Getting started with Facebook – Communicating with your audience

We’re using the word “audience” in this article to include visitors to your page and people who have “liked” your page (it always gets a giggle from groups when we start talking about “likes” and “people who like your page” when we’re carrying our social media training!)

Status updates are created in exactly the same way as status updates on your personal Facebook page so it’s pretty easy to understand.

Page updates can be text (status updates), links to other websites and pages, photos and videos, and events, milestones, and questions.

Text updates

Text updates tend to reach the widest audience – people can comment on text updates, and on any of the other status update types – use these to interact with your audience, tell them how things are going and what’s going on with your business.  You can also ask open questions and get people interacting with your page!

Links

Use links to link to your website, including product pages or promotions.  Also consider linking to articles that might be of interest to your audience, as if they see you as a good source of information in your specific area of business they’ll be more likely to interact with your business on Facebook.

Photos and videos

Photos and videos are useful to showcase new products and to give customers a glimpse into your business – consider taking photos of your shop/office/restaurant and posting them to your Facebook page – making customers feel at home before they set foot in your business and showing them how welcoming you are!

Events, milestones and questions

Events

Events are great for encouraging real world action from your page audience.  Posting about discount days, special events like your businesses “birthday” or open days will be shown to your audience and they can indicate whether they are attending, their attendance will be show to their friends further extending the reach of your business to people who may not have heard of you before.

Milestones

Milestones are highlighted on your page – perfect for new product launches, highlighting new staff joining the business or anything else you can think of that show your business in a positive light.

Questions

Questions are useful both as a market research tool (find out what your customers think of new product ideas before you launch them!) or general questions that encourage your audience to interact with your page.  In the same way that Event participation is shown to your audience’s friends, their responses to your page questions are also shown to their friends.