Help! I can’t find you on Facebook!

Editor’s note: The following is a guest blog post by my friend Cathy Rodgers, Founder of Seven Waves Marketing. We met on twitter several years ago and we both enjoy helping clients succeed with their social media marketing.

It happened again this week.  I met a local business owner at a networking event who didn’t have a business card, but told me to be sure and find them on Facebook. My search was futile.  In fact, I was able to find their website but the link to Facebook was broken.

I’ve noticed many businesses advertise to look for them on Facebook, thinking people will flock to their page, but it’s impossible to find them in the search bar.  Before you spend money for offline advertising, be sure to register the vanity url or facebook name. I know, you can find your page but please ask someone who has not “liked” your business page to test it out in case you have any doubts.

It’s really easy to register the name of your page, just go here: http://www.facebook.com/username/

The sad thing about the example above was this company hired a social media company to manage their online presence.

Creating Community

Social media is all about creating community and helping others.  Facebook just rolled out new features which now allows business owners to like other pages and to make comments as the brand.  This also allows you to create online partnerships.  Be sure to take advantage of this feature, as well using the @ symbol to reference other pages which provides a link to their page in your post, while landing you visibility on their page.

Also, Facebook just announced a new feature last week which now allows links in the comment box.  This works well when you find out someone has been talking about your brand on another page.  How do you do that?  Sign up for an alert system like Social Mention, which monitors a variety of online mediums including blogs, Facebook, and Twitter: http://www.socialmention.com/

Promote Your Own Services on Facebook

With the new banner feature, business owners can easily create graphics to promote themselves.  If you don’t upload a lot of photos to promote events, then why not create your own promotional ads in this space.  The dimensions are:  97 pixels wide x 68 pixels high.  There are five boxes, which translates to five opportunities for promotion of your services.    The next time you create a post with a photo, your images will update – or simply update with text.   Here’s an example for you:  Seven Waves

Currently, there is not a way to control which image appears first.  There are a lot of free banner programs which plug into Facebook which can easily create one solid banner  that breaks up into five, but make sure the one you choose is recommended by your online business community.   Happy marketing.

Cathy Rodgers is Founder and President of Seven Waves Marketing in Savannah, Georgia. She can be reached through numerous channels including her newly revamped web site at http://www.7wavesmarketing.com