Turn your Passion into a Business in Facebook

Be your own Boss: renovate your passion to be an entrepreneur, use social media for networking to promote your business...

Written by Sk. Abtahiune Rashid

Do you have any passion that appreciated by your friends and fellows? Have you ever thought your passion can make you an entrepreneur? How does it feel to see your passion turns into a business! Are you worried about promotion and marketing? How it would be work in Facebook!

Few tips are here for you to turn your passion into a business in Facebook.

Become an Expert on Your Own Industry: The passion is yours, so you need to know what you are going to sale. You must need to show your creativity. Remember you are the only expert here who needs to know how to make the product, marketing the product and ensure your products on your customer’s hand. Moreover, you need to have a clear idea of how to operate this business. 

Build Your Brand: According to Rakickaitė J. (2008)  branding refers to ‘use of a name, term, symbol or design or combination of these, to identify a product’. Mainly, the concept of a brand comes from product marketing where purpose of brand was to differentiate a product/service from other, so that people would give preference to choose what they want to buy. Brand is the most valuable assets for a business mentioned by Merlin (2002). Often, the image of the brand influences customer’s choice and preference. Therefore, from the very beginning of the business you should keep it as your prior concern. Try to pick a name for your business that reflects your thoughts and creativity. In this case it is encouraged to choose a key word that imitates and/or portraits the selling point of your business. You are most welcome to design a logo that shows your commitment is more serious as professional. Always try to show ingenuity that has a meaning. Remember it’s a reflection of your personality as well.   

Open a Facebook Group and a Business Page: The business network is habitually described as the starting point for new ideas. Now a days, social media has become a tool for marketing. Different research shown the positive impact of social media in small business. A study on ‘Trusting the Social Media in Small Business’ by Kahar et. al (2012) says, social media are useful for image building, strengthening relationship, and networking among business entrepreneurs and customers. Similar study by Grizane and Jurgelane (2016) stated that using social media has a positive impact on business in terms of maximizing the benefit of small business.  

Thus, when you are decided to start your business in Facebook then you need to open a Facebook group and a business page over there. You do not need to pay for it because it is free. But there is an option to pay if you choose to boost-up your page later. Facebook Group Header images is currently 820 x 428 pixels in size. So, design something (banner) in limit 820 x 331 and then add the top and bottom margins to fill the frame.

Invest enough time and energy in building an audience in your page. Please do not demotivate if you don’t get response very first. Remember building trust is very important at the beginning of any business. Try to invite relative and friends to be a member of your group and like your page to be connected. Try to be more active on the page by posting events, new creation and asking for customer’s opinion and/or feedback. Apply your own style for marketing your innovation. Few things need to remember:

• be careful on your objective (be strict on subject)
• be clear to your audience (what is the group about)
• be specific (include a key work in your group name that customer can easily find you by quick searching)
• create some ground rules and request to everyone to follow it. As an admin you must take care of every individual’s thoughts, freedom, choice and respect. Always try to be polite and focus without being bias and taking things personal.
• promote your page premium and everywhere. Tweet out a link to your group on a regular basis. Such as if you have other account in twitter, LinkedIn then you can also boost up there. Also, create some content that is only available via the group such as Facebook live video and share it as public to reach the mass people. You may create “theme days” to focus on a topic, share your idea and stimulate the conversations of the followers. Never forget to thank them for being with you!
• Post the Photos, Videos and Adds of the Product: Post the good quality photos and videos of your products with a wide description that customers could able to understand about the details of the product. Photos needs to be bright and attractive but without any falsification. It is very important to present your product that customer motivate to press order without watching it by person. Always try to upload the post and photos of a new product in a specific time of the day that your customers don’t miss any update and save their time to buy form you. A pull marketing strategy is more useful in social media. A continuous interaction with customers will help you to have an idea of their interests, preferences, values that helps you to make your product and/or service more attractive (Largrosen and Josefsson, 2011).

Post the Photos, Videos and Adds of the Product: Post the good quality photos and videos of your products with a wide description that customers could able to understand about the details of the product. Photos needs to be bright and attractive but without any falsification. It is very important to present your product that customer motivate to press order without watching it by person. Always try to upload the post and photos of a new product in a specific time of the day that your customers don’t miss any update and save their time to buy form you. A pull marketing strategy is more useful in social media. A continuous interaction with customers will help you to have an idea of their interests, preferences, values that helps you to make your product and/or service more attractive (Largrosen and Josefsson, 2011).

