Facebook – it needs more than just a quick poke

A lot is mentioned about how amazing Facebook can be for a business. We hear stories everyday how companies setting up a presence here expect overnight increases in sales coupled with thousands of adorning ‘fans’. The team here at BreakTheSeal certainly don’t believe this is the case, although we do know Facebook can be a powerful tool in aiding word of mouth marketing. The advantages of having a successful Facebook presence can often be hard to quantify as there is a mix of tangible and intangible benefits, so here’s our breakdown of the top 10 rewards Facebook can bring to your board table.

Top 10 Tips for Using Facebook

• Branding: Facebook is a great resource for generating brand awareness. Now popular across all age groups and demographics, creating interception points for building your relationship with existing and potential consumers.
• Customer Engagement: Utilising a well run Facebook page enables you to communicate important promotions, messages and events to your target audience.
• Drive Web Traffic: You can leverage Facebook as a portal to drive traffic to your website and other online properties.
• Reputation Management: This allows you to see what people are saying about your company. Information regarding what consumers like and dislike is an extremely useful tool for providing a better service and growing your business.
• New Customer Acquistion: Facebook allows you to find consumers you may not have found otherwise. Because of the way it operates, ‘friends of friends’ are pointed to the activities and brands a person is into, massively increasing public awareness. Just imagine if your company could leverage 1000 genuine ‘fans’, with each of these influencers averaging a mere 200 friends, that’s a staggering amount of extra brand exposure – 200,000 people in fact!
• Client Retention: Studies show that brands who keep in contact with its customers are more likely to generate repeat business with them.
• Access to the Social World and its Inherent Value: aka the cool factor. You never know who is using Facebook. Consider the following scenario: a potential prospect could be doing research on your brand or organisation and may use Facebook to see if you have a presence there. Then they see that you have a Facebook profile and see a number of positive posts about your brand, this in turn can shape their sphere of influence and could end up being one of many deciding factors as to why the prospect selects you over another vendor. The perception that Facebook is “IN” and the fact that you are using Facebook could help influence their perception of your brand.
• The Viral Effect: Take word-of-mouth to a whole new level. Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd… Facebook is attracting quite a crowd.
• B2B & B2C: Because so many companies are starting to utilise Facebook, it’s become a platform for communicating with customers and suppliers. A stronger relationship with suppliers could bring about certain benefits, likewise, there is also the potential to find and be found by alternatives, which may be able to take your business to the next level.
• Feeedback Mechanism: Facebook provides a great tool for monitoring social trends and behaviour. We are able to utilise advanced technology providing you with the information that can create competitive advantages in your industry.

Be warned, initiating a Facebook page for your brand is much like getting a dog; it’s not just for Christmas. Many of the benefits you see here are not gained without time and effort on your part. Constant daily interaction with your customers is vital, they’ll have questions, be raving (or complaining!) about you and they’ll also want some form of recognition for associating and spending time with your brand. Devising an effective strategy is crucial for success; luckily the team at BreakTheSeal are blessed with the creative spark to help you achieve this. If you have any queries or would like a strategy developing, please comment below, or contact us.