links. Make sure you’re sharing visually interesting content like images and videos
• Ask no-risk questions to spur interactivity and habit. Think: “What’s your favorite drink?” not “What do you think about the healthcare bill?”
• Make sure you share when people are listening/sharing most. Find your Facebook prime time.
• Post regularly
• Pay attention to your Page marketing Insights. It’s where you can do things like check your Page demographics and see if it’s what you expected for your brand.

How to Increase Your Fans on Facebook

• Buy them through Facebook Ads
• Buy them through give aways and sweepstakes: “Become A Fan and get a 20% off coupon”
• Earn them through helping them be more awesome (quality content)
• Get them by making your Facebook presence known in your other marketing such as TV, your website, e-mail marketing, and other messaging.
• Encourage users to become a fan for their benefit: “If you need any additional assistance and are on Facebook, you can always reach us there!”
• Create a simple viral marketing campaign/contest: “Tell us about your favorite product and the winner gets a gift certificate” (this will show up to the friends of fans)
• Spur virality by getting people to mention your Page  (by using the @ symbol in their posts) for rewards (like a ticket to your event)
• Create events, whether virtual or physical, and use Facebook’s Event system to invite people
• Tag users in photos when possible

While this may just be a brief rundown, if you follow all these points on creating a presence for your company on Facebook, I assure you that you’ll be well on your way to lots of fans and a successful page. Just remember that you have to stay active.

What are your thoughts?

Image credit goes to adesigna

RSS peeps, please click through to view the video!

This post is part of my series, The Complete Guide on How To Use Facebook for Business.

In this video, I outline 2 quick and simple steps to help your Facebook Page get found by people who are looking for it within Facebook.

In this video I take you through the first stages of creating a Facebook Page for your company, the importance of choosing your categories, picking a name that people are looking for, and what account you should be creating a Page from.

If you have any further questions, feel free to let me know! Coming up will be more on customization!

This next line should wake you up like realizing you accidently hit “reply all” to that personal e-mail you meant to send to one specific person.

1. Most people will come to your Facebook Page just once.

Taking that into consideration, you have one opportunity to get the person to become a fan of your page. It also means the primary goal/strategy of every Facebook Page should be to convert as many users as possible to become a fan of your Page. You can see this in play by Mashable, as well as many others.

2. The value of your Facebook Page is in what you share, not in the Page itself.

After you get someone to become a fan of your page, your secondary strategy kicks in – sharing. This is also where the true value of your Facebook Page is.

When someone is a fan of your page it gives you the opportunity to share continual information with them that they will find interesting. It’s about them, not you. If you shoot wedding photography, share memories and stories. If you’re a real estate agent, share crime rates and ask questions like what the first thing people look for in a house is.

3. The success of your Page lies in its activity

If people are “liking” or commenting on what you’re posting on your Page, then there’s a pretty good chance they’re also clicking on your links and sharing what you post with their friends.

One important thing to note is the more activity your Page receives, the better chance you have at your Page showing up in the News Feed, where you get exponential marketing exposure. We want activity.

4. Your page isn’t for acquiring new customers.

The vast majority of the time, your Page will be best served as a customer retention tool not a customer acquisition tool. It’s unlikely someone who doesn’t have a pre-existing relationship with your company will fan your page, because being a fan can be a rather personal arrangement (depending on the Page).

That doesn’t mean there’s no point in having a Facebook Page or that you won’t get any new customers. It just means your strategy needs to be focused.

5. Timing is everything

I’ve said this again and again: Facebook is real-time. What you say at 11:00 am is only seen at 11:00 am (unless it gets a lot of activity). So use your Facebook analytics to understand your Page demographics. We’ll get into using your Page demographics later, but the idea is simple: are your demographics what you expected and are you sharing when said demographic is likely listening?

More Secrets?

What’s a Facebook Marketing Secret that has served you well?

Sweet looking photo credit goes to rpongsaj.

