This intriguing question was recently asked by one of my professional services colleagues, Barry Feldman. Barry authors a popular marketing blog called “The Point” and also guest writes for Social Media Today. The question is intriguing to me since it is asking a question about social media from a niche market to which I happen to belong!
My first thought is that Facebook is obviously helpful to business since I have used it to generate leads, engagement and even direct sales for many of my own clients. However, the clients that initially came to mind were not professional service businesses, but rather product-based businesses; Mooers Volvo, and Criminal Thinking Therapy for example. But, when thinking about my own Facebook page I had to take a step back and make a self-assessment.
Although my own professional services Facebook page hasn’t led to any direct sales that I can attribute exclusively to this platform, I do believe is has helped my business in several important ways. What follows are recommendations and observations from my own experience with a ‘professional services’ Facebook page.
- Use your business Facebook page to promote existing client and colleague blogs, Facebook pages, services and events.
- This approach has helped me maintain and strengthen connections which ultimately leads to more business.
- Use the promote post feature to leverage posts into ads that drive traffic to your website and tech blog.
- I have used this feature on several occasions and have seen a dramatic increase in website and blog visits. As a result this has become a standard practice for my own Facebook page.
- Post blog articles which then auto feed to your Twitter account where they reach an even larger audience.
- Twobs (Twitter Snobs) will advise against this approach since they believe Twitter should be used independently of Facebook. In my experience, as long as I also interact with Twitter followers on that platform as well, cross posting from Facebook has actually helped to create more engagement on Twitter.
Since my clients are more active on Facebook than they are on Twitter, or even Linkedin, it is a way for me to keep my business top of mind for them. Facebook is the single largest social site in the world. For businesses that rely on positive word of mouth to generate sales, having a business Facebook page that is professionally developed and well maintained is almost as important as having a website. Social media is words of mouth digitized!
I receive a fair amount of traffic to my tech blog, theinkblog.net and website, LoebigInk.com that originates from my business Facebook page. A quick check of your website and blog analytics will let you know if your Facebook page is generating any traffic. If it’s not generating traffic, you may need to do a better job of optimizing it for better leads.
One of the single most important and easiest ways to encourage traffic is to include your website address in your ‘about’ description so that it shows up as a link on your Facebook front page.
Side note: if your page is setup as a ‘local business’ the about description won’t appear on the front page. Switch to a company page in order for your URL to display.
What do you think? Is Facebook helping generate business, leads or traffic for your business?
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