By now you’ve probably heard of Facebook, right? Taking the time to learn Facebook can help you market your small business. And if you are going to use social networking sites like Facebook it is also important to know the proper etiquette.
Shama Hyder, Chief Marketing Expert and Founder of After The Launch shared pointers on how to use Facebook to market your business in a recent episode on Small Business Trends Radio. This is a beginner’s tutorial covering: 
- The differences between Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace;
- How a great profile page on Facebook becomes your “brand”;
- Why it is important to join Facebook groups; and whether Facebook Apps are worth spending time and money on;
- The proper way to connect with others on Facebook, including writing on walls.
Shama is a marketing consultant to independent professionals and professional service firms around the world. As Founder of After The Launch, Shama serves clients through her one-on-one consulting work, and through her company’s several online and offline marketing services. She offers a free report that you might want to take a look at: “101 Ways to Market Your Business”.
You can read or download the show transcript or listen to the audio podcast at: Using Facebook For Small Business: The Ins And Outs.
Small Business Trends Radio is sponsored by: JumpUp.com
StartupStories
Thank you Anita and Shama! I’m glad you started at the beginning because it is so tough to learn all these sites. Who has time to learn arll these sites?
Amanda
I do agree, StartupStories. With all the ever changing sites, who can keep up? I had always wondered about Facebook but never had the time to sit and research how it could help me market my business. Thank you Shama for explaining everything so clearly and Anita for bringing us another helpful interview. Now if I could just find some time to get on there…… 🙂
Thanks for the information. I heard a lot of facebook but I usually don’t mind it. I will try it to help my business boost more and earn a lot. Thanks.
Aurelius Tjin
Hey, great tips and insights. I have been using facebook for some months now and I am enjoying it’s features and apps so far.
Great post! 🙂
EJMalyn
Shama, a great intro to Facebook, need to check out the profile page.
Facebook is ok. There are a lot more sites that I would consider better business tools. Some of the apps are borderline ridiculous. I got tired of people sending me drinks and and having zombies chase me 🙂
The Masked Millionaire
Thanks so much. I also really didn’t understand what the big deal about Facebook was all about. I guess that is why there are people like you to teach people like me. Thank you so much.
Anita Campbell
Bill, I agree on the zombies and such.
And they’re tricky too. I got some chain-letter-teddy-bear yesterday and in the process of trying to delete it, it automatically was blasted out to everyone of my FB friends — yikes! I think the same thing happened to others, because now I’ve received that same little teddy bear about 10 times from other people. You think you’ll get to the screen to delete it, but before you can do anything it’s blasted out.
A Facebook app like that can make you pretty unpopular pretty fast.
Anita
Martin Lindeskog
Anita,
I got the teddy bear! Thank you for the greeting! 😉
Anita Campbell
Hi Martin, you are wonderful for taking it as a positive greeting. It felt a little too much like spam to me. But hey, if you enjoyed it, I’m glad.
Anita
Vicky
I have the same thoughts about the apps. I use Facebook sparingly. I am on it and have a few friends but there are a lot more relevant site to use for business tools out there.
Hi,
I very much would like to listen to this podcast, however, it says “To hear Shama’s interview about using Facebook in business, click the red and yellow arrow below:”
But all I can see if the below. No arrows and there isn’t a link.
[display_podcast]
Please help? Maybe the podcast was moved?
Thanks
Martha
Anita Campbell
Hi Martha, I am so sorry. The Podpress plugin that we use to play the podcasts was crashing the site, so we had to take it down temporarily. But never fear, you can find the recording over at my podcast site (which is where the recording originally appeared) — go here:
http://www.smbtrendwire.com/2008/02/19/how-to-use-facebook-to-market-your-business/
I hope we will get the Podpress plugin working again soon. Please bear with us. 🙂
Best,
Anita
Excellent tips, we are going to launch this week for our business on facebook. We are also looking into having our own video filmed to put on our site as well.
I’ll look forward to listening. Like anything, social media requires regular attention. I would think Facebook could also be especially helpful for small businesses that have more than one location and multiple services to offer.