Facebook for Business

Facebook has been one of the most potent mediums that bonded the people in one virtual place to share their thoughts, ideas, and all kinds of a possible form of information without being physically involved. This social media platform has been an enormous success after its launch in 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg focused to improve the internal communication among the Harvard University campus. Unlike other social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, who are generally focused on a particular category, Facebook certainly welcomes all its users to share all kinds of content (except few prohibitions) without any charges. The unique nature of Facebook is to host the conversation which is of common interest and the users can increase the multitude of information by sharing and re-sharing them on their walls, groups, and pages. One thing that is common in all the Facebook posts is that the platform looks out for the opportunities to engage more users through the content which is often used by the brands to propagate their schemes and offers and also increase brand awareness among the potential market. Several brands are using Facebook as a tool of promotion for their brands to reach out to the potential segment through innovative campaigns and there begins the need of formulating a proper and effective business plan for the medium.

There are multiple befits of using Facebook for business:

• Facebook is a free social media platform to subscribe and use (though some services require investments). 
• One an account is activated and promotion starts, it gets the opportunity to be discovered by the other users who are searching for similar products or services.
• Facebook provides a friendly environment that helps users to easily be in touch with each other and also maintain a healthy relationship among them.
• Facebook provides the option of creating communities to facilitate the brands to share their information.
• The platform often comes handy when generating leads for their business.
• Facebook makes personalizes communication easier for the users to design and serve it to the targeted one.
• Through Facebook, the process of feedback to answer the complaints and grievances becomes faster and more effective.
• Facebook allows us to share multiple types of content in innovative forms to attract consumers.

Personal vs. professional usage

Most Facebook users use the platform for recreational purposes and share the content of their choice which also indicates their personal choice and inclinations. While the individual profiles are generally meant for personal usage, the pages and groups are quite extensively used by the brands to set up a channel of communication with their potential market. But to create a business page or group, a profile must be created, which under any circumstances should not be used for personal communications and all the commercial communication needs to be sourced out from the business page.

The following benefits can be utilized offered by a Facebook page:

• A Facebook page allows multiple interactive activities like following, sharing, liking, inviting friends to drive the traffic towards the page to increase its reach.
• Email address, website link, postal address with the locational map can be added to a page for better navigation. On a business page, the opening and closing hour details can also be added for physical store locations to help out the consumers.
• A Facebook page can also host job postings to attract suitable candidates for their organization.
• While managing all the activities of a page can be challenging for one person, Facebook allows to disseminate the responsibilities among people with multiple altitudes like “Admin”, “Editor”, “Moderator”, “Advertisers” and “Analyst”.
• All the Facebook pages are by default accessible to all the uses, making it easily searchable.
• A Facebook page allows us to put details of the product or services to make the search easier and narrower.
• The privacy features in Facebook make the information shared on the platform secure while ensuring the free flow of information to the target sections.
• The algorithm helps the users to easily mage and control their pages. 

The usage of pages varies for different purposes and they can broadly be categorized into the following types.

• Local business or place
• Company, organization or institution
• Brand or product
• Artist, band or public figure
• Entertainment
• Cause or community

Another important tool that can be used for marketing brands and their products or services is Facebook groups. While sharing most of the characteristics with pages, most groups allow the members to share their content on the “group wall”, while the group admin has the authority to remove any person or any post that does not fit for the group at any point of time. A Facebook group can host multiple interactive activities to engage and retain the member to the group. One such activity is the polls that can be used by the brands to understand and gather information from the consumers without disturbing their regular activities. Polls generally include the options spread across with a question and allows people to choose from. The same can be used by the brands to identify the consumer’s preferences and expectations from the product or service and help them in modifying the same.

Facebook services are mostly free and allow the users to use them for their benefits but there are services requires monetary investments to multiply the effects like the Facebook ads which proved to be extremely helpful for marketer and advertisers to uphold their brand offerings among their consumers.