The opportunity Facebook brings to businesses should be obvious – there’s a lot of potential customers and eyeballs available. But getting access to the widely untapped population of hundreds of thousands of Facebook users can be a bit tricky.

That’s why with all of my recent Facebook research, writing, and presentations, I’ve decided to create the complete guide on how to use Facebook for business (free). I am going to be building this guide over the course of the next couple of weeks. Here’s some of what you can expect to learn:

• Fundamentals of a rockstar Facebook strategy
• How to create a Facebook Page for your company
• The secrets of getting your company found on Facebook
• How to make your Facebook Page grow like a weed
• Getting your Facebook updates into the News Feed
• How to write killer Facebook updates
• Linking your Facebook account with other social media

Posts Written

• 5 Facebook Page Secrets You need to Know
• [Video] How to create a Facebook Page for your business (getting started)
• 2 Simple steps to help your Facebook Page get found

Not Complete Enough For You?

If there are any immediate Facebook questions that you don’t see present in the list above, feel free to let me know and I would be more than willing to cover it and add it to what will be the growing list above!

Laughing Squid took the sweet photo. They’ve got an awesome site too, so check it out!

In the webinar I go through explaining all the components of the 12 steps to starting your Facebook campaign. You can see those 12 elements on slide 36.

The post on Shoemoney is only looking at Pages, but brings to light 2 very interesting points that will help understand your Facebook Page and how Facebook “ranks” it.

1) It would seem that Post Quality could be a good indicator of whether what you’re sharing on your Page is getting placed in News Feeds.

2) The Post Quality of a Page seems to be based on how Facebook is grading your page against similar Pages and their attributes (fans, etc).

I will say that I’ve noticed usually when having a Post Quality (PQ) of around 200 on one of the Pages we run at Talk, frequently those updates get pushed into the News Feed. I need to experiment a bit more, however, to see really what the kind of “breakeven” number may be.

The unfortunate side of this is all is that Profiles owners don’t have the same quantitative measure of whether their own shared items will become “Newsworthy”.

The irony of it all is that it took me way longer than was reasonably necessary to figure any of this out myself. The whole process is about as user friendly chopsticks to a 3 year old. I have to simply assume that none of this was even designed for a business owner. It took me a good 2 minutes just to figure out how to create a vanity URL for a page (I figured it out only after I googled it. I never found it via Facebook) – and I’m a techie for a living.

All that said, I’ve got a good set of notes on all this which I will be converting into some quality posts soon. Also, if you’re a bit miffed about the fact that I am talking about Facebook so much, it’s because I’ve been thinking about it a lot in preparation for Talk’s Facebook 101 webinar, which I am hosting.

The Highlights section meant that Facebook finally introduced something that sat on the front page of every Facebook user, pushing content in front of them that was decided by an algorithm. And what that algorithm meant was I now had a greater opportunity to help Facebook decide what was worth putting in front of a user. Now with Facebook’s recent design update, it gave what was “Highlights” but is now the “News Feed” an even stronger position on the site… meaning even greater potential exposure. But one question to me still remains.

Is Facebook Optimization Really Possible?

While algorithms mean gaming potential and lots of fun analyzing how it all works and then cracking it wide open – Facebook is different. Facebook is different because what my “News Feed” says is different than what your “News Feed” says. The difference between the two news feeds occurs because our group of friends on Facebook aren’t identical. What the big question here is whether that variable in friends fully eliminates the ability to sway what’s in a users “News Feed”.

For example: If there is a method by which Facebook ranks a particular “shared” item to place it in a “News Feed”, at the very least while your competition is unknown, you can at least improve your chances of showing up in the “News Feed” in the event there aren’t any “close competitors” so to speak.

I know. I’ve been distracted with Facebook thoughts as of late. In my defense, it is the most popular social network right now.

Update: I’ve written a follow-up post to this one that’s a little more quantitative.