Of course, the most overused marketing advice to small businesses in 2018 is still ‘engage on social media’. As a local mechanic, dry cleaner, architect, doctor or store manager, this advice seems way out of touch. What benefit are you going to get from wasting your time posting on Facebook, when few people are going to be ‘engaging’ back anyway. People don’t really care that much about what their local plumber is posting on Facebook do they?
That’s right, for many small businesses, it’s bad advice. But what’s worse is that it turns businesses off Facebook altogether.
A Facebook Page is a free, additional stream customers for your local business, and all you have to do is make it. You don’t have to post to it if you don’t want to, but you still reap many benefits from simply having one.
Businesses that don’t need to ‘engage on Facebook’
We will quickly run through the businesses that don’t really need to be posting on Facebook and social media. These include:
Businesses that are too small:
Medium-sized businesses have a large enough reach and customer base to often see benefit in posting on social media. However, most small-businesses are not of an adequate scale. Your local butcher, baker and candlestick maker won’t benefit from wasting their time on Facebook.
Businesses that are not ‘interesting’ enough:
It’s not hard to turn your travel agency Facebook page into a sort of travel blog. It is hard to consistently post quality content when you are a window installation company. People don’t buy windows because they are interested in them. They buy them because they need windows. Therefore, you will have trouble engaging even your most loyal customers.
Small businesses that can sometimes benefit from posting on their Facebook Page
Some small businesses, despite their small size, are actually of a nature that can be particularly suited to social media. These include restaurants, cafes, entertainment services and ‘fun’ products.
Our favourite example is of course Mama’s BBQ Chicken & Salad Bar in Endeavour Hills, Melbourne. It’s a local chicken shop that started making funny videos like this one:
It’s just the chef dancing around the shop and saying ‘The food that gives you energy’, but its low-budget humour quickly caught on with the locals, and then went internationally viral.
Going viral is very rare, but for successful content, you want to include good humour, beautiful imagery, emotion or discounts and special offers. However, this will only work if your business is actually suited to social media marketing.
The bare essentials of a good Facebook Page that doesn’t post content
A good business Facebook Page doesn’t take much. In fact, it shouldn’t take very long to make at all.
These are the only things your Facebook business page really needs:
Images:
A profile image
A header image
Page info:
Business name
Phone number
Email address
Website URL
Categories
Website
Location
Hours
Content:
None!
After you are done making it, you can basically forget about it, and it will keep doing its job. That is: it will keep letting people find your business, and become new customers.
That’s why whenever we make a Jetsite—a website designed for small business, we make you a Facebook page as well. It’s an addition that will see you get many extra customers each year.