Neesha Anderson

I’ve helped all kinds of businesses with their web presence, including their facebook presence. While many of my clients already have facebook business pages set up, many business owners don’t see the value in a facebook business page or rely on their personal facebook account to promote their business. For business owners with a personal facebook account but no facebook business page, the question remains:

Should I have a facebook business page or just use my existing personal profile to promote my business?

This person had many facebook friends through his personal account and worried that a business page would be less visible and engaging. This is a consideration, sure, but the big question your should be asking yourself is

How does it make sense to integrate social media in my brand or business?

To guide you in answering this question, see my recent blog entry: Social Networking for Your Business – Finding Your Style.
If you are trying to decide whether to create and promote a facebook business page, here are some differences between a facebook personal page and a business page. Personally, I think creating a business page is a good practice, especially if you already promote your business on facebook.

Facebook Business Page vs. Facebook Personal Profile:

1. Pages give you access to insights

Facebook insights for pages gives you data about your pages in including when it was visited, the reach of your pages posts, the history of “likes” on your page, and how people engage with your page and posts.

2. Pages have unlimited friend count

Personal pages cap the friend count at 5,000. Facebook pages can have unlimited followers.

3. Pages are indexed, so they can show up in search engine results.

4. Pages have tabs so you can create a complete business presence

You can use tabs for things like opt-in forms, maps and directions, contact information, and company history

5. You can use Facebook Offers and advertising with pages

Facebook Offers is an official way to promote deals to your Facebook fans. You can also pay for advertising spots for your page.

6. You can let others manage your page.

Facebook page administrators can create admin roles for others to help manage the page. Roles include insight analyst, advertiser, moderator, content creator, and manager. This is especially useful if you plan to hire third-parties to help manage your web presence.

7. Pages allows check-ins for Places

Pages connected to a Place allow people to check-in on facebook when they visit your physical location. This shows up in there feed and provides free advertising for you.

8. Pages allow cross-business promotion by allowing you to showcase other pages you like

9. Facebook has scheduling built-in for pages

There are third-party services that allow you to schedule posts for personal pages and business pages. Facebook includes this feature “in-house” for pages only.

10. Pages help you keep your personal life private

You can set up access restrictions for your personal page to separate what goes out to personal friends and family and what goes out to your clients and customers, but it is much simpler to keep a personal profile for personal posts and a business page for business posts.

11. There are different third party tools for pages and personal profiles

Many tools set up for pages are meant to help businesses.

12. By setting up a personal profile for your business, you do run the risk of being shut down.

13. Pages let you engage as your brand

When others see posts and comments from your business page, your business or brand name will appear instead of your first and last name.

When you start thinking about online social networking for business the big question your should be asking yourself is

How does it make sense to integrate social media in my brand or business?

Setting up a presence across social media platforms is useful the way that giving your business cards to friends, family, and business partners is useful – it makes your information easier to look up and share. So do set up a presence for yourself on facebook, google+, linkedin, and others. But realize that is can be far more valuable to focus your efforts on engaging online in a way that provides something valuable for your customers or clients. Often this means committing to one or two social media platforms that are compatible with your business.

How do you choose the right social media platform for your business?

Social Networking for Business – Considerations:

1. To increase your SEO (search engine rankings) develop your presence on Google-run platforms.

As far as social networks go, Google+ and YouTube are the best places to build a presence in order to make your business more visible in search engine results.

2. Consider where your target audience is.

If you serve a younger audience, instagram, twitter, and facebook may be the best places to engage. If you serve mostly women, check out pinterest. If you are mostly a B2B (business to business), then it makes sense to engage linkedin. See the resources below for more information.

3. What style of interaction suits you?

Will you be posting mostly pictures? Then Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest will suit you. Do you plan to post articles and create conversations? Then consider Facebook and Google+. Will you have spontaneous deals and specials that only warrant a line of text? Then consider incorporating twitter in your social media strategy.

