How Professional Service Firms Should Use Facebook Fan Pages

A few months ago, I wrote a post about the reasons professional services firms should leverage Facebook business pages. At Kinesis, we specialize in working with professional services firms and help them to grow their revenue through more effective marketing and branding strategies. I'll be the first to admit that Facebook is a more challenging space for these types of companies - especially if you are selling B2B with a high-priced product.

However given its reach, specificity, and low cost, Facebook should be a part of your marketing strategy. You can read my past post for all my reasons Why. In this article I'd like to focus on the How.

Once you've set up your Facebook business page, there are specific ways to leverage your online community to get more attention for your company:

1) Invite all of your friends, vendors, and clients to "Like" your page. You know they already like you in real life, so it will give you some momentum and help your page to not appear like an empty cavern.

2) Make sure all of your staff "Likes" your page. Get your staff to participate on your Facebook page. They are your biggest advocates and can help keep conversations going. Big tip: Each week at your staff meeting, have everyone write down one thing to post on your Facebook business page and then use one of these ideas as your daily update.

3) Hit the magic 25. By doing 1 and 2, you should be able to hit 25 fans. This is really important so that you can get a vanity URL that's easy to remember as opposed to the long string of characters Facebook will initially assign to your page. Go to https://www.facebook.com/username/ and select a name. For example, we're at www.facebook.com/kinesisinc.com

4) Update your page regularly. I recommend that our clients update their Facebook page at least 3 times each week. Yes, you can promote your business, but I also encourage you to share news about your company and your staff, give industry news updates, testimonials, tips and share links from other Facebook business pages in your local community. Spend 10 minutes to brainstorm as many post ideas as you can in 10-15 minutes. Use these until you run out - it should last you several weeks) and then repeat the process.

5) Like other Facebook business pages and participate: Go to the business pages of your vendors, clients, past clients, and referrers and "Like" their page (see video below for How-To). Then make sure to look at your Home News Feed to see what's happening with them and comment regularly. Your comments as a page will include a link back to your home page so you can generate new fans.

6) Offer special Facebook deals: As a professional services firm, I know this won't work for some companies, but if you can offer specials to your Facebook fans this is a great incentive to get people to Like you.

7) Promote in your office. Create small cards  that you hand out to people encouraging them to "Like" you on Facebook. If you offer specials, mention that on the card. If you don't offer deals, then another incentive for people to "Like" you is to give useful tips. For example, we provide ongoing marketing and social media tips for people.

8 ) Incorporate photos and videos. Create various photo albums as part of your Facebook page. You can showcase your office and team members. Another great photo opportunity are the community events that you participate in. Dole out the photos slowly since people can only see 3 at a time as part of their Feed. Upload a few each week. If you have videos, these can also be a great draw for your page.

9) Engage people in conversation. One of your goals should be to get people to comment on your posts and hit the small thumbs-up button. The reason you want to involve your fans (besides nurturing the relationship) is that every time someone interacts with your post, it shows up on their feed. This means that your page is exposed to all of their Facebook friends at absolutely no cost to you. Pretty cool, eh?

Here's a great article about customer engagement and what it really means: Are We Killing Our Customers With Too Much Engagement? And here's the key point: "Customers...want to engage with content that amuses, teaches, or inspires them." And they want to look good online - we all do, right? So create ways to help your customer share their knowledge, their company, their intelligence, their good looks, or whatever might be important to them.

10) Advertise. Facebook advertising is cheap and very targeted. You can quickly grow your Facebook fan base with people who have the demographics you are looking for in your prospects.

So, I hope these tips help your company go out and kick some Facebook booty! Once you've begun implementing these ideas, check back in and let us know how it's going.