Rocky Mountain Mr. & Ms. Magazine[RM3]

By Doug McIsaac

Facebook is the largest and one of the fastest growing social networking sites on the web. The odds are that you have a profile and that you have friends who are active on Facebook. One of the aspects of Facebook that many people aren’t aware of is that they can have a business page or fan page in addition to their personal profile page.
Businesses of all sizes are using these pages to interact with their customers, everyone from Coca Cola with over 4 million fans to local brands with 50-150 fans. Should your business have a Facebook page? Yes, here’s why you should have a Facebook page:

1. Your customers are there

I’m sure there’s an exception, but with over 350 million people worldwide and over 200,000 adults in Montana on Facebook the odds are that they are there.

2. You can be found easily

There are SEO benefits to having a Facebook page. What that means is that in many cases your Facebook Business page can be found on the first page of Google’s search results for your page name. This is a great shortcut for businesses that want to rank well in the search engines.

3. Very easy, inexpensive way to communicate with your customers

The benefit of Facebook and other social media tools is that you can engage your audience on a deeper level. Your only expense is your time unless you hire a professional to build and manage your page for you.

4. Pages allow a business to “Publish to the Stream”

Items that you publish on your page show up on your fans homepages. The average person on Facebook has 120 friends and their friends will see what you publish. It is even more powerful when you are able to get your fans to interact with your page through liking and commenting.

5. Pages allow a business to engage fans with Rich Media (video, pictures, events)

You aren’t stuck just sharing text you can share a variety of content to keep your page interesting and engaging. Sharing photos from events, videos you’ve produced or are sharing form YouTube will help your audience get more involved in your page.

6. Pages let a business analyze how fans are interacting

Facebook’s Insights Dashboard is a powerful analytics program takes away the guesswork by showing you how your fans are interacting with your content. This helps you develop stronger strategies to interact with them.
Those are just a couple of the reasons that you should explore starting a Facebook page. Starting a page is easy to do and it can be a fun way to interact with your customer base. But beware Facebook is addicting, if you don’t have a plan when you start your page you will find yourself on Facebook for hours a day with no real return on your investment. If you would like to find out more about Facebook join us in a class February 2nd and 9th.

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