Social Media Spotlight: All About Facebook
Social media can be intimidating, but these platforms are important for small businesses to market themselves on. Today we’re covering important information about Facebook so you can be comfortable with marketing your business on this social media platform!
Facebook was founded on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes in a Harvard dorm room as a way to connect students with other students at the school. The platform quickly spread to other college campuses over the next month. By September 2005, Facebook was being used by high schools to connect students with each other. By late 2006, it was opened to the public, and by the end of 2006, membership increased to 12 million. And it has continued to grow since then. By April 2015, over 40 million small business pages were on Facebook.
Facebook’s primary function is a “News Feed.” A Facebook user’s News Feed is the page that they spend the majority of their time on; it collects meaningful posts from their friends, groups, and pages that they follow and shares them in a single scrolling page for ease of access. These posts range from text posts, photos, and videos. In addition, Facebook will share advertisements on a user’s Feed, allowing users to see posts from businesses that they are not immediately following. The posts that show up on a user’s Feed are determined by an algorithm that calculates how likely a user is to enjoy a post. If it believes that the user will be interested in the post, then it will share the post to the user’s Feed. Information about your business can be shared to your customers as they are browsing social media through both organic and paid placements.
As a small business, the most popular and effective method to share your posts is via a Business Page. Many businesses use a public Facebook Page to share information about their business, ranging from business updates to special deals and discounts. Additionally, Facebook Business Pages offer many benefits. Facebook’s integration makes it easy to run advertisements that will share your posts to the Feeds of users who aren’t following you. Additionally, Business Pages include analytics that help you measure how people are engaging with your content, and the demographics of your followers. A Facebook Page is a great way to help keep your customers connected and aware of any new information that you have.
Facebook offers several features to help you run and manage your business. Business Manager is a tool businesses can use to manage their Facebook Marketing efforts. Some advantages of Business Manager include the ability to create new business assets, such as Pages, ad accounts, and product catalogs. You can also use it to claim existing business assets, such as business Pages, so you can control them more effectively. You can also manage your accounts, making it one stop that allows you to post and make changes to your business accounts on Facebook. Business Manager can be used to add an agency or marketing partner to help you manage your business; this helps you keep your personal and work life separate, so you can effectively market your business. Using Business Manager, you can run and track ads by creating an Ads Manager account, making it easy to advertise your business. Ads Manager is where your ad campaigns are hosted, and Business Manager helps you integrate these campaigns with your business. You can also create and manage your catalog and inventory using Business Manager.
Facebook is an immensely popular social media platform that is used by people worldwide. With over 2 billion users, a Facebook Page can be seen by individuals all around the world. However, Facebook also offers ways to connect to local audiences. When you run an advertisement, you can choose the demographics that you wish to advertise to. Since users share location, age, and gender information with Facebook, you can easily choose the audience that you wish to advertise to. Facebook also receives enormous information about a users interests based on their activity on the platform and the pages and posts they interact with. This helps you target a customer base to ensure a high amount of conversions. With Facebook’s massive platform and demographic information, reaching either a broad audience, or a specific demographic is a breeze!
Social media is becoming more and important for marketing, and Facebook is one of the most popular platforms out there. Have any questions or issues with Facebook? If you have a small business and need help navigating Facebook or any other social media platform, reach out to us!