When asked, small business owners will frequently tell you that most of their new business comes from word-of-mouth.  The reason this is proven to be such a strong form of advertising is that you have received validation from your new clients trusted friends, family, and associates.  What would give you more confidence in a product or business? A random ad that you see on the internet, or a friend who has expressed their gratification for a business with whom they had a positive experience.  In most cases you would ultimately make a decision to engage based on the influence of your friend.

Luckily for us Facebook has created a form of advertising called Sponsored Stories.  These ads were optimized to help people discover your business through their friends on facebook.  These ads inform users that their friends are engaged with a specific page and give the viewer the opportunity to also like the page based on the Sponsored Stories ad. This can be a very powerful ad that will help you grow your brand and business page with newly qualified leads.  These new leads have already received validation from a friend that your business is trustworthy and worth engaging.

This all sounds good but how do you take advantage of this advertising opportunity?

A few tasks should be completed before deciding to implement Sponsored Stories ads.  First, you want to be sure that your business facebook page is created as a page and not just a user profile.  You will also want to ensure that your page is filled out completely and accurately.  And finally, the time should be taken to create a page that is inviting and visually pleasing to visitors.  This can be accomplished by having a graphic designer build a custom profile photo and cover photo that, at a quick glance, expresses exactly who you are and what you offer.

Now that your page is presentable and set up correctly to utilize facebook’s advertising platform, we can set up a Sponsored Stories ad.  To access this section of the advertising platform you can navigate to http://www.facebook.com/ads while logged into your management profile.  From this page you will have the opportunity to create a new Facebook Ads Account or manage your existing ads.  If you need help creating these ads, you can follow this link to download Facebook’s free comprehensive User Guide for the Ads Create tool. https://www.facebook.com/business/sponsoredstories/ .

Grow your audience at your own pace and within your spend limits.

The great thing about facebook’s advertising platform is that you can start an ads campaign with any budget. You will be surprised to see that with dedicating just a few dollars a day, your fan base will grow quickly.  Another great feature you will receive is the pool of targeted connections in which your ads will be displayed.  This will grow every time you receive a new ‘like’ to your page. This is made possible because with every new ‘like’, your ad will now also be displayed to their friends as well.

What are you waiting for?

This has been a proven and successful method for businesses to grow their brand awareness and engagement levels within the social media community. And remember, if you are not doing this, your competitors probably are!

-Joshua Buscay (Marketing Manager, Laughlin Associates Inc.)_­