Your “Like”ability
There’s great value in looking at current web design trends and social media outlets if you want to put your business on the fast track to getting noticed. Even if you run a fully brick and mortar establishment, it’s important these days to have an online presence – even if it’s just a Facebook page telling people what you do. Just don’t make the mistake of leaving behind your human face for your online face as that can effect you “like”ability.
Confused? Don’t be. It’s actually the oldest bit of business advice in the world: make a connection with your customer base. Work hard at it. This is your bread and butter. Not sales and raffles and other gimmicks – old fashioned interaction is where it’s always been at. If you run a physical establishment, it’s easy to do that. Well, okay. Maybe not easy, but it’s certainly easier to do when standing face to face than when communicating online. But how do you really connect with your customer base if you never see them in the flesh? It’s actually a lot simpler than you might have imagined.
Getting Human on Facebook
Social media is so new that people are still struggling to figure it out. Sure, you’ll find experts here and experts there who will tell you that they have the guaranteed secret to blowing up your Facebook page and making it insanely popular overnight. But really, at this point a lot of that talk is conjecture. Even the kind that’s backed up with data, because as you know, what works for one business often doesn’t work for another. So what to do? Get human. It should be easy, since you are one. But how easy is it to convey humanity on a Facebook page that’s dedicated to a business? Here are some tips on how to do that.
- Speak in the first person. Just because your Facebook page is named after your business, it doesn’t mean you have to take the third person, impersonal voice when talking to your fans and followers. People like it when they know they’re talking to a real person as opposed to just making comments on a Facebook wall. To engage your followers and foster communication, the best method is to use “I” and “we” more often. It works.
- Share life experiences. Not everything you discuss on your business Facebook page is required to be about the goods or services that you offer. Try sharing more personal news with your audience and see how they react. You might find that it puts a more human face on your business, which always results in increased sales.
- Be honest about things. Fallibility is just about the most human trait anyone can think of. If you make a mistake – whether that mistake is posting inaccurate information and having to retract it, or messing up an order for a customer – the best policy is to fess up to your mistakes and make amends. When people see a business owner do this, it reminds them that they’re human after all. It ingratiates people to you, and ultimately results in their increased support. You can’t do much better than that.
The great news is, it’s easy to be human. Humans are intensely flawed and everybody knows this. What’s much harder is trying to put across a flawless public face, whether that’s on Facebook or on a mailing list. Add a dash of the human, and your “like”abilty will skyrocket – both on Facebook and in real life.
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Vince F is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments.
