Article written by: Chris Picanzo

Introduction:

My name is Chris Picanzo I am the owner and creator of Flipit4u Marketing. www.flipit4u.com
I created my business to help local businesses with getting to the top of a google search results page within their product or service, along with Branding their business and generating traffic to their website through the creation of social media. I have been working online on a part time basis since the beginning of AOL. In the state this economy is in, I had a vision of helping struggling businesses so they can compete with the larger corporations as well as their competitors.

Mission:

My mission here is to educate you, the members of a business or corporation on how to keep your business’s reputation in good standings and help keep your google ranking at the top.
Nothing hurts a business more than not showing up on google when a potential customer searches for a service or product in your industry.
This information is not going to end all your problems with SERP “Search Engine Results Page” but it will definately help. This is just one part of the many ways you can help your rankings on any search engine.

Social Media and your Business

Why Social media?
Social media is the fastest growing industry in the history of any business, for that reason alone is why there are over 800 Million users registered on Facebook. Facebook being the largest of the social media frontier. There are hundreds of social media sites on the net, but there are only a hand-full that really matter.

• Facebook
• Linkedin
• Twitter
• Youtube
• Yelp
• foursquare

Facebook- Let’s begin with the largest of them all. Facebook is now the internet. If your business isn’t on facebook than you are losing out on an ocean of potential clients or customers. People all over the world use facebook every day, and when a person has a Facebook it is called a facebook account. I mention this because there is a difference between having an account and having a business page. An account is for people a Page is for businesses. I see it all to often when a person is using their facebook account as a business. This  is frowned upon by Facebook, they want everyone to have a business page if you own a business. You as a person can control as many business pages as you want. There is not just business pages, they have organizations, non profit, Music, artists, clubs pretty much any catagory you can think of and you can build a page under the appropriate category.

The pro’s and con’s of using fb as a business vs an account.

For starters if you use an account for your business you can only have up too 5K friends. As a business you can have as many as you want. The second issue is how to gain friends or fans. As an account you have to ask to be someones friend or they have to ask you to be friends with them. When you have a business page people just have to “Like” your business. This is also known as becoming a Fan. As a business you can not write on a person’s wall.. You can however comment on a post as a business and you can post as the business on another business page. This is probably the second most common reason why people prefer to use their account that way. The first is I’m sure because people don’t know the difference and didn’t do any research before creating their page.

Why it’s important – The reason it is so important to have a business page on facebook is the obvious. They are the biggest and google knows it as well as any other search engine knows it. So if you have a business page on Facebook you are going to get looked at by the search engines weather it’s Yahoo, Google or Bing. The fact that you have a page and if filled out correctly you are telling the search engines that your listing is more relevant than someone else without a page.
The more you use your facebook page the better your ranking on google is going to be. Now take that with a grain of salt because there is definitely such thing as over doing it on FB. You do not want this to happen because once you lose your fans it is 10 times harder to get them to come back.

When do I use Facebook for business?

This is a great question because lot’s of businesses just post things when they have the time or post something every morning and don’t look at the demographics of their fans or have any idea when the majority of fans are on FB and will see your posts.
There are a couple of tricks we can use to figure out the best time to post. It’s sort of a live split test on your wall or news feed. If your page is established somewhat already, you can go to the analytics page and view the action your page has and when it happens. Use this information to help base a timeline of when to post on your page.
If your not so established you can try posting a couple of pictures that are either the same or very similar in the message the picture is portraying. Post one in the morning and one in the evening or at night which ever times you think your desired audience would be on facebook. Take the amount of likes and comments from each post and that would help determine your best times to post. Now this isn’t etched in stone because facebook and the people using it are constantly changing. The more stuff you post the more you will get a feel for what times work best for your business.

Facebook conclusion

So now you have some basic knowledge of how and why to use a business page. This report could be 100 pages long if I were to get into every detail but I just want you to know the basics to get you started and have a hand up on what to do and not to do.
So you now have a page for your business and you want it to work for you. I would advise assigning someone in your company to assist  you with your facebook page. This is good for a few reasons. 1 it gives your employee a sense of responsibility. 2. So you don’t have to spend all of your time on FB and use your time to run your business. 3. Allowing someone else to control your page will bring in fresh ideas for content and they will have a friend list that your business could be shared with.
You must lay down a set of ground rules to anyone you allow access to your page. You need to be specific in telling them what you expect out of them with a clear set of rules that have a desired result. “Interaction” and “More fans” as well as what never to post in regards to your image. Remember every business is different, the basics apply to all but if you own a night club it would be perfectly normal to post pictures of attractive people and partying. If you have a law firm your not going to want pictures of you partying with the best of them.. lol Just keep it in respective according to your type of business and you will be fine.

• Do not over post! There are very few types of business that can get away with posting more than 5 times a day. Depending on your product or service you should on average post no more than 3 times in a day.
• Have an action plan before you start posting. Figure out if you want to post something relevant to your industry to inform your fans. Or do you want to interact with them and post questions that will require an answer or opinion.
• You can post about your business but people don’t want to see every single post where you are pushing or selling your product or service.
• Most fans are looking for something of value from your business page. Make sure you incorporate giving your fans something whether it’s a coupon or a free ebook something, just make sure it has value.
• Some businesses use the headlines of the day or week to interact with fans. There is nothing wrong with this method but just don’t lose sight of your objective, gaining fans and turning them into customers.

I hope you were able to get some help from this report. It is all information that I have encountered and researched as I grow my own business. I look forward to helping anyone that asks for the help and can be grateful they found something I wrote. Please feel free to leave a comment or suggestion as I’m sure I’ll be making this a blog post as well as a free report.