How to use Facebook for business

First decide if you want to use Facebook (FB) for personal use or if you are just setting this up for your business. If you are using Facebook just for business, you may consider minimal use of personal details and skipping all the “find friends” features.

We will now setup a Facebook Page to promote your business as it is inappropriate to use your personal Facebook page to do this.

Create a new Facebook page in a new window.

Your objective is to get people (guests) to ‘like’ you (become a fan).

To do this you need people to visit your page and select the ‘like’ button.

This creates a flow-on effect:

1. All your page updates will now appear on their profile page and be visible to their friends
2. All of their friends become notified that they ‘like’ your business. This acts like a referral and can often mean friends of friends will visit your page, review your service offering and become a fan themselves.
3. People who ‘like’ you (fans) can write comments on your page which are posted to all your fans. This can act like a traditional guest book review.
4. The comments created by the fan are posted to their personal page for their friends to see.
5. If one of their friends comments on the original comment (friend’s chat), it will then be posted to all of the friend’s of both of them.

You can see that if done well, information about your business can be spread far and wide. Unlike traditional advertising, information sent via Facebook also has your friends personal recommendation attached, making it a trusted source of information.

Once you have 25 fans, you can setup a “vanity URL” which allows you to have the address www.facebook.com/yourbusiness.

Like your website address, this URL is valuable to your business. It can then be used on your printed materials, marketing promotions and will form part of your corporate identity into the future.

We recommend that you contact everyone your know that has a Facebook account to become a fan of your page so you can get 25 fans and your URL.

Each Page can have a username. To set a username for your page, first login and go to this link: http://www.facebook.com/username

Under your personal profile user name you will see a drop down box with your page name. Select the page and select ‘check availability.

Note: you will not be able to edit or transfer this username once you set it.

The Like button lets users share pages from your site back to their Facebook profile with one click.

Log into Facebook and then go to: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like for more information.

Please contact us if you require assistance in adding the Facebook Like button to your website.

Once you have created a presence on Facebook it is important to start to include Facebook in your online marketing activities. We recommend that you:

1. Use your personal profile to become friends with as many people as you know on Facebook.
2. Add regular photos and relevant information to your Facebook page.
3. Tell guests about your page on Facebook via your company brochures, newsletters and your website.
4. Use your Facebook page as you would your Guest Book. Ask people to add comments, photos and links about your business and your location to your page.
5. Use Facebook to notify guests of new events for your business and your region.

Continue to monitor Facebook for new features that might help you to market your business.

I think a good way for operators to start to get a feel for facebook is to listen for a while. If they create themselves a page and then join a group on facebook relevant to their destination or their particular experience niche eg. wine regions of Tasmania, they can see what people are saying and importantly what they’re asking about that particular topic. Liz Ward

Without being overly simplistic it is about thinking like the customer/s and not putting their own perspective into the media. I am amazed at the demographic shift in Facebook registrations and yet still find some retailers firmly of the opinion that Facebook is only for teenagers. Paul Massingham

My motive for joining facebook was because 10% of our accom guests are comming from Hong Kong via direct bookings. Their social networking capabilities and attention are so much more savvy than ours and they are using this medium to show their friends what they experienced in Tasmana as well as commenting back on our site. I think its working but ive a long way to go. Tim Parsons

The early facebook users are now 25, working, booking and buying and still using Facebook. I do not know what it means but it is not going away anytime soon. Jim Munro

I suppose it equates to what sector of the tourism industry you are targeting as to whether Facebook is the right medium to promote your business. Maureen Brennan

Are we aware of any good methods to demonstrate how utilising these services can achieve a measurable benefit? Jeremy Baird

As far as tracking, the people I spoke to integrated their booking engine to Facebook and tracked their source for every booking. That was a pretty solid idicator of returns. That is how they knew they go over 30 bookings a month from Facebook. Mark Oliver

You can track through the e-Commerce section of Google Analytics then look at the bookings and revenue by referring source. Dania Margerinson

To share your experiences about Facebook with other tourism industry members, join theAustralian Tourism Marketing Group