Surprisingly so, social media is more than just a platform to stalk your so-called friends’ whereabouts. In fact, using certain platforms—like Facebook and Google—for marketing purposes can come in quite handy, regardless of your industry. But, nowadays it’s not so much of a question of if you should be on social media, it’s more so of why you should be and what to do when you are there.

Key Points

• Facebook is the most popular social media platform
• You need a Facebook Business Page to create an advertising campaign
• A Google Business Page can be utilized as an online phone directory

Facebook

The Numbers

Facebook is the big player of the social media world, the LeBron James so to speak. According to statistics there are 2.2 billion daily active users, people spend an average of 35 per minutes per day on the platform (accessing it 8 times a day), and 19% of all time spent on our phones is on Facebook.

Shocked? You should be. Those numbers alone should be enough to persuade any business professional to take the Facebook plunge.

Facebook Business Pages

A Business Page is your golden ticket into Facebook marketing. In fact, in order to create any type of ad campaign, you must have access to the Ad Manager and Insights feature that only a Business Page offers.

A business or place type of Page can be used as modern day yellow book for service-based sales professionals. You can set your office hours and contact information, helping clients and prospects be able to find you.

While a public figure type of Page might seem unnecessary or even daunting from the outside, an agent might find this page to be extremely beneficial for their business. It can not only help to garner attention, but also establish your brand. Remember to be authentic share behind-the-scenes content—your audience wants to know who is behind the camera.

Facebook Advertising

Now let’s turn our focus to generating leads for your business. With Facebook advertising through your Business Page, what you can do and the results that you can potentially garner take the cake.

By utilizing Insights and Analytics, you can see who’s engaging with your ads, and what type of content is working. You can also determine where your ROI is coming from, and how to spend your marketing budget wisely. Lastly, a Business Page enables you to garner reviews from current and past clients, helping you to build and manage your reputation.

And now for the impressive part—the results. Simply put, Facebook advertising can help to build your audience. Garnering engagement on your ads will in turn ramp up your Page’s overall engagement (e.g. likes and comments). In fact, half or our Page’s likes have come as a result of advertising.

Since we’ve covered the basics, read up on what type of content and how often you should be posting on Facebook.

Google Business Page

Don’t worry, we’re not trying to convince you that Google is a social platform. In fact, a Google Business Page is far from anything social. It’s more of an online directory to display local results for businesses, and it’s extremely beneficial for service-based professionals.

Like Facebook, what you can do and the results that you can garner from utilizing a Google Business Page are impressive. For starters, you can use it for your marketing. A Google Business Page allows you to show up in maps when a prospect is looking for your business. You can also include your hours, phone number, and website to make contacting you as convenient as possible.

When it comes to the results, having an established Google Business Page increases your local search engine results. In addition, like Facebook, a Google Page allows you to garner reviews from current and past clients, helping you to build and manage your reputation.

Action Items

Following the podcast, our goal is to provide you with as many actionable tips as possible. For this episode, they include…

• Create a Facebook Business page and start advertising.
• Google yourself, see what comes up, and determine how convenient it is for someone to contact you.

As always, take action on these tips!