How good is your company's Facebook page?

