28. Questions? Comments?
• Ellen Anderson
• Virtual Reference Librarian
• Geneva Public Library District
• eanderson@gpld.org
• (630)313-1006
Editor's Notes
Hello, thank you for having me. My name is Ellen Anderson and I am the Virtual Reference Librarian at the Geneva Library. Part of what I do at the Library is run most of our social media outlets and monitor the Library’s online presence. I am here today to share with you the research I have done on how to create and run a successful Business page on Facebook. I have included examples from my research as well as personal experience of working and running the Library’s social media outlets. I would like to start off with a short introduction of Facebook and Facebook pages for business.
Many of you probably recognize this screen as I assume many of you have personal profiles on Facebook. This is the log in page to Facebook each time you choose to log in. Facebook as you know is a social media platform. So what does that mean? Facebook was created as a place for making connections by sharing ideas and personal updates. Facebook is a place where millions of individuals come to talk, share ideas, pictures, videos and get to know others or engage long distance relationships or friendships online. It’s a community building tool created as a place for social interaction. Next, lets take a look at the importance of Facebook specifically for marketing by looking at Facebook’s trends.
Pew Internet’s social media update came to the overall conclusion that of the adults who are Internet users- Facebook is still the social media platform of choice. This was from a recent survey completed just last year. The exact stats they found say 42% of online adults use multiple social networking sites, but Facebook remains the platform of choice. This bar graph shows a few stats most notably that compared to other social media sites, Facebook stands out as the clear leader in social media. Not only that, but they are continuing to grow even larger. Based on this graph, Facebook will continue to grow and continue to lead social media in terms of number of users for the next few years. Of the adults who are online in 2012 67% were on Facebook, in 2013 71% were on Facebook. In order to relate that information to you, this means that a customer that comes to your business that uses the Internet– there is a 71% chance that he or she is a Facebook user. That is a very high percentage. So, for you as a business owner, the stats show that you will reach the highest amount of online users through Facebook. So if you are looking for a social media to start with, I would choose Facebook as your platform to try first. Or, if you decide you only want to use one social media platform, based on these stats, I would choose Facebook because you will reach the most number of online users in your marketing.
This is a chart of time spent on social media sites. We can see that 83% of a users time on social media is spent on Facebook. So not only are there more users on Facebook, they are also spending more time on that site.
So, lets take a look at exactly how Facebook is doing in terms of its users. Facebook has 1.15 billion users worldwide. 699 million daily Facebook users and 128 million daily Facebook users just in the US. These numbers can basically speak for themselves. When trying to market to online users Facebook has established itself as the leader of online community and by marketing on Facebook, you will have the advantage of being able to market to a huge amount of people. So, lets break down these stats a little further.
Out of all Internet users 63% of men use Facebook and 70% of women who are Internet users use Facebook. The largest age group that is on Facebook is 18-29 year olds at 83% but the age group 30-49 is not far behind at 72%. And we can also see that the smallest user group is ages 65+ at 40%, but when you think about it, 40% isn’t that small. What this means is that Facebook has grounded its self in both genders and has a representation in almost all age groups. Depending on your user group or your customer base, there is a good chance they are using Facebook. Making Facebook a great way to start marketing to your customer base online. So, once you decide whether or not Facebook is where you want to begin marketing your business online, the first step will be to create a business page.
What is a business page and how is it different from a profile. I know many of you may have a personal profile already and may want to understand how a Facebook page is different. So let me begin with Facebook profiles:
Each person who signs up for Facebook has one account with login information. Each account can have a personal Timeline and manage multiple Pages. Personal Timelines, or profiles, are for individual, non-commercial use. They represent individual people and must be held under an individual name.
Facebook Pages look similar to personal Timelines, but they offer unique tools for connecting profiles to a business or a brand. Pages are managed by an individual who has personal Timeline or profile. Pages are not separate Facebook accounts and do not have separate login information from your Timeline. In order to create a Facebook page, you will first open a Facebook timeline or profile.
If your goal is to represent your business, brand or product on Facebook, create a Page. A Page lets you engage with people or profiles on Facebook and offers tools to help you manage and track engagement.
So, our next step is to create a personal profile. Your personal profile account will allow you to create and manage a page. You will set up your personal information on Facebook to represent yourself and you will have a log in and password. This profile is how you connect to your page. You will sign in under your personal profile then be able to flip over to business page to manage and add content to your business page. Or, perhaps many of you already have personal profiles and you can begin to create a Page. From your home screen you will be given the option to create a page. This will take you to the picture you are seeing now. Here you can create your page based on the type of business you are. You will have a few options to choose from such as a local business or Place, Company, Organization or Institution, a Brand or Product, Artist, Band or Public Figure, Entertainment or Cause or Community. Once you choose which type of business you are, many of you will fall in the Local Business or Place, you can begin to fill out your basic information to get started. The first steps will be to fill out what type of business you are, your location and phone number and agree to Facebook’s terms and agreements in order to create you page.
