Facebook is the most popular social media website on the internet today. Currently they tout having about 500 million users. Due to the fact that there are so many members, Facebook is a perfect venue to advertise and market your business and it is free to join.
Getting Started With Your Profile
After you join Facebook, one of the first things you want to do is create a profile for yourself. Before writing a single thing in that profile, keep in mind that you are representing your company and the profile needs to make a perfect first impression of you and your business. Some business owners do not want their picture shown on the business profile so showing the company logo is acceptable. Put only those things that you want your customers to know about you, try to keep it professional and business like. Although you want to appear transparent in the public eye, you do not want to over do the information you are giving. You will want to tell the customer what year your business was established and a short description of your products or services that you provide. You are only allowed to list 3 links, one should be of your business website, the second could be a special page on your website and the third could be your Facebook business fan page. Keep your business profile updated and current all the time.
Make a Business Fan Page
This is easy to do and will help to promote your business. A fan page is a page that most businesses have where their customers go and they “like” the page. They tell all their friends and so on. On the fan page you can show pictures of your products, announce sales, contests and other promotions that you have going on at that time. You may also add your website link so that a potential client can click on that link and go directly to your site. Your customers will naturally go to you fan page to see new products and get updates of your business. You as the business owner need to keep the page updated and change product pictures often. Use your fan page to have discussions with your customers, as this is a great way to find out what they think about your products or services. Knowing what customers thinks will help you change the way you do things in order to please the clients. This is such valuable information because most business owners have to guess what the customer is thinking.
If you should decide that this is a task you do not wish to attempt, there are many social media consultants that can help you create your fan page. (You can
contact me if you need help finding one.)
Using Facebook Polls
Facebook offers polls that anyone can use but they are especially good for the business owners. This is an easy way to find out what people think about any topic. Knowing what potential customers think gives you an advantage over other businesses. Facebook has a number of other free applications like the polls to help the small business owner market their business.
The small business owner should take advantage of everything that Facebook has to offer. Facebook is an easy and effective way to reach many people and is referral marketing at its best! Marketing your business is free and free advertising is hard to find. Once you begin to use Facebook, you will begin to wonder how you did without it all these years.
With the current state of the economy worldwide, many of the unemployed have opted to start freelancing to create opportunities when few seem to exist. The internet has made this easier to do than in years past.
1)
Freshbooks
If you are going to do work for others, you have to get paid! You will need to create invoices for your records and to keep track of who owes you and how much.
Freshbooks has a free level that will allow you to invoice up to three clients! You can choose to send the invoice via email or for an additional fee, you can snail mail the invoice to your client. The system interfaces with
PayPal to allow quick and easy payment acceptance and with
Outright to help with your accounting needs.
Freshbooks has a list of add-ons on its website that allows you to connect easily to other online resources that will help you maintain the project management, customer support, marketing, and other areas of your business.
2)
Mailchimp
Communication and staying in front of your clients, customers, or fans is key if you plan to build a successful company. Email is definitely the most economical and green method to use for this. There are many providers to help you get your message across to your audience. Mailchimp is one I have discovered. The provider will allow you to send up to 12,000 emails (total) per month to a mailing list of up to 2,000 subscribers and it will cost you NOTHING. In other words, Mailchimp will let you send six emails a month to 2,000 subscribers without it costing you a penny! (There are other levels if you need more but the free plan will get you started. I have to admit, I was not able to get
Mailchimp to work like I wanted but there are many freelancers who use it successfully.
3)
SocialOomph
Social media has become a major part of the marketing plan of businesses of all sizes. Freelancers and small businesses can easily reach the people who are most interested in what the company has and for free! By promoting your business to your friends and their network of friends, you automatically have a method of promotion that has your established reputation attached. Who better to refer you and your services or products to others than your friends? Statistics have been published that suggest the average Facebook user has about 130 friends. Having a Facebook fan page that is promoted by your friends has the potential to reach thousands of other Facebook users. All of that exposure is absolutely free! A tool like SocialOomph makes posting to that fan page easier. Instead of having to log into Facebook to post regularly,
SocialOomph allows you the opportunity to enter and schedule as many posts as you want. Say you have 15 minutes and four ready-to-go posts on your hands, you can schedule Facebook posts for your fan page. If you just post one of those postings a week, when your 15 minutes are up you will be set for the next month’s worth of postings. Easy!
Whether you are a graphic designer, a virtual assistant, or a social media specialist, the bottom line is your business will need information systems if you want to run your business as efficiently as possible. These are just a few of the resources out there that can provide awesome support at little or no cost. There are many others, some may even be a better fit your specific needs. This list is only the start of the ones I have used. Many more are started daily! Watch for more articles in the future that will highlight some of these new resources.
