Facebook For Small Business: Five Simple Things You Should Be Doing

It's not like you need more things to do, but if you have found Facebook to be a valuable tool for your small business then you should be looking for things that will simplify your time and tasks on social media. I put together five simple things every small business should consider doing on Facebook every week and month to see a continual benefit.

5 Simple Things You Should Be Doing on Facebook

1. The first thing is to be real. This is especially true of retail, restaurants, and practically every direct-to-consumer business. Take ten minutes every week and get out your smartphone and snap images of your employees, your storefront, your products, and maybe some of your favorite customers (with permission of course). While your creativity is fresh write down something to go with each image or ask one of your employees something about them so your customers can begin to know more about your company. You do not need to get a professional photographer that charges a premium to create content for your Facebook channel. From time to time, this may be valuable, but your day to day social content should not be over thought or have extremely high-end production. I have found that raw posts with images or video we capture on our mobile devices often produces the best results and engagement. Check out one of my favorite tools to edit images and do text overlay - Canva. There are also some great online tools to help you share your content like Buffer or Hootsuite.

2. Create a calendar. Some people are completely spontaneous but those people usually find five to ten days between posts. It is beneficial to post one to two times a day on Facebook as a small business. Of course this varies by industry but generally, that is the rule. If you get disciplined by creating a calendar you should create a content category list to help you fill those buckets and assign the ratio of each category accordingly. An example would be creating categories for products, employees, services, special events, holidays, recognition, charities you admire or support, customers, and maybe quotable quotes. Take your categories and decide how often you want to post for each category. Let's assume you have 45 posts in a thirty day month, averaging 1.5 posts per day. You can slice that pie however you like, but I would recommend doing slightly more people and event related content over product or service content. Which leads me to the next point.

3. Use Facebook so people get to know your culture. If the majority of your posts are advertisements or are product or service centric you are missing the point of "social" media. Be social. People love businesses that are lovable. Most products and services are not endearing. People are endearing. Share great content about your people, your mission, values, and beliefs. Share content about your customers and share real stories about real people like the founders, the employees, or leaders in your community.

4. Really engage. Business pages on Facebook have some limitations on engaging personal profiles pages, which is why creating content your followers engage with is extremely important. Once someone makes a comment or reviews you be sure you are responsive. They may have made a comment, asked a question, or just was engaging, join the conversation and participate.

5. This is not really a task to check off, but a state of mind. Do not overthink this stuff. Do not act like a big PR firm for a fortune 500 company. If you get a bad review be honest, polite, but straightforward. Be humble and apologetic if the customer is right. If they are wrong, stand your ground but be courteous, because social media is no different than the town square, everyone can see and hear you. Sometimes if you have built a loyal following of customers they will often be the ones who jump in and defend you. If you are funny then be funny. If you are not funny, don't try. Be yourself and let the personality of your company come out on Facebook. Be the real you, have a plan, be transparent, engage your followers, and don't overthink it. This should be fun.

Facebook can be a huge benefit for businesses, just be sure to utilize it to your needs. Want some guidance through this? Get the conversation started.