Once you have filled out your information you will create a page that looks something like this. You will continue to update and fill out your basic information and also upload images for your business or brand.
Your Facebook page will consist of what I have put into three basic parts. Your Admin panel which is where you will track and view all of your engagement stats. Next, is the basic information section which will include your profile and cover images and your location information. Last, is the body of the page which will include all your original content such as updates and posts and also include who you are following and who has written on your page timeline.
First we will start with the Admin panel. This is a basic run through just to give you an idea of what the admin panel looks like. The admin panel is the largest difference from the Facebook personal timeline. This admin panel was created specifically for businesses to track how they gain followers and track how many followers their posts reach. From this panel you can see each of your posts and your total reach, meaning how many individuals saw your post. You can also see direct personal messages from profiles and most importantly your insights. When you click on “Check out Page Insights” this will take you to all your stats for your business page.
This is what your Page Insights looks like. At the very top you can see an overview of your page’s engagement, your likes, your reach, and give you further stats and information regarding your posts and people who have liked you and engaged with your page. This is a snap shot of the overview page. From here I can see a chart of in just one week how many people liked my page and on what day. I also see in the chart next to it how many people my posts are reaching and on which days. Next to that it also breaks down my engagement of likes, comments, shares and post clicks. Now, on each of these charts, I can click on them to get more information. So, I am going to click on the middle chart entitled, “post reach”.
Now I can see in detail the number of people who saw my posts. What I can take from this information is when I get the most reach or views from my Facebook users. I can then schedule out my posts when I know most of my users are online and I can make sure the majority will see my posts. I want to make sure I get the most people seeing my posts and the most interaction with them as possible. If I know when my users are on and when the best time is to reach them, I will continue to post during these times. For example this chart is showing me I reach the most people at the beginning of the week. This means, I will continue to make sure I post at the beginning of week so I make sure to reach the highest amount of people possible.
Another tab I use a lot with in the insights page is the “people” tab. The screen shot here shows how many people I am reaching and where they are located. This is helpful to me so I can see where my users are located. I want to make sure for my goals of my Facebook page, that I am reaching people in the Geneva, IL area. So what I can see is that am reaching the majority of people who are located in Chicago, Geneva, St. Charles, Aurora and Batavia all in IL. This is exactly what I want. I want to reach those in my community to engage with them on a local level. I want them to come to Geneva Library and use our resources.
The next area of the Facebook page is your basic information. You can update, change or add to your basic information at any time by clicking on the “Update Page Info” button which appears directly underneath your cover photo. Your basic information section needs to be filled out with accuracy and attention to detail for your customers or patrons who are looking at your page for basic information such as phone number to contact you, your exact location, and hours of operation for reference. You will also want to upload an image as your profile picture that represents you as a company or brand. This can be a logo if you are interested in getting brand recognition or a picture of your building. Something that represents what you business is and what you do. Having a clear picture or logo allows for easy searching by customers to be able to find you online.
The Last section is the Page body. The first section of the body is a box that displays reviews from your online followers, the next box below is a box displaying what other customers or patrons have written publicly on your timeline, followed by a box which lists the other business pages your page follows. The rest of the body is the timeline. The timeline is your collection of posts added by you starting with the most recent descending to the oldest posts. This is original content created by you such as status updates, pictures, videos, links to your website, etc. This is where you will create original posts to market yourself and send information to profiles who are following you. These posts will get sent out to other individuals in their profile news feeds. The information you create to post is public and published on the Internet, you will want to make sure the language is appropriate for how you want to portray the image of your business.
This is a closer view of your timeline. Here you can see closer the box of recent posts from other profiles, our likes or in other words, the other pages our page follows and also our posts. At the top of the timeline is your status update. In the status update box is where you will create an original post, upload a photo or video to share with your followers.
This next section I will talk about these posts that you will create to send to your followers. These posts are how you will market your business. These are original content that you create which has something to do with your business or brand. You will want to make them engaging so your followers will read what you have to say and hopefully interact with you by liking your status or commenting on your post. The more your followers interact with you the more visibility your post will be seen. For example, if a follower likes or comments on one of your posts, their profile friends will also see this interaction or connection to your page. Your post will then have more visibility to even more people. By successfully running a Facebook page, you can create an online following of users and create an online community. This is what Facebook is meant to do: a tool focused on community building. So, I have put together some tips on how to create successful, interactive posts for your users to create a community and a conversation around your business.
