Before we get into recruiting Fans on Facebook® and Followers on Twitter®, let’s first review some basic introductory goals in launching a social media campaign for your Carlsbad small business.
- Broadcast your business online visibility on the second most popular website in the world.* (http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/facebook.com)
- Connect and engage with existing customers to promote loyalty, and recruit new customers through grass-roots digital word of mouth.
- Give your North County retail small business a virtual identity; develop an online community built around your products, services, location, customers…etc.
- Establish a Twitter profile for your business to begin following other local businesses in the area. (suppliers, vendors, customers…etc.)
- Keep it simple – if anything seems to daunting, take a step back and think about your primary goals again. Visibility and communication.
Over the next couple of weeks we will look to check off each one of these easily attainable goals. We’re trying to keep this informative and structured toward the DIY beginner when it comes to digital marketing, social media, and local search techniques doable for the Carlsbad small business owner without devoting tons of time.
Getting started with a Facebook Business Page is the first step in achieving goal number one. It’s pretty easy but it’s also easy to take a few wrong steps and wind up wasting time. The most important thing to remember when starting a Facebook Business Page for your Carlsbad small business is this – PAGES are for businesses, and PROFILES are for people. Be absolutely sure you are creating a Business Page, and not a Personal Profile.
Create your Facebook Business Page Here.
Problem number two often arises when small businesses wrongly categorize themselves with the next step seen here:
Basically if your Carlsbad business is a retail physical location (or multiple locations) with a verifiable address (more on this later), you pick the ‘Local Business or Place’ option, choose the appropriate category, and complete the sign up process. Most retail small businesses will choose this option.
If your business is a structured company – and you don’t want to be identified with a specific neighborhood location, you would want to initiate your business page as a ‘Company, Organization, or Institution.’ Also be sure to choose the correct category with this option.
Follow through with the simple step by step instructions to give your Carlsbad business a Facebook presence. It would serve you well to review Personal Profile privacy settings and the functionality of your Business Page. Your personal facebook profile is allowing you to act as administrator of your business page, get familiar with the navigation. Upload some photos of your business, products or services to spruce up your profile. We’ll cover building a list of loyal ‘Likes’ on the next installment. Go forth and connect with friends and family on Facebook – as your Business Page.
We’re sure they’ll have plenty of suggestions!
P.S. Here is the Twitter link to sign-up your small business – https://twitter.com/signup, it’s not as confusing.
*Facebook is the second most popular site in the world according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings. Search engines refer approximately 6% of visits to it. This site has been online since 1997, and the time spent in a typical visit to Facebook is roughly 32 minutes, with 37 seconds spent on each pageview. Relative to the overall population of internet users, this site’s audience tends to be users who browse from school and home; they are also disproportionately women under the age of 45 who have postgraduate educations. – http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/facebook.com
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