Many busi­ness­es feel that hav­ing a Face­book pres­ence is a must these days. After all, every busi­ness is on Face­book, right? How­ev­er, not all busi­ness­es man­age to actu­al­ly get real val­ue out of that pres­ence. In fact, most don’t get much out of it at all. This is a huge missed oppor­tu­ni­ty. Face­book is the biggest social net­work, with the most active users, and peo­ple are con­stant­ly look­ing at infor­ma­tion, and being trig­gered by what they see. If there is a chance to “meet” your tar­get audi­ence, it’s on Face­book. This is where your audi­ence is, and if you want to reach them effec­tive­ly, you need to opti­mize your pres­ence.

It can be a chal­lenge for many brands to put out the right mes­sages to their audi­ences on Face­book. The social media plat­form remains one of the best ways for brands and con­sumers to con­nect, and the ver­sa­til­i­ty of the plat­form gives brands the oppor­tu­ni­ty to real­ly show what they are about via dif­fer­ent kinds of media.

Face­book has become a cru­cial plat­form for brands to be present, and ready to engage with con­sumers. It pro­vides a rich media, and inter­ac­tive uni­verse for brands and con­sumers to con­nect, but many brands are still opti­miz­ing their chan­nel and the way their brand is pre­sent­ed.

Research has made the case that there is prov­able val­ue for brands on the plat­form. Accord­ing to one study by syn­capse, the aver­age val­ue of a brand Face­book fan in key con­sumer cat­e­gories increased 28 per­cent to $174 between 2010 and 2013. For cer­tain brands, this can be even greater: a Zara fan on Face­book is said to be worth $405.54, and fan of BMW is said to be worth very healthy $1,611.13.

Anoth­er 2010 study of brand fans of the plat­form, by Vit­rue (since acquired by Ora­cle), con­clud­ed that each fan gen­er­at­ed $3.60 in media val­ue based on an esti­mat­ed aver­age impres­sions val­ue of $5. While slight­ly out­dat­ed now, by these cal­cu­la­tions, brands with mil­lions of fans are gen­er­at­ing tens of mil­lions of dol­lars in media val­ue from their Face­book chan­nels.

How­ev­er, for every suc­cess­ful brand, there are sev­er­al more who aren’t doing their brand jus­tice. These days, engag­ing on Face­book isn’t about recy­cling the cor­po­rate ethos, or pro­mot­ing a brand’s adver­tis­ing, but pro­vid­ing con­sumers with a sense of authen­tic­i­ty, giv­ing them a por­tal on which they can eas­i­ly con­nect, and pre­sent­ing a brand per­son­al­i­ty with whom cus­tomers can like and inter­act, just as they would with a friend on the social media net­work.

Show The Brand, Or Show The Company?

OK, so the two aren’t exact­ly mutu­al­ly exclu­sive, but in the con­text of Face­book there may be a sub­tle dis­tinc­tion. A brand is an iden­ti­fi­able enti­ty, a ref­er­ence point for which con­sumers can asso­ciate a ser­vice or prod­uct. The com­pa­ny on the oth­er hand, is who you are – the staff and per­son­al­i­ties, and more impor­tant­ly, the shared val­ues and objec­tives which the brand holds dear.

To help brands work bet­ter on the chan­nel, here are sev­en tips on how to max­i­mize a brand’s pres­ence on Face­book.

7 Tips For Presenting Your Company On Facebook

1. Be Authentic

Authen­tic­i­ty, and the abil­i­ty for a brand to put out authen­tic con­tent, is fast becom­ing one of the most valu­able traits for a brand.

Espe­cial­ly among key tar­get groups such as mil­len­ni­als, hon­est­ly and authen­tic­i­ty are seen as fun­da­men­tal char­ac­ter­is­tics upon which con­sumers build the emo­tion­al con­nec­tions they are look­ing for with brands.

