Facebook for Business ? A Decision to Make

If done right, a Facebook page can be as important to the success of a business as its website. If not, it can be a disaster and in the worst cases it can actually result in losing loyal customers. There's quite a lot to consider when deciding if using Facebook for business is the right move for your particular company.

Should you try Facebook for Business?

Is there a reason for you to try Facebook for business other than the old "everyone else is there, so we have to" argument? Social media isn't about push marketing and if your master plan is to build a Facebook page to constantly tell people about your products or services, you will not succeed.

You have to provide something that people will benefit from in one way or another. Then you can hit your fans with your marketing message in interesting ways. Being creative is key and by actually doing something worthwhile, you will grow a strong base of fans that will get the word out for you.

It takes time to utilize Facebook for Business

One of the first and most important things you should ask before getting your business on Facebook is: can you or someone within your organization spend the time required to maintain a Facebook page?

Depending on the size of your company and your goals for Facebook, this may take just a few hours a week or 20 (or much more for giant companies). That's just the maintenance of keeping up with the page- adding new compelling content, communicating with your fans, coming up with new ideas and implementing them.

Setting up the page will take quite a bit of time as well. Thankfully, there are thousands of applications that can enhance your Facebook business page's look and functionality without hand coding everything.

All this is not meant to scare you out of creating a presence for your business on Facebook. Just know that there's actual work that needs to be done and a lot of it!

Are your competitors on Facebook?

Another major part of your decision to get your business on Facebook should be whether your competitors are there. If most aren't currently on Facebook, you should do some If they are using Facebook for business, does it look like they've been successful with their campaign? Do they have a lot of fans? Do they post a lot? Is the content they post

interesting or is it just filled with bland, boring marketing messages? To sum it up: is your industry conducive to Facebook?

Decision Time

At this point, you've probably realized one thing that keeps coming up: it takes a lot of time, effort and creativity to succeed using Facebook for business. There should be a lot of work that goes into creating your Facebook business presence before you actually start building your fan page. Don't just jump in; spend the time now to figure out if it's all feasible rather than after you've already failed!