Is it worth the time and effort for a B2B (business to business) brand, consultant, or staff team to maintain an active Facebook Page, on top of other social media demands?
It might be, if you get a lot of good business from personal referrals and word-of-mouth.
Here is a recent question from a friend and professional colleague …
“I’m considering bringing my business Facebook Page back online. It’s been dark/unused for several years, because I felt like it was a time suck since potential clients aren’t looking for me on Facebook. Over time, I’ve started thinking that while they may not be looking for me, they are on Facebook for their own work, so maybe it makes sense. Doing this [social media] for others is easy. Doing it for myself – not so much.
Two questions: (1) does it make sense? (2) how do I jumpstart and not look lame that it was dark so long?”
My advice back to him:
1) Yes, it makes sense to have an active brand Facebook Page, because Facebook is where everybody on the planet spends their time right now, including your current, former, and prospective clients.
I think there’s too much focus on B2B vs. B2C business communications – it’s kind of a silly differentiation especially when it comes to social media. Most B2B communications advice seems to consist of, “Stop being so boring! Do stuff like a B2C business would!”
People prefer to work with people they like and trust. An active Facebook Page highlights your business as human, fun, smart, and worth people’s hard-earned money.
2) Nobody really notices that you’ve been dark, so don’t worry about it. Frankly, because you’ve been dark, no one will notice that you’re posting, at least for awhile, because the Facebook algorithm will ignore you. 🙂
Most people only interact in the News Feed anyway, less so directly on Pages. If they DO go directly to your Page, as long as a few of the most recent posts are not from 2011, they probably won’t scroll back far enough to notice that you “came alive” fairly recently.
3) To jump-start your Page – make a list of the top 5-7 questions people ask you all the time, or problems/issues you come across all the time in your business. Make a simple editorial calendar addressing each one – on Mondays you’ll share updates about X, on Tuesdays the topic is Y, on Wednesdays it is Z, and so on.
Re-share evergreen blog posts from your archives. It’s OK if they’re a few years old as long as they’re still accurate (check and tweak them first.) You can get more elaborate and organized later with some sort of content marketing editorial calendar that ties in email newsletter, blog posts, tweets, Page updates, etc.
Be prepared to drop a little money on a few Sponsored posts, to get back in front of followers.
Once your Facebook Page is reasonably lively, it will have a lot of “Google juice” authority – like all social profiles do – so it will come up high when people search for your brand name. That’s a nice SEO benefit.
Don’t forget to add a Facebook Page social button to your website, and make sure it’s linked correctly. You can also send a note to your email list that the Page is now active, announce it on other social media, and invite your personal profile Facebook connections to Like the Page, if you think it makes sense for them (don’t blast all of your connections.)
Did I miss anything? Am I way off the mark? Let’s talk down in the comments!
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Don’t know if that makes sense cause I’m using twitter and instagram for business.