Brands such as Mod­cloth allow their staff to engage per­son­al­ly with fans and users. This cre­ates a sense of authen­tic­i­ty that encour­ages a healthy brand rela­tion­ship. It’s very pop­u­lar with their large­ly mil­len­ni­al audi­ence.

2. Tell A Story With Your Product

Face­book is con­stant­ly being updat­ed to sup­port the plat­forms and media that con­sumers are using, and the con­tent they are con­sum­ing. In our fast-paced dig­i­tal lives, this isn’t just with words – it’s pho­tos, videos, shares, and likes. Dig­i­tal inter­ac­tions have become so much a part of our lives that even a few clicks can have mean­ing today as a relat­able expe­ri­ence.

On Face­book, a world of vir­tu­al enti­ties and tran­sient inter­ac­tions, even oth­er­wise inan­i­mate objects – your prod­ucts – can tell a sto­ry. So make your prod­ucts come to life. This video from A.1. sauce is a per­fect exam­ple of what’s pos­si­ble with a lit­tle cre­ativ­i­ty:

3. Share How-Tos

How-tos pro­vide gen­uine use for con­sumers, and are one of the best ways to encour­age engage­ments, and build pos­i­tive sen­ti­ment with con­sumers. This type of con­tent can be a tremen­dous­ly valu­able asset for your com­pa­ny, espe­cial­ly for ver­ti­cals such as fash­ion and make­up, where con­sumers active­ly seek out and appre­ci­ate how-tos.

4. Use Video

2015 has already been her­ald­ed to an extent to be a big year for Face­book Video, with the net­work rolling out spon­sored video ads for brands with­in the News Feed for a $1 mil­lion-a-day price tag. In the brand video adver­tis­ing are­na, the bat­tle lines are already being drawn between Face­book and YouTube, and this is a tes­ta­ment to the increased val­ue of Face­book video adver­tis­ing amongst con­sumers. As report­ed in this post by Kel­ly Wrather, 40 per­cent of John Lewis’ over­all impres­sions for their huge­ly suc­cess­ful Christ­mas Video Cam­paign were sourced from Face­book.

5. Testimonials

Get­ting cus­tomer tes­ti­mo­ni­als on Face­book can pro­vide tremen­dous val­i­da­tion for your brand. Research has shown that a sin­gle social rec­om­men­da­tion from a trust­ed source can improve pos­i­tive sen­ti­ment by 9.5 per­cent, and can be con­sid­ered more influ­en­tial then price or brand fac­tors in con­sumer mind­sets.

A blog post by wish­pond offers four strate­gies for increas­ing tes­ti­mo­ni­als. Con­tests encour­ag­ing con­sumers to engage can be a great way to get them to share reviews and expe­ri­ences of your prod­ucts.

6. Respond To Questions & Complaints

The way con­sumers are voic­ing their com­plaints to brands is chang­ing. Social media offer con­sumers empow­er­ment, as well as con­ve­nience, and it’s no sur­prise that more peo­ple are turn­ing to social media when they have a ques­tion or com­plaint.

Com­plaints can be a fan­tas­tic way for brands to address con­sumer griev­ances and pro­vide reas­sur­ance to con­sumers who are hav­ing a neg­a­tive expe­ri­ence.

Do you real­ly want mes­sages like these fill­ing your feeds? Of course not. Thank­ful­ly com­plaints are a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands to address con­sumer griev­ances and reas­sure oth­ers.

7. Link Back To Your Website

Link­ing back to your web­site can help your cus­tomers or poten­tial cus­tomers get a bet­ter under­stand­ing of your com­pa­ny or brand.

Gen­er­al­ly, peo­ple like to read short and suc­cinct sto­ries on social sites. But some­times you want to or need to go more in depth. In these cas­es you “trig­ger” your cus­tomers to click through to your web­site to read more (e.g., to a blog post or a page that explains a new fea­ture).

Make sure you con­nect your chan­nels by link­ing them togeth­er. In oth­er words, don’t leave your cus­tomer on Face­book, take them to the next step – it’s a huge num­ber of fans you can poten­tial­ly con­nect to your web­site.