Example Business Uses Of Facebook
Filed under: Facebook, Facebook Promotion, Online Advertising, Small Business Advertising, Small Business Marketing, social media
Recently I did a series of posts on how to setup a Facebook fan page as well as a few other Facebook fan page how to examples. After doing those I thought it may be good to list a few examples of various types of businesses taking advantage of the promotion that Facebook allows.
Here are a few to show the varied ways businesses are using Facebook pages:
Auto Spa Car Wash - I posted about this the other day and thought this was a good example of how a business, in the case a car wash, uses Facebook to promote their events, specials, and other offerings. This just shows with a bit of creativity almost any kind of business can take advantage of the social network effect.
Eagle Valley Golf Course - Someone the other day gave me some great examples of how they had seen golf courses using Twitter and Facebook. Here is a solid example of a course with good group of friends. Perfect example of promoting events and special discounts online through their Facebook page to get people booking tee times.
Car Dealership - Here is a dealership posting customer reviews as well as video reviews of various cars. Once again directly connecting with their fans and keeping a positive message out there. There were many bad car dealership examples, people with one post or 2 fans. Seems like alot of them jumped on the bandwagon but never had anyone help them take advantage of the initial motivation.
Ford Fusion - On a much larger scale here is an example of a company like Ford, who I continue to see using social media in various ways (they use Twitter quite a bit too but that is another post). In this case they are promoting their go green and hybrid initiatives while promoting their Ford Fusion Hybrid. I think much of the value here is customers posting actual comments on the page. Nice job by an old school company.
LIFT Coffee Shop - This is a business that gets it, great use, using it to promote their menu items, specials. They post constantly keeping their hundreds of followers connected. Local coffee shops are places that people tend to connect with and hang out in, they get attached. This is a way to keep that going even outside of the shop.
As businesses start to use more than just advertising and their websites to promote their business I think it is very important to stay in touch with how they are using it. It is easy for those of us that have lived in an online word to just say, yeah everyone uses it, it is the next great thing. But I find it even more important to actually step back and take a look at how, and why it works for some and not others.
Bruce, here’s my questions for you:
1. How do you get started marketing a local business on Facebook/Twitter?
You don’t want to look stupid with like 2 followers :p
2. What can you do to gain followers for something that’s local?
3. Do you think a Facebook/Twitter only promotion for a local business would be effective, and if so, how many followers would you need to do so?
Just wanted to throw some interesting questions at you
@DNUnderground – Very good question:) That is a post I have planned though so do not want to put it all in this comment, a few tips here though: http://brucemarler.com/how-to-promote-your-facebook-fan-page/
A few notes about the local aspect, remember when its local the number of followers directly relates to the size of the area or target market. In some cases 100 may be a huge number of followers depending on the type of business.
You will see some of the promotion tips in the link above in this comment, but for example, a restaurant, could put their facebook and twitter links on their menus, delivery menus,etc and promote following in that way and make sure people know specials will be given there, also putting the badges on their websites works well, especially if they put text around it stating what value it will give if people follow.
One last thought, in local areas many times the business owners are well know and have lots of contacts in the community, being friends with them on Facebook and then suggesting their page tends to get alot of fans, this is a quick way to get interested people watching.
Look for some more thoughts on that later, full post to come.
Thanks so much for your response. I’ll take a look at the link. Hopefully you’ll be posting that article soon! Keep in touch Bruce.
Another informative post Bruce. Facebook has helped countless businesses. Its important to note that in order to keep a competitive edge you have to adapt to current day technology. There are a great deal of companies out there who need consulting in this department. Lets start with the first company we find listed in the Yellow Pages.