Why Bother With A Business Page
One question we are often asked is why you should bother with a Facebook or LinkedIn Business Page. This question usually comes from an individual who has a powerful personal brand. They find that when they post on their personal profile, they receive a lot of engagement while their business page receives very little.
In many ways it is easier to rely on your personal brand. You are already on Facebook or LinkedIn engaging with people as yourself. People know you. They trust you and they may even be sending you business.
And yet, we still encourage our clients to have Facebook and LinkedIn Business pages. Here’s why:
You want your company to grow.
If you rely solely on your personal brand, you limit your growth. Sure, in the beginning you may find that your personal brand is enough. But I want you to consider how long it took to build your personal brand. Did it happen overnight or was it a matter of weeks, months, or even years? For most people building a personal brand takes years.
A business page is much the same. It takes nurturing. You cannot wait until your company is “big enough” before you start building your brand because a business brand takes even longer to build.
We encourage our clients to use their personal brand while they build their business brand. Start with these three strategies:
Invite your friends or connections to like or follow your business page.
Share your content from your business page to your personal page, not the other way around.
Create a team of friends or supporters who will like, comment or share your posts at least once a week. This sometimes takes prompting and often works better if you are doing the same thing for their business pages. When done right, it works wonderfully.
Business pages allow you to create a community around your brand.
Read this also as - business pages allow you to have a life outside of your business when your business is running without you.
As you grow you will not be the only person people talk to in your business. You will hire a team and while you may want to remain the face of your business for years to come, you need a place where people can gather around your brand and not just around you. You need to create a community.
On a business page you can share stories of your success, show off your brick and mortar business and introduce new members of your team. In addition, and maybe more importantly, you can transfer this community and business page to a new owner if you decide to sell your business down the road.
Business pages allow you to learn about your customers.
It may be rewarding to watch the likes and comments come in on your personal page. At the end of the day, what are you learning from those likes and comments? A business page gives you analytics. Analytics help you:
Know which content is working. When you discover the content that is getting the most likes, comments and shares you have a better understanding of the type of content your audience is looking for and can create more content that will attract even more customers.
Hone in on your target audience. It is not unusual for a client to tell us their target audience is moms between the ages of 35-55 only to find out through analytics that their audience is actually men between the ages of 45 and 60. This information allows us to either change our marketing strategy or change the product or service to match their audience.
Measure the effectiveness of campaigns. We are true believers in the power of social media to build a brand, but let’s not forget that your goal is to increase sales and put more money in your pocket. Using your analytics you can get a better understanding of the effectiveness of your campaigns and can change your strategy based on this information.
Building a business brand is not easy. We understand that. But if you are serious about growing your business, creating your brand is the single most important step you can take and the easiest and least expensive place to do that is on social media.