The first tip is visual engagement. Facebook users love to see pictures and watch videos. Connect your status update with a picture. Facebook users are bombarded with advertisements and messages so they spend a small amount of time looking at each post in their Facebook feeds and an even smaller amount of time actually reading a post. The more your post pops out or the less there is to read, the better chance you will have at grabbing their attention and hopefully getting interaction with that post. The first example is from Etsy, they have a really nice picture of a product that is for sale on their website. They are hoping to boost their sales by promoting this lamp by creating a post around a picture of their product. At the Library I have created a video series of staff members talking about what they are currently reading. We are hoping to create conversations around books and reading to continue to build an online community of people to like to read and talk about books.
Create engaging posts in order to engage users. Like I have mentioned multiple times throughout this presentation is to engage your users. An engaging post will help the user to want to interact with you. The best I way I have seen this used is by asking the user a direct question. This question you hope they will stop and respond to your question. Once you get that user to stop, what happens sometimes without the users knowledge, is that they now are thinking about your business by reading your post. You have started a conversation with them regarding your business and are beginning to build a community around your business.
So, the first example is from Barnes and Noble, they wrote, some books are made for autumn. What’s on your fall reading list? Barnes and noble wants to be the first place you think about when you are deciding and buying what you want to read. Asking what’s on your reading list helps to user to keep their company in mind when deciding where they want to buy their books from. Turbo Tax also created a post by writing Happy Monday! What does your to-do list look like this week? This was written right before taxes were due Turbo Tax is hoping you will interact with them by answering the question and remembering their product is available for things that need to get done, such as taxes.
Be funny and edgy. The more creative your post the more people will stop to look at it and interact with you. The Home Depot put out this great post of a video of a puppy in a bucket. People love animals. And people love to watch animal videos. They did a great job of connecting their products to cute dogs. Also, Geico came out with their hump day commercials on TV and then also pushed posts about hump day on their social media. This post was posted on a Wednesday to be relevant. This makes people laugh and hopefully enough that they will comment or like the post.
Staying local with your posts will help to define and speak to your users. For many of you your customers are in the Geneva area. By showing them you are relevant to the Geneva community will help them relate to you. People like seeing themselves or their friends or you actively involved in the community. The Geneva community is something you and your customers have in common. Showing your customers you are here for them at a local level allows you to feel more approachable. Also, showing the faces of yourself and your staff help to give customers a familiar face. The first example is of Moveable Feast when they were at Festival of the Vine, encouraging their users to come out to visit them at their booth. They took a great pic of their staff to show they are friendly and approachable so hopefully you will come visit. The Library also took part in a volunteering event with staff and patrons at the Food Bank, this was a great way our users got to see some of the fun things we do outside of the library.
Staying committed is the next tip. In order to have conversations and interactions around your business or brand, you must help to facilitate these conversations. If you are not posting online and creating interactions, your followers will drop off. It is important to not only continue to create original content conversations around your business or brand but also comment on other conversations on Facebook relating to the type of business you have or to other businesses located in the same area. Knowing what conversations are going on around you keep you informed of what people are talking about. Commenting will help you to control conversations by keeping your business relevant. I put up the Burt’s Bees page because they are one of the leaders right now in Facebook page marketing for businesses. They contribute at least once a day to their online community. They are a great example of how to maintain a Facebook business page.
When you are posting to Facebook, keep in mind your goals of why you are on Facebook. For many of you, you may be getting on Facebook in order to build an online community. Keep this in mind every time you are posting. Make sure you think about your language if it is appropriate for your community, if what you are saying propels or continues the conversation around your brand or your company.
Stay relevant. Be aware of what is going on around your business and community. Are your customers getting ready for an upcoming event or important date? Stay in their conversation by being relevant to them and what they are doing. Is it back to school time? Do you have ideas or resources that are valuable to your customers? Share them. Target was staying relevant by creating a back to school post in August before school started in the fall. Here they are showing off their backpacks. They want to create themselves as the place people go to buy all their school supplies. So they create posts when they know parents are looking to buy school supplies. Community Coffee updates their users with recipes to their customers who love coffee. They now created themselves as a place to go when their customers are looking find relevant information on coffee or other recipes.
Create a posts geared towards your users and costumers. Know who your customers are so you can market directly to them. For example, Macy’s geared this post Calvin Klein fragrance specifically to woman by writing, “calling all downtown girls”.
My parting words would be to have a goal set in place of what you want to do online. Make that into a plan by creating a schedule of what you want to post and when. And be committed. Stick with you plan and continue to post and create conversations with your online community around your business.