4. Consider the all of most popular websites and social networks.

Before you exhaust yourself with possible networks, decide what among the most popular websites suits your business’ social engagement style – it may not be an official social network that you end up having the most “social engagement” on. Then, consider places that are explicitly set up for social networking. Here are the most popular websites and social networks of 2013, according to eBizMBA:

Most Popular Websites of 2013:

1. Google
2. YouTube
3. Facebook
4. Yahoo!
5. amazon.com
6. Wikipedia
7. MSN
8. Bing
9. eBay
10. Twitter

Most Popular Social Networks of 2013:

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. LinkdIn
4. Google+
5. Pinterest
6. Tumblr
7. Flickr
8. VK
9. Instagram
10. DeviantArt

5. Consider the most popular websites and networks for your niche

For instance, if you are in real estate, you may want to engage with your audience on zillow, trulia, and realtor.com. Almost every large niche website has some form of social engagement available.

6. Make online social interaction about providing a resource rather than advertising and selling.

Ask yourself what you could provide and then ask yourself how you could most provide that resource online.

The best way to engage with your clients and customers online is to provide something of value for them.

If you have a large knowledge-base relevant to your business, you may want to consider blogging regularly and syndicating those blog entries from your website to the social networks where your clients or customers already engage. If you are a photographer, you may just stick to syndicating photographs from your websites gallery pages to social networks. If you have a vast collection of online resources (useful websites), you may set up a “Resources” page on your website and periodically post a URL to your social networks with a short description of that resource.

Additional Resources

Social Networking Demographics

MediaBistro Social User Demographics
A Case Study in Social Media Demographics

eBizMBA

eBizMBA Most Popular Social Networks 2013
eBizMBA Most Popular Websites 2013

I recently attended a webinar by BrightLocal that presented some recent statistics and tools related to online reviews.

Online reviews are important to get, keep getting, and to manage. This is a time-consuming task and many business owners opt to pay someone to manage their web presence for them. Web management may include managing any of the following: online reviews, blog content, social media presence, online event promotion, website updates and upgrades, backlinks, SEO (in general), and web servers.

If you don’t have someone managing all of these components of your web presence, it can be difficult to know where to start. I believe that online reviews are a great place to start because:

1. Reviews are becoming increasingly relevant as people look to the web for business information.
2. They are something that needs to be built over time.
3. There are tools and services available so you can avoid the overhead of paying someone to manage your reviews.

I wanted to share two slides that were presented at the webinar I attended. The first slide shows the Local Business Reviews Ecosystem. In this slide we see how various business directories are out there and how they feed each other:

In terms of importance, most of the panelists considered yelp, Google+, and yahoo! to be the most important places on which to be reviewed. I was surprised to learn that Citysearch is actually working online roulette strategy one of the easiest places for clients to leave reviews and it actually feeds a host of other review sites.

The next slide I want to share is a breakdown of review and reputation management services. I’ve yet to look more closely into each of these, but I wanted to give everyone a chance to do their own research if interested. Some of these services are overkill for a business with a small web presence. In particular, I have heard good things about getFivestars, so I’d check that out first.

Finally, much of the webinar was inspired by the exhaustive 2013 Local Search Ranking Factors report released by moz.com. Check it out here: http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

One of the first considerations that arises when creating a web presence is how to find images for a website. Including images on your website has a big impact on visitors that increases engagement and interest in your products and services.
Many small businesses do not have enough quality photos and graphics to optimize the visual component of their website.  This is especially true if for business blogs, where it’s a good idea to include a fresh image with each blog post.  In this entry I will take a look at some resources online that offer stock photography and graphics.  I’ll point you to free and paid resources to build your image collection.
[Read more…] about How to Find Images for a Website

When your small business decides to take on social media online, setting up a presence on Facebook should be one of your first priorities. If you are new to Facebook, or social media in general, the task of polishing, presenting, and using your Facebook business page may seem daunting. That is why I have compiled a list of eight steps that will get your business page ready to interface with potential customers on Facebook.

Note: This entry is intended for individuals who already have a Facebook account and Facebook business page. You can set up a Facebook account here. You need a Facebook account to create a Facebook business page. Once you have a Facebook account, you can set up a Facebook business page here.

[Read more…] about Eight Steps to a Facebook Business Page