It’s not enough to add social media to your marketing toolbox. You need to plan how you will use it to increase your sales. Then you need to make it work to do that.

As part of their marketing mix, we manage the Facebook page for one of our clients. When we took it over they had less than 50 “Likes” and posted once or twice a month. Most of their fans were investors and employees. They hadn’t really considered what would motivate a customer to follow them and they didn’t really think about why it would be good for their marketing.

I don’t recommend a Facebook page for every business but it seemed like a good opportunity for this company. They are a retailer who is growing and adding new locations across several states.  Their goal is to increase store sales.  Facebook is useful for:

• Raising company visibility
• Building loyalty to the brand
• Encouraging store traffic.

The way to do these things is to make sure that you have a clear strategy and process. Respond to any message promptly and post regularly. The posts must be interesting to the company’s customers in order to develop fan support.

The content of the posts should include:

• Photos of customers (everyone likes to see themselves)
• Photos of employees helping customers
• Store news
• Special Offers
• Contests and sweepstakes
• Useful information.

Ideally, there should be a post every day or two and it should be clear that visiting the company page is beneficial to the customer. In our case, we have encouraged store managers to send us photos and added sweepstakes and contests.

It’s only been a couple of weeks since we initiated the campaign, but we now have more than 200 likes and our Facebook activity has gone up a lot. We will need to see if that translates into increased sales.

Is a Facebook page right for your company? Maybe, maybe not. It depends upon your business and whether you have the time to maintain the page.

If you do decide to do it, be sure to have goals and make a commitment to keep it up. This kind of tactic takes time to mature.