Happy Small Business Saturday!
We recently attended Facebook’s “Boost with Facebook” event that encouraged small business owners to use Facebook’s many resources and tools to help manage their company. We compiled some key takeaways from this event.
Facebooks allows you the ability to reach people where they spend their time – the internet. Whether it be Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc., over 1 billion people are connected to small businesses on their social networking sites and 8 billion messages are sent between people and businesses every month.
A great tool for small businesses, like El Cajon based First Class Packaging, is to create a Facebook page for their company. The first thing that customers see when they click the page is the cover photo, so it needs to be enticing, appealing, and related to the business’ product or services. The other most noticed item is the profile picture of the business page. This should be the company’s logo making sure that the branding is very clear and consistent. On the top of the business page, small businesses should entice the customers to interact by adding a “button.” The button can be sending an email, sending a message, or re-directing the customer to a contact page. It is essential for making customer interaction easy and encouraging.
Another great resource that small businesses can take advantage of is creating a business group for their company. Business groups are created through the business page and build a sense of community around customers and allows the business to leverage a group calendar that informs its customers of events, sales, and other important dates.
A tool that many small businesses may forget about is messenger and the type of response that is left to customers when business owners are away from their page. Some best practices for responding to messages include:
- Be responsive. Set a welcome greeting and use an away message if you cannot respond within a given time period. Facebook will give your business page a badge that says “Very Responsive to Messages” if you respond to 90% of customer messages within 15 minutes.
- Monitor trends. If you notice a lot of customers asking the same questions such as hours or return policies create “saved replies.”
- Set expectations. Let the customer know you will be with them within a certain amount of time.
- Know how to answer sensitive questions. Make sure to send the right message with each customer and respond appropriately given the situation.
- Write the way you speak. Make it feel like there is a real person responding to their questions and needs.
If your small business needs help developing its social media, public relations, advertising or marketing plans, schedule a complimentary consultation with Oster and Associates today.
