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Everyone knows about using Facebook to stay connected with friend and family. But what about using Facebook for business?

When you compare the two – Facebook for personal use and Facebook for business, you’ll notice that the former is very basic. You add someone as a friend, share your precious memories with them, and get people to like, comment, and share your posts.

So how does this differ from Facebook for business?

Facebook for business vs Facebook for personal use

While people using Facebook for personal use care about engaging with their friends and family, it’s not earth-shattering if a post someone makes doesn’t get a lot of engagement. It’s about the fact that you shared something and the people in your network were able to experience it too – even thought they were not necessarily there.

When you move into using Facebook for business, the game changes and you’re not concerned about just sharing content. You’re concerned with the following:

• Sharing quality, business-related content
• Reach
• Engagement (likes, comments, shares)
• Effectiveness

So what is so important about each of these items when using Facebook for business?

Sharing quality content

As I mentioned, when you share content on your personal account, you don’t necessarily care if people liked it or not. As a business using Facebook, you cannot have this same mentality.

When using Facebook for business, you have to be more selective about what you choose to share because you’re sharing it with people who are customers and who have the power to influence the buying decisions of their friends by recommending your business to them.

For instance, while you can share all of the Internet memes and unrelated content that doesn’t relate to your business on your Facebook Page, sharing this type of content can have drastic effects on your business.

Here are a few things that can happen when sharing inferior content on your Facebook Page

• Lose sight of business goals, which should be:
  • Raise product awareness
  • Sell products
  • Drive fans to your blog or website
• Confuse customers who support your business
• Negative word of mouth from customers

Reach

Reach is an important metric for businesses on Facebook, but it is not the primary metric.

The purpose of reach is to show you that your content is being seen. It does not mean that you’re successful with using Facebook for business though.

With reach, this just means that people are seeing your content. This is a good indicator that you’re putting out the right kind of content for your business on Facebook if you have a high reach.

Once you have reach, the next thing your business should focus on is engagement.

Engagement

Engagement means that people interacting with your content – through likes, shares, and comments. The more engagement, the more your content gets passed around, the higher your reach.

Effectiveness

One of the challenges that most businesses have with using Facebook for business is determining the effectiveness of their social media efforts.

A lot of businesses focus on the wrong indicators such as reach and posting unrelated content.

For example, anyone can post a quote or funny photo on their Facebook Page and get a high level of engagement, which will also boost their overall reach in the process.

While this seems like it is effective, it is not. It is creating a false sense of effectiveness when using Facebook for business.

What steps can you take to be effective at using Facebook for business?

Instead of focusing on posting items that will boost reach and engagement because it’s fun content (quotes, memes, etc) – this is often considered cheap content and something you want to avoid. Instead, what you want to do is post quality content – that’s related to your business that in-turn is engaging for fans and customers.

There are lots of ways to come up with content. For example, ShortStack created a cover photo that was also a game. The game was engaging and the answers were related to their business.

To help you learn the ropes of using Facebook for business, we’ve compiled a free ebook filled with helpful tips for your business.

Remember, using Facebook for business isn’t that challenging. When we focus on the end goals and stay on-course, it’s actually really easy.

Download it, read it, and send me a tweet to tell me what you liked about it.

12 Do’s & Don’ts of Facebook for business