Social media marketing is the newest way to find and engage with your target market online, and is growing in popularity daily. Social Media sites such as Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn and YouTube are great platforms to use to raise the profile of your business, and the UK population now spend an hour per day on social networking sites, so it makes sense to ensure that your brand is present and that you are engaging with potential and existing customers in a way that makes your business far more accessible.

Facebook has over 600 million users, so you need to ensure that your Facebook page stands out from the crowd by following this guide:

• Be sure to create a business page rather than a personal profile for your business name, as Facebook can and have shut down personal profiles that were running on a business name. To identify which you are currently running, if someone has to friend request your page, it means it’s running on a personal profile, if someone can “like” your page, you’re already on a business page, and if someone has to “join” your page, you’re running a group, which offers much less functionality than a business page.
• To create a business page, you can do so from your own personal Facebook Page but visiting www.facebook.com/pages (in the top right corner, you’ll see Create a Page)
• Include all means for potential customers to contact you – website, phone no, email address, twitter account, LinkedIn profile
• Extend your brand presence with an optimised profile picture for your business page – you can have a profile picture for your business page that is 200 pixels wide by 600 pixels high.
• Update status on your page regularly – no-one will “like” or engage with a page that has no activity on it
• Add a custom landing page – as on your website, you have only a few moments to impress your page visitors and for them to “like” your page and come and engage with your brand/content. So make sure that your custom landing page creates the right impression, is on brand, provides a means to collect page visitors email addresses, and you can even go as far as showing your latest blog posts or promoting your latest products/services on your landing page.
• Go find your target market and get chatting to them.

Do not spam your followers – you’ll get reported as a spammer, and your account will get barred.