Posted by The following excerpt is from Jason R. Rich’s book Ultimate Guide to YouTube for Business. Buy it now fromAmazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | IndieBound
According to YouTube, more than 500 years’ worth of YouTube video content is watched on Facebook every day, and 40 percent of people who watch these videos share video links with their online friends. You’ll discover it’s easy to promote your YouTube channel and its content on Facebook by announcing new YouTube videos on your Facebook page and providing a link that leads to your YouTube channel. Alternately, you can embed your latest YouTube videos in your Facebook page so they can be watched on Facebook. At the same time, it’s possible to use paid Facebook advertising to attract new viewers to your YouTube channel (or a specific video) and simultaneously boost your following on Facebook.
Creating a Facebook page for your business is free. To create a branded Facebook page for your business, follow the step-by-step process that’s outlined when you visit this page.
What’s great about Facebook is you can:
- Customize the appearance of the page and include customized banner art and your company logo.
- Link the Facebook page with all your other online activities, including your company’s website and YouTube channel.
- Tap into Facebook’s more than two billion active users worldwide, yet cater to a highly targeted audience.
- Create an online community in which you can interact informally with your customers and potential customers, while these people can interact with each other in moderated conversations based around your products/services.
- Take advantage of paid Facebook advertising to attract followers to your Facebook page, while simultaneously promoting your YouTube channel content, thus quickly building your following and viewership.
A Facebook page allows you to communicate with your audience using text, graphics, photos, videos, audio, and other multimedia content, yet requires no programming or graphic design skills to set up and operate. In fact, the operation of a business-oriented Facebook page is much like a personal Facebook page, but with a few additional options and features. There’s even an official Facebook mobile app, called Facebook Pages Manager, that can be used to manage your company’s Facebook page from anywhere, using an internet-connected smartphone or tablet. From a computer, you can set up and manage a company Facebook page using any web browser and by visiting the Facebook site.
You can use a Facebook page to tell your company’s story and humanize your business; showcase its products/services; interact with existing customers/clients; use it as a soft-sell and promotional tool to attract new customers/clients; share information; promote sales; and build customer loyalty around your company, its brand, and its products/services. The best way to use Facebook is to focus on building an interactive community, as opposed to just posting messages and content that your followers simply read or watch.
However, before establishing a Facebook page for your business, visit the Facebook pages of other businesses to see how each has formatted its page, discover what it’s primarily being used for, and to determine how other companies are interacting with their Facebook page’s followers and visitors. Learn what’s possible. Then, just as you did for your YouTube channel, devise a specific plan for how you’ll use your company’s Facebook page. Develop an overall set of goals for the page and a plan for how you’ll achieve those objectives.
Make sure your Facebook page is branded in a way that’s consistent with your website, YouTube channel, and other online presence, and be sure to include your company’s contact information prominently. Then, once the page is established, cross-promote your Facebook page with your website, YouTube channel, Twitter feed, Instagram feed, and other social media accounts. While some content can (and should) overlap, provide at least some unique content on each platform, giving visitors a reason to follow your business on multiple social media services.
Keep in mind, operating a company-oriented Facebook page takes time. You’ll need time to set up, establish, and customize your presence on Facebook, then invest time on an ongoing basis to update the page with new content, moderate public comments and posts created by others, and interact with your Facebook followers. This interaction will help you build loyalty, but will likely be the most time-consuming, since timely and personalized responses to questions and comments will be expected.
Don’t just establish a Facebook page and abandon it, allowing your followers and visitors to interact freely, in an unmoderated forum. Not only will this give the people who access it the impression that you don’t care about them or your content, but it could quickly lead to misinformation or negative information being published about your company and its products/services. People visiting the page will potentially post information that may or may not be correct, and there won’t be anyone from your company correcting or moderating what’s being said in this public forum.
Keep in mind that just about everything published on a Facebook page, and within the profile that’s associated with a Facebook page, becomes searchable. So, if someone does a Facebook or Google search about your company or its products/services, they could easily come across negative posts that have been published on your Facebook page if no one from your company is moderating the content.