In order to improve my online marketing on social media I recently attended the ‘Power up your social media’ course run by Dorset Growth Hub held at Merley house in Wimborne.  A great training course was given by Andrew Knowles from the Dorset Growth Hub. During the course I had the luck and pleasure of meeting Glenda from Precious Memories – Keepsakes.

Glenda setup Precious Memories – keepsakes 15 years ago so she could work from home and get the perfect work life balance with her family when she become a Mum. Glenda explained that she had worked in the past in teaching and marketing roles but had decided to setup her own business so she could work around her home life responsibilities. Whilst getting to know Glenda it soon became apparent to me that Glenda knew her stuff when it came to Facebook. So when Glenda offered to help me out with my Facebook business page I jumped at the chance. It was really kind of Glenda to offer to meet up with me at my studio in Broadstone to run through some tips and techniques.

 

Glenda came over to visit my studio from where I do all my graphic and website design work. It’s a wooden cabin in our garden but it’s also my studio and a great place to work . It’s separate from the house so is purely a work environment away from the usual distractions encountered when working from a home office. Once we were settled with a coffee we got to work. We had a full day running through various issues, with Glenda taking me through where I was missing content on my profile along with how my Facebook posts could be improved. Firstly Glenda showed me how to save posts so I could easily relocate them at a later time and date. Glenda also showed me how to retrieve these saved posts so I could transfer them from my personal Facebook account onto my business page and share for Graphfix and all my business followers.

We also discussed the importance of telling users and potential customers all about me, as this is one of the most important factors when selling services and skills online. Glenda showed me where within the Facebook business page to add this is. I learnt that this is called your ‘story’ and Glenda said I was to add as much about myself that would explain and inform without putting in too much and boring potential customers! Glenda also said using a photograph as profile image rather than a logo is better, as it gives a more personal and human feel to my profile.

We then went on to look at Facebook reviews. I didn’t even realise that you could write reviews on Facebook! Glenda explained the importance of Facebook reviews. Once people locate your business page and see what services you offer they need the security of seeing that you are reputable and trusted before they will consider using you.  We discussed that I already had a number of ‘happy customer’ reviews published on my website at www.graphfix.co.uk but that I would also need some customers with a Facebook profile to also write some further reviews within Facebook.

The next area we looked at was how to add in services into my business page. This was quite straightforward but again until Glenda had shown me I didn’t realise that this was possible. We discussed the service areas I could include and came up with the following list; logo design, brochure design, website design, business card design, vehicle, car & van graphics and stationery design. I had to include an image and some overview text with a price for each service.

Only then did we discuss how to reach out to potential customers and build a community. I could see that before you can do this you need have your shop front in order. We discussed how to reach potential customers via building links, sharing interesting posts and submitting to existing groups.

Thanks to Glenda I now know a lot more and can see where I can improve. Fingers crossed I will see some improvement with my Facebook presence!