What You’re Not Getting About Facebook for Business, and Why You Should Care

 Tinu Abayomi-Paul’s Profile 

Ever since someone told me I was on Facebook Grader’s Elite User page last month I’ve been in a constant state of amusement about it for three reasons. 

1. I was still getting Facebook traffic every day, whether I spend zero minutes or an hour there each day,
2. All the social media scoring sites amuse me to no end, because though they mean well, they miss the point,
3. At the time I had about half the friends of most of the people on that list, and while I updated Facebook nearly every day, I almost never logged into to do it. I had the stats to legitimately be on the list, but I worked about 10% as hard to get them as anyone else on that list.

Two years ago I wrote a book about my experiences with Facebook for Business, which I’m updating with some multi-media aids and more recent how-tos.

Because I’m seeing that two years later, most business people still don’t get Facebook, how it can help them, or what they’re supposed to be doing there, let alone how it can mean an increase in sales, more leads, more traffic, better business connections, or more business period. 

I’m going to spend the whole week talking about this. But for right now, let’s just cover the basics. 

What Most Business People Think of When They Look at Facebook – and What They SHOULD Be Thinking

Most business people look at Facebook and think “I want to advertise or market to those 180 million people.”

They should be thinking “How can I help the targeted sub-set of those 180 million people see my business as THE solution to their problems?”

Facebook is a social platform. Now there’s a place to advertise and ways to market, but …. that’s not what the optimal relationship is, and that isn’t what will reach the most people.

Let me put it this way… naturally the best way to maneuver through water is in a boat, so doesn’t it seem silly to try and go up the Mississippi river in a motorcycle? 

It’s probably possible, sure. But there’s a better way. Why not do that instead?

The best way to get the most out of a social platform is to be social. Period.

Social meaning that you meet as many people as you can who you have something in common with, connect to them, then present them with the option to connect more deeply with you. This does not have to be:

• Time consuming
• A one by one process, or,
• Something you do every day

in order for Facebook to work for you. 

And you don’t have to market on Facebook. It’s probably better if you don’t.

I have never, not one time, solicited any type of business while on Facebook. Last year Facebook brought me tens of thousands of dollars in profit. 

While I was sick.

Not including book sales.

How is this possible? I set up my profile effectively, and let it speak for itself to the right people. Then I made them all come to me. 

I’ve never gone up to anyone on Facebook and said “hi, I’m Tinu, this is what I do, and how I can help you”. Not as a first conversation, not as a 50th. Everyone comes to ME, asks for my help, and how much it is to hire me.

If you can create that environment it’s a constant stream of prospects to you.

I’m actually going to reveal all the basic things you need to know about Facebook for free in a few days, here on the blog. Before we get to that though, let’s look at how people are screwing up their chances on Facebook, so that if you’ve been told to do any of these things, you can STOP.

Huge Mistakes I See Every Day on Facebook

1. People marketing in the wrong place, to the wrong people, in the wrong way, at the wrong time.
   
   You want to market on Facebook? Fine. You have 4 options. Get a Facebook Business Page, Participate in or Create a Group, Buy a Facebook Ad, or Leverage Your Profile.    

   Guess which one works the best, by far? Leveraging Your Profile. Most people don’t see this, and when they get an inkling of it, they do it in the most annoying way possible.

   And you can’t sell to people you annoy. They tune you out or they block you from interacting with them.

   No sale. 
    

2. Relying solely on building a large friends list.
   
   There’s a reason that the Facebook grader page doesn’t just list the first 50 people to make it to 5000 friends. If you make 5000 weak connections, they are actually worse than another person’s strong 50 connections.     

   Like anything else, you need to connect to the most targeted connections possible, and have a subset of influencers within that group.

3. Ignoring Facebook’s power to broadcast as well as receive. There is something to be said for having a lot of friends of Facebook – if they are the right friends. 

   If you’re picking people who are mutually beneficial to you, who have influence over other people in your target market, the nature of Facebook will amplify your efforts.The key to that here is the news feed.

   When you go to Facebook’s home page, you’re getting live updates of the people you’re connected to, and if you wish, a subset of the people you’re connected to, now that they’ve introduced filtering.  So when YOU publish items on YOUR profile, they’re going at least to all your friends, and potentially to the friends of your friends, if they take action on the information. 

   So why not just post your link on a more powerful user’s profile? 

   Well, first of all they can delete it, and block you, and then you can never leverage that relationship again. And you probably won’t find another powerful Facebook user to dupe into listing your spam, because we all know each other. I’m one degree of separation from all top 50 users on the Elite list, and half of them I either know or am connected to them on Facebook.

   Secondly, Facebook isn’t set up to drive traffic to profiles anymore, it’s set up to drive traffic to news feeds. I spend 75% of the time that I’m logged into Facebook on my own profile page, browsing the news feed. Unless I’m deciding whether or not to add you, I’m not going to your profile. Neither are other users. 

   Thirdly, you’ll get better results posting to your own profile, where people you know and the people they know can get your news when it pops into their news feed. 

If you take no other information away from our dialog about Facebook this week, let it be this: the news feed is where it’s at, where it’s going to BE at, and where it always WAS at. Master the News Feed, and learn to properly leverage your profile and your work in Facebook is done.

We’re gonna talk more about every day this week. For now, sign up for a Facebook account if you don’t already have one. I’ll show you the most important areas to pay attention to in an upcoming video.