Facebook Business Pages

I’ve noticed that a lot of my wedding industry friends are using Facebook more and more as a means of marketing their businesses which is great news! After all it’s free and just takes a few minutes of your day (well ok, sometimes hours) and the interaction with their customers is incredibly useful. On the down side, some of them have created new personal accounts and are using them as business pages. Here’s the top ten reasons for having a business page for your business instead of a profile page for your business.

1. Profile vs. Business Pages:  Profiles represent individuals and must be held under an individual name, while Business Pages allow an organization, business, celebrity, or band to maintain a professional presence on Facebook. If you use a profile page for your business, it looks rather silly that your business “lives” in a certain place.  Also, on a business page, you can tailor the info page to have your store hours, parking, etc.  You may only create Facebook Pages to represent real organizations of which you are an authorized representative.
2.  The Like Button:  “Like” is a way for your customers to give positive feedback or to connect with your business on Facebook. Your “fans” can like your business which in turn will show up on their friends pages and provide “word of mouth” advertising for you.
3. Social Plugins: Social Plugins enable you to provide engaging social experiences to your users on your website. Because the plugins are served by Facebook, the content is personalized to the viewer whether or not they have signed into your site.  This provides great enhancements to any website!
   1. Like Button
      The Like button lets users share pages from your site back to their Facebook profile with one click.
   2. Send Button
      The Send Button allows your users to easily send your content to their friends.
   3. Comments
      The Comments plugin lets users comment on any piece of content on your site.
   4. Activity Feed
      The Activity Feed plugin shows users what their friends are doing on your site through likes and comments.
   5. Recommendations
      The Recommendations plugin gives users personalized suggestions for pages on your site they might like.
   6. Like Box
      The Like Box enables users to like your Facebook Page and view its stream directly from your website.
   7. Login Button
      The Login Button shows profile pictures of the user’s friends who have already signed up for your site in addition to a login button.
   8. Registration
      The registration plugin allows users to easily sign up for your website with their Facebook account.
   9. Facepile
      The Facepile plugin displays the Facebook profile pictures of users who have liked your page or have signed up for your site.
   10. Live Stream
       The Live Stream plugin lets your users share activity and comments in real-time as they interact during a live event.
4. Weekly Updates:  Once a week, Facebook sends a report to the admins of your page with valuable information and links to helpful marketing techniques
5. Landing Pages:  To me a landing page is sort of like a welcome mat.  It can appear only to new visitors and can be pretty simple or quite elaborate.  The beauty of them is they allow you to direct your visitors to where you want them to go.  Samples: To click on the like button, to go to a contest page, to register (you can even have a form on the page), to tell their friends about your business.  The list can go on and on.
6. Admins:  You can assign more than one person to work on your business page.
7. Mobility:  With a business page, you can post status updates, photos and more from your smart phone!  There are more than 350 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. 
8. Professional Branding: Your brand will appear much more professional.
9. Users:  More than 800 million active users, more than 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day, average user has 130 friends.  (Data collected from Facebook on October 2nd, 2011)
10. Photos and Videos: Facebook offers an incredibly easy way for you to put your photos and videos on your business pages.

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1. Implemented Facebook