Your Business Has a Facebook Page: Now What?

Joining a social networking site like Facebook can be extremely beneficial when branding your business and reaching your customer base. But some business owners misunderstand the concept and application of what it means to be "on Facebook" (or any other social media outlet).

Instead of thinking of "joining Facebook" as a task, think of it as an evolving project that has no end in site. Social media is more like a human life than a marketing concept, as it is ever changing, on-going and will always require effort and time from you (or your employees).

Compare your Facebook page with that of a newborn baby, for example. You gave birth to him (started your page), and now expect the task to be complete. It is only beginning. You now have have to nurture your page. In short, you've got to put in the time to make Facebook pay off for you in order to sell your brand.

Your aim in starting a Facebook account is to drive traffic to your Facebook page.

Driving Facebook traffic can be accomplished by:

• Providing new content regularly.

• Updating your Twitter page to announce that you've added fresh content on Facebook (with a link).

• Emailing your contact list of consumers with a link to the Facebook page containing fresh content.

• Using Facebook's Events option to let your customers know when you are having a calendar event. A simple offering of fresh coffee and cookies on a certain day is enough to call it a party, and will drive traffic into your store front or meeting. A great thing about Facebook Events is that when your customer sends an RSVP in return, their Facebook newsfeed shows that they've done so, so all of their friends will be introduced to your brand.

• Linking in your fresh content with all of your social media outlets. If you use Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn or a blog or just your own website, adding fresh content to all of your outlets will drive traffic to your Facebook page.

All of these media outlets work like a tight jazz trio. You can't have a great combo without the sax, the drums and piano. Singularly, the instruments may not do much for you, but all working together they produce amazing results.