Tuesday 6 August 2013

Are facebook business pages a fad, or the future of social media marketing?

Well, I've finally taken the plunge (again) and relaunched my traverselife Facebook page. It's been a year and a half since my last post which is hardly something to crow about.

Honestly, you'd think that having survived the drama of having a web site constructed and starting a blog, (which involved a lot of internal angst) that it wouldn't be too hard to post on Facebook business pages. Not so. There's something I find very challenging about being "out there" in public with the potential to be torn to shreds by trolls - frankly it's unsettling.

But as I commented in my last post, Can blogging support your values? the benefits are there.

So when I was contacted by a young, keen and above all, knowledgeable, social media enthusiast regarding creating a business presence on Facebook I thought I should give it a go ... again.

This time, however, I wasn't alone, bumbling along, not really knowing what I was doing. Amelia (on Twitter: @AvidComms) walked me through such things as an over arching storyline, daily themes, the use of photos and using hoot suite to schedule posts.

In short she made a Facebook business page seem logical and achievable. Something that even a somewhat disorganised (cough, cough) person like me could do!

Like many people, self promotion doesn't come easily to me, so even letting clients know it was up and running was a bit of a challenge. However it's all happening over there, email invitations have been sent, received and acted on, and I have gone from a decidedly uninspiring 7 "Likes" to 30+ in a couple of days which feels very supportive and is extremely encouraging.

Armed with a bit more discipline and structure I hope to provide links to interesting articles, some posts I've written, and exchange comments and interact with current clients, as well as with people I may never meet in person; and I welcome you as well!! I'm not sure how it'll go, but I'll certainly do my best to provide interesting, informative and hopefully useful content.

I expect I'll refine this as I go on, but at present I've described my traverselife page as relating to further education, career development and workplace communication as well as using ACT (Acceptance & Commitment Training) and mindfulness techniques to support career transition, improve workplace happiness and assist overall wellbeing.

The current focus for weekday posts is:

  • Monday - Education
  • Tuesday - Job hunting
  • Wednesday - In the workplace
  • Thursday - Mindfulness
  • Friday - Working towards retirement
If you're on Facebook please drop by and say hello! ;-)

Interestingly, since I wrote this post I've been to a local small business networking meeting and the topic for next time is Social Media: Marketing and monetizing your company. I hope the speaker doesn't just focus on Twitter like one book I borrowed from the library did!

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Posted by Sue Travers










6 comments:

Hilary Melton-Butcher said...

Hi Sue .. I think you're right to hang on in there - and by starting again .. you really can start again with a new approach, having refined the necessities etc ..

Good luck - I'll be getting my own page up sometime in the next few months ..

Cheers and I'll be over to join you on FB .. Hilary

Sue said...

Good on you HIlary, I'll look forward to that. In many ways I find Facebook easier than blogging, I suppose it's because I'm not creating my own content which I find very time consuming, though it is satisfying. thankyou for joining me :)
cheers
Sue

Anonymous said...

social media is a big business which is really important and be considered as precious. It helps many people, investors, business and other local agency for the information that they want regarding on that certain topic. Also business use this for the success of their business by introducing their product in social media to the people.

Sue said...

Hi Will, thanks for your comment. I'm sure you're right and the more I read about the benefits the more logical it seems to be involved. I'm interested that a lot of small businesses still talk about social media as if it's not going to stay and are quite dismissive.
cheers
Sue

Whitehat Inbound said...

It’s nice that you chose to start again. Facebook is such a powerful tool yet so common that it’s easy to take it for granted and use it inefficiently. Then when it doesn’t get us the results we expected, of course, we’ll get frustrated. Nice to know that a kind soul offered you help on how to start over again. I hope this means great results. Good luck!

Clwyd Probert

Sue said...

Thanks for your supportive comments and best wished Clwyd. I agree it's easy to get frustrated, but equally important not to give up after even a few failed attempts.
cheers
Sue