Using Facebook for Business: 5 basic tips and strategies

One of the more common questions I get when I talk to people about Facebook is, naturally, “why should I care?” Many people still consider Facebook to be little more than an online Rolodex or, since they see their friends every day, superfluous.

The truth is that it’s a lot more than that. This is obvious to people like Jeremiah Owyang, Connie Bensen, Nick O’neill, Rodney Rumford, my co-worker Teresa, or myself because we all spend too much time figuring these things out so other people don’t have to (all speakers at our December event, by the way).

It’s becoming more and more obvious that social networking in general, and Facebook in particular, are important places to be - they drive customer engagement - not just attention - and at least in our experience they can provide some exceptional ROI.

If you’re floundering about in the world of social media, and you’re looking for a few easy ways you can get your business into Facebook, here are some things I’d recommend trying:

1. Get your employees on Facebook - at least half of good Facebook engagement is showing up. Having your employees engaging with people, leaving comments on walls, or participating in discussion boards on groups will give your company both a presence and a personality. This is amazingly powerful. People like other people more than they like companies.
2. Talk about it - while it’s not really a good idea to try to create a business profile on Facebook (the way you’d create a band profile on Myspace), it’s perfectly fine to be excited about what you’re doing. When you’ve done something cool at work, update your status to share it, or post a note, or post a link for other people to check it out.
3. Create a group - this is the place where you can promote your business proper. Use your company name in the group title if you want to. Make sure to be active in the group yourself - respond to people’s questions and be sure to ask questions yourself. Start message board threads. And remember, comedy works. Don’t be overly serious.
4. Import your blog posts - there’s a feature in Facebook (which Teresa explains in a video that I can’t for all the googling in the world find, so here’s my shorter, lamer version) that allows you to automatically import your blog posts as notes, which are then syndicated through the FB newsfeed to your friends. Grab the feed from your company blog (you’d better have one) and pull it in to your profile.
5. Build an application - although building an application can be the most time-consuming form of Facebook engagement, it can also easily be the most rewarding. Apps can be used just to promote your brand, to drive traffic to your site outside of Facebook, or to make money within Facebook. There are a lot of rules and regulations for building within the Facebook walls, so unless you’ve got someone on staff who really knows the terms of service and is familiar with the technical language necessary to build your application, you should probably at least get a spec from someone who is familiar with the space. Someone like—wait for the shameless plug—us

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