Facebook fanfare

Facebook. What’s a company to do? It’s not a person, doesn’t have friends and rarely goes to parties.

• Can your company have a Facebook page? Yes.
• Can your company have friends? Not really, Companies can have fans (People who like it).
• Can your company sell products on Facebook? No.

So what’s the point?

Facebook is tricky. You have to look at your company a little differently. You have to look at it from the point of view of the people who are happy (really happy) with your product or service. You have to convince them there is some social benefit to allowing you to send them messages directly. You can’t sell product on Facebook, you give away popularity.

For example: Let’s say company FRS makes shoes. Fancy shoes. Fancy RED Shoes. The kind of shoes that stand out; shoes that people buy so that when other people look at them they go “WOW! Look at those shoes”. Facebook loves FRS. Facebook is designed for FRS to post endless successions of images of beautiful red shoes that it’s fans can say “I want these” or “These are Soooooooo beautiful”. Get the idea?

But your company isn’t like FRS, your company sells lunches in the CBD. What can you do? Post the afternoon specials before 11:30 every morning. Tell your fans what’s for lunch. Make them want it. MAKE THEM WANT IT!

Facebook is ALL about generating comments. Positive comments, obviously, are more delightful than negative ones, but negative comments can be good too. Answer the negative comments. Tell your fans what you are going to do about them. Improve your company. Publicly.

Prove the company to the fans >> get more fans >> generate more interest >> get more fans >> make more happy customers >> get more fans >> build your fan base >> Get. More. Fans.

If your company is in the business of making people happy (with what they bought from you) then you can benefit from a Facebook page. If that’s not true (and you need to be honest here) then it’s probably a good idea to check Facebook for hate pages with your name on them. Do something about that. It’s free market research with the customers name on it.