Which social media channels work most effectively for your business? If you are like a lot of other business people, Facebook is probably among the list of your most used social media channels. However, do you think that you are leveraging Facebook for all that it can offer your business?

Some of your Facebook efforts will work and some will not

The fact is that Facebook has a lot of power and possibilities behind it when it comes to business. Additionally, Facebook has been around for quite a while and it has gained respect among business people. Of course, the Facebook of today is not the Facebook of yesterday. In the beginning, Facebook was used pretty exclusively by college students to communicate easily among them. However, nowadays, Facebook is used by millions of for all sorts of purposes.

The truth is that Facebook holds tremendous potential when it comes to content marketing but you need to have a clear understanding of which aspects of the social media channel will work effectively for your business and which ones will not. Because each business is different, it is important to really wrap your mind around the particular needs of your business. Some of the aspects of Facebook that may serve your business very well are:

• Posting on a regular basis: One of the important aspects of posting content for any business person is that the posting be done consistently from week to week. The fact is that your target audience members need to see consistency from you so that you can build a relationship together. Your consistency says many different things, including making a statement about how committed you are to your target audience. The fact that you are posting top-quality content means that you are making your best effort to solve whichever problem(s) they are experiencing. It is a known fact that content must always be fresh. It should never be stagnant. It is very helpful if you post evergreen content as much as possible but you still have a responsibility to update the content on a regular basis and to post new content (whether created or curated) on a very regular basis.
• Get involved consistently: It isn’t enough for you to post content on a regular basis. You must also jump in with both feet when it comes to interacting with people through comments at the bottom of the post. There are several different ways that you can do that, including asking thought-provoking questions, sharing your thoughts, etc. What is important is that you engage other people. The more you can generate interesting discussions, the more solid your relationships with those people will become. Interestingly, if you get involved with people, they will tell you what interests them. All humans love to think that their opinions matter. You have a responsibility to make them feel just that way.
• Don’t stick exclusively to text: As you are aware, status updates are absolutely necessary if you want to succeed in business. However, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t make those updates interesting for other people. You may want to seriously consider adding a graphic element of some kind to your status updates as well. Considering that many people are visual, a graphic element will work very well with them and those people will react favorably to what you are posting. The visual element may be as simple as a photo of something relevant and interesting.
• Don’t use Facebook in a promotional manner: Social media, which includes Facebook, certainly serves an important purpose in business. However, the content that you share with other people on Facebook should be informative, educational, and exciting. It should never be promotional. The last thing that you want to do is to deliver a “hard sell” because that is the last thing that your target audience members want to read. It must be about their needs before your needs. It is that simple.
• Facebook serves many valuable purposes, including great customer service: Because successful relationships are at the heart of social media, customer service seems like a natural. After all, it is always about the people before anything else. Interacting from the customer service perspective allows you to develop meaningful, enduring relationships with your target audience members. The truth is that good customer service is a necessary part of any business and yours is certainly no exception.

Conclusion

There are many different ways in which you can market your business online. It is very important that you don’t discount Facebook as one of the social media channels that is no longer effective or valid. That simply is not true. Facebook has a great deal to offer and it can be extremely powerful for your business. Additionally, because so many people are connected to Facebook, it would be foolish not to take advantage of such numbers of connections. As a person who is involved with marketing for business, you can’t afford to ignore the power that Facebook has behind it.

Michael Cohn is the founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of CompuKol Communications. He has over 25 years of experience in IT and web technologies. Mr. Cohn spent a significant amount of time at a major telecommunications company, where his main focus was on initiating and leading synergy efforts across all business units by dramatically improving efficiency, online collaboration, and the company’s Intranet capabilities, which accelerated gains in business productivity. He also reduced company travel and travel costs by introducing and implementing various collaboration technologies.

His expertise includes business analysis; project management; management of global cross-matrix teams; systems engineering and analysis, architecture, prototyping and integration; technology evaluation and assessment; systems development; performance evaluation; and management of off-shore development.

Mr. Cohn earned a Master’s degree in project management from George Washington University in Washington, DC; and a Master’s degree in computer science and a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, NJ.

Mr. Cohn is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).