Dear Larnaca parents,
Welcome to our first article as official bloggers for LPN on using Facebook as a promotional tool for your business. We hope you'll find these fortnightly articles useful.
Whether you are on Facebook or not, this topic is really hot!
Social media is officially used in any marketing strategy nowadays with Facebook being the fastest growing social network in Cyprus over the past year. Not only school children are on it, the fastest growing section of the population who are users are adults above 35 years old.
Parents use Facebook during their coffee breaks or at night time, after the children are asleep and they finally get to enjoy some 'me' time. They will browse their Facebook News Feed very quickly and they will enjoy some posts more than others. For those with friends and family abroad, the photo albums from far away will be the highlights, or that party they went to last week. Not always the Facebook friends have such highlights to share though, so most don't share anything or they share quotes or videos. During the last six months there has been an increase in the number of friends who share 'pages' of businesses or who invite you to become a member of a Facebook 'group'. The groups have been designed for a small number of people with a common interest as certain features become unavailable after the group reaches a certain number of members. Facebook recommends creating a group when you are targeting a small population. You can click on the following link for more details if you have a Facebook account. https://www.facebook.
We believe the best Facebook resource for promoting your business is the Page format and we will explain why: You invite Facebook users to 'like' your page and they decide to become 'fans' themselves if they are truly interested. A Page can have indefinite number of followers, there are no restrictions on how many people can join. The Page is created and administered by people who own the business or who are appointed by the business owners, it can be linked to other social media such as g+, Linkedin, twitter and Pinterest or to an existing Blog or Website.
If your business doesn't have an internet presence then a Facebook page is the place to start: Facebook is free and will always be, it is very user friendly and it has more than 600 million ACTIVE users! This offers you a unique audience in the Cyprus context. If you don't get out there your competitor will so use the slower Summer days to set up a personal account with very basic information as a first step. You only need an email address, a name that sounds real and you can use to promote your business, so preferably your OWN and a telephone number that will remain private as long as you make sure that 'only you' can see it. You can set it up as private as you wish but you need an account to access any page or group on Facebook.
Then you need to 'Create a Page' from your account or find someone to do it for you. If you get stuck at this point but you have a personal Facebook account, click on https://www.facebook.com/
GeekOroklini for a lot of tips and information on this topic. You must think of:
- A Profile picture that will be shared around the web. Size is 180 x 180 pixels and eventually reduced even further on thumbnail version, so make it simple and clear, such as using only the initials. For example, Sharon could use LPN on a profile picture for a page linked to this site (currently there is a group for LPN not a page)
- A Cover photo that will be seen only by visitors to your Page's timeline and should be large, colourful and musn't contain URLs, phone numbers or promotions. A clear message that reflects the spirit of your business would suffice. LPN could have the coloured handprints that we are already familiar with and the full name: Larnaca Parents Network with or without a short motto like: A page with something for every parent in the Larnaca region, Cyprus.
- Other pages related to yours or that could be of interest to your 'fans' (followers) such as contributors to the page, health pages or community pages. These can be displayed on your timeline and it's a great way of collaborating with associates.
- Would you like to display posts by others or not? Comments can be made even by people who are not fans since all the content in a Page is PUBLIC but they can only 'post' if you allow it on the page.
- Are you going to administer the page yourself or are you going to hire someone to do it for you? You will need to post at least twice a day and check the page at least 4 times a day to deal with any engagement from your fans. Negative comments have to be dealt with a.s.a.p. and not just deleted as soon as they appear. Normally most comments are positive.
Apart from the photos, you can write and share 'Notes' with larger content that the normal 'Status update' and these must always be accompanied by a visual aid as it guarantees double the engagement than a post or a note without a visual would get.
You can also create Events, highlight posts, pin an important or informative post to the top of your page for up to a week (then you can repin it to the top or you can replace it with another post at any time you want - even before the week is over).
The idea behind the Page is to interact with customers or potential customers and build trust using a tool that wasn't available in the past. When fans write positive comments about your product or when people can just see what you do and 'like' it without having to buy it, then you get a whole new concept of 'window shopping' that will eventually lead to people having you in mind when they finally decide to buy or contact you for the deal.
It takes time and it requires patience. We believe that the financial uncertainty in Europe in general at the moment favours inbound marketing through social media and we wanted to share our knowledge on the use of Facebook business pages with you.
Thank you for reading and more specific tips on what, when and how to post will follow.
Veronica Athanasiou
99 66 32 86
www.facebook.com/GeekOroklin
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