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According to recent statistics, Facebook now has more than 750 million active monthly users worldwide.

It’s great to know, but what does it really mean for a small to medium sized local business with a customer base nationwide or even a few miles around your trading base?

How can you take advantage of what facebook has to offer for businesses in the UK?

Obviously the social network has long been known to connect old friends and allow users to share photos and chat. However, with a raft of new features and improvements over the past year, Facebook is also an ideal space for businesses to engage with current and potential customers and most importantly generate important business leads.

We’ve collected together just ten of many, many reasons why your business needs Facebook.


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1. Grow your community, reach new customers and GET BUSINESS.

With so many people now using Facebook regularly, there’s a great opportunity for businesses to connect with all kinds of people in a personal and direct way. Many of these people look for products and services using Facebook, so if your offering isn’t represented and it doesn’t look attractive to potential customers, then you’re missing out.

Your business can create a Facebook page to store all kinds of information and engage with people as well as also claiming the location of your business as a Place by adding it with Facebook for Mobile. This means your business isn’t just represented online, but as an offline location as well, allowing people to find it easily and even check-in when they visit.

2. The power of viral.

When someone likes your page or interacts with your brand on Facebook, their network is notified because an update will be sent to their page. With Facebook’s new customised news feed functionality, this also means that your news is more likely to show up in a user’s news feed than before as more of their network are sharing your content.

This means that the more people who share, like and engage with your brand and content, the more people will hear about what you have to offer. Facebook encourages this kind of viral sharing of information and it can really help to spread news of your business.

3. Specifically focus on your target market.

While Facebook has more than 750 million active monthly users, for most small to medium sized businesses, the global figures don’t mean very much. What matters to you is how you can connect with your local market, even if it is just your city or local area. The great thing is that users share specific information about their location, demographic and interests, which means they can be contacted directly or even with Facebook’s targeted advertising, allowing you to reach your local market via facebook.

4. Targeted advertising.

Although advertising shouldn’t be your primary concern when you set up a Facebook page, it’s important to know that if you want to target specific users you can use Facebook’s targeted advertising to reach them.

5. Run competitions and promotions

Facebook can be used as a powerful marketing strategy to drive entries to competitions and promotions, but this doesn’t necessarily apply to every business and isn’t compulsory.

6. Another way to drive traffic to your website

Many companies are able to generate business leads directly from their Facebook page. However, if someone is interested in what you have to offer, chances are they’ll investigate further and find your website and other online assets. This is why it’s important to have a great Facebook introduction page and plenty of calls to action which entice people to act.

7. Engage and educate

You can create regular content for users to engage with that set you apart from the rest and show that you’re a knowledgable ‘expert’ in your field. This way, once they decide they want to learn more about you or make a purchase they know where to turn.

8. How long are you seriously going to wait?

Social media, especially Facebook, rises in popularity everyday amongst consumers and businesses alike. There’s no chance that it’s suddenly going to become obsolete, so it’s much better for you to join the conversation now than playing catch up a few months / years down the line. If you wait until you really cannot ignore it anymore, you will have to commit a lot of time and money to make it work. It will be expensive to build your community fast, and you may simply have left it too late to catch up with your competitors.


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9. Most individuals under 30 use Facebook

In the developed world, most of the under 30 demographic are using Facebook on a daily basis. This represents a huge proportion of the population and even though your products or services may not be aimed solely at that age group, they’re going to be having families, consuming products and making important decisions more and more as they get older, so need to be a key part of your communications.

10. Networking with other businesses.

Facebook’s latest improvement allows pages to like and interact with other pages, which means you can build up connections with other businesses.

This kind of networking can also begin in real life, when you meet someone in both a personal and professional sense it’s now often natural to add them to Facebook afterwards.

Here at Codastar we’re experienced in creating Facebook pages for clients, populating them with content and managing them later down the line. To talk to us about maximising your business potential using Facebook then get in touch for an informal chat about your needs and expectations. Or, you can view our portfolio of Facebook page designs.

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