Have a Conversation and Try to Response Fast: Remember you have chosen Facebook as a social media to promote your business. Boling et. al (2009) described in their findings that, ‘small business has an established presence in the social networking domain, and to some extent is aware of the possibilities and opportunities offered’, so, consider yourself more interactive and proactive in the social media. Monitor your Facebook group and page very frequent. Try to response any kind of quarries of the customer regarding any product and services as soon as possible. Make they feel that you do care of them and much responsible in what you are doing. You may consider any co-admin/s if you are busy in somewhere else and/or you supposed to handle a lot of response from the customers. Make sure that your co-admin/s are same knowledgeable like you in terms of your offering product/service. Also, you can share the related events here, such as your business is going to take part in any fair or exhibition etc. and boost it up in your page during the event time that customers can visit you there.

Never Compromise with The Quality: Always try to ensure the quality of the product. Try to deliver the products on time. This is very important to keep in mind that in online business customers are relying on your photos and description. So, it if very hard to build the trust and easy to lose the trust. Always keep an option for return. You may add value added service like ‘delivery at home’ or ‘delivery on cash’. Use a verified business address and contact number that your customer can trust you in all way and never feel them lost. Another important issue is to crackdown on bad behavior. Try to be strict on your business policy for example: zero-tolerance for bad behavior or breaking the rules of stealing customers etc. but never take your step back to apologizing if it seems like an honest mistake. From security perspective, it is very important to maintain confidentiality of customer’s personal data such as credit card information, home address, phone number etc. (Gunawan et. al, 2005).

Always Welcome Customers for Writing a Review: This process relates to the relationship marketing that helps to build trust, commitment and attraction. These underlying factors create more interaction between the customers and the companies and stimulate a mutual learning process (Lagrosen and Josefsson, 2011). In online shopping, customer often depends on the review of other customers. So, always ask your customers to write a review in your page about the products and/or the services they purchased from you. Try to response in more positive way if anything found wrong/bad and never forget to thank them for their contribution. It is a good way to be connect with your valuable customers and that also help you to note the point of improvement.

In sum up, keep in mind that there is a lot of competition in this virtual world of business. Your office is not visible that doesn’t mean your existence is invisible. Starting a business from scratch is more like jumping on a roller coaster so before starting this journey do your own research. Remember now your passion is no more restricted within you. You are now in a world of business, where it is essential to consider your business in a very professional way. May be these tips will help you to understand the facts but show your innovation by exploiting your creativity and be unique. Happy Business!

References:

Rakickaitė, J. (2008). FROM BRAND TO CORPORATE BRAND, Social Science, vol. 1, no. 1, p.9.

Melin, F. (2002). The brand as a value creator. Identity, Trademarks, Logotypes and Symbols, edited by Holger, L. & Holmberg, I. Stockholm: National Museums & Raster Förlag, pp.109-126

Kahar, R., Yamimi, F., Bunari, G. & Habil, H. (2012). Trusting the Social Media in Small Business, Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 66, pp.564–570.

Grizane, T. & Jurgelane, I. (2017). Social Media Impact on Business Evaluation, Procedia Computer Science, vol. 104, pp.190–196.

Lagrosen, S. & Josefsson, P. (2011). Social Media Marketing as an Entrepreneurial Learning Process, International Journal of Technology Marketing, vol. 6, no. 4, p.331.

Boling, R., Burns, M. & Dick, G. (2009). Social Networking and Small Business: An Exploratory Study, p.9.

Gunawan, W., Kelly, D. S. & Tarigan, R. E. (2005). THE USE OF QUALITY, SECURITY AND TRUST FACTORS TO IMPROVE THE ONLINE PURCHASE DECISION, . Vol., no. 5, p.10.

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DesMarais, C. (2015). 8 Tips on How to Turn Your Passion Into a Business, Inc.Com, Available Online: https://www.inc.com/christina-desmarais/8-tips-on-how-to-turn-your-passion-into-a-business.html [Accessed 28 November 2018].

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