SEARCH CLINIC

Online marketing with social media is not just for large companies- any business can prosper.Any small business that invests its time wisely can improve it’s customer or client loyalty and word of mouth marketing with an effective social media strategy.

Social media is useful for almost every type of business. Cafes, retail stores, and even B2B professional services can build their online reputation and increase trust.

By taking advantage of social media, businesses can make themselves more accessible, more personable, and maintain long term connections.

Facebook is the most popular social networking website on the internet, and often the first site that comes to mind when people mention social media.

Establishing your business presence on facebook requires an ongoing effort, but can have some great rewards if done well.

Here’s Dr Search’s advice for getting started with Facebook.

1. Create a business page – Creating a page for your business is really quite simple and gives you an instant presence on facebook to share information about your company.

To get you started visit www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages and click Create a Page. Here’s a few suggestions for populating your page with relevant business information:
* Overview of the business
* Website and contact information
* Your logo and pictures of the business
* Videos
* Press releases and blog posts
* Company news and updates
* Your contact details

2. Interact with your fans – Once you’ve setup a page for your business, the most important step is to interact with your fans!

Try and post updates to your page at least weekly which can include new blog posts, competitions and links to new products or special discounts.

It’s also important that you engage with any customers that leave a comment on your wall or wall posts. Remember that facebook is a public forum so take care with your replies and show potential customers that you provide excellent customer service.

3. Promote your facebook page – The tricky thing about facebook pages is that you can’t friend someone the same way you can from your personal profile. People can elect to become fans of your page, but only if they know about it.

Here’s a few ideas on different ways to promote your page:

* Identify contacts from your personal profile that are business contacts and invite them to become fans of your business
* Include links to your facebook pages in the footer of email communications with customers
* Include a facebook icon on your website or blog and give customers some incentive to become a fan (special discounts, coupons etc.)
* Promote your facebook page using other social networks that you participate in like Twitter and your blog posts.

Facebook has reached 500 million members – the equivalent of connecting with eight per cent of the world’s population or the third largest country.
The milestone figure comes only five months after the social network signed up its 400th million user. The pace of its growth has accelerated rapidly – Facebook had only 150 million registered users in January 2009.

Facebook, the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg while he was still studying at Harvard University, launched in February 2004.

To mark the half a billion milestone, the site has launched a new application called ‘Facebook Stories’, a website within Facebook, that encourages users to share their experiences of the social network.

These stories, which are limited to 420 characters, (the same number as a Facebook status update) will then be sorted by location and theme. The application will also be hosted on several launch partners’ Facebook fan Pages, such as the X Factor and the White House.

The site has approximately 26 million UK users, which is more than a third of the country’s total population.

Last month, Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, said it was “almost a guarantee” that the site would hit one billion users, while speaking at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. He explained: “If we succeed in innovating and remaining relevant there is a good chance of bringing Facebook to a billion people.”

He also revealed that Facebook had just four remaining countries left to conquer: Russia, Japan, China and Korea, according to Zuckerberg. “We are down to just four counties where we aren’t the leading social network.”

Zuckerberg also recently visited the David Cameron in Number 10 Downing Street and praised the British Government’s efforts to open up its data to software developers.

The Social Network, a film about Facebook’s rise to prominence is due for UK release in October 2010. It charts the birth of the site and has the tagline: “You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies.”

The site recently faced heavy criticism from both European Information Commissioners and users alike, for over-complicated privacy settings, which users said led them unwittingly to make personal information public.

Concerns about privacy on the site were running so high that 60 per cent of the 1,588 Facebook users questioned by Sophos, a computer security organisation, in May, said that they were considering deleting their accounts on the social networking site.

A further 16 per cent said they had already stopped using Facebook because they felt they had inadequate control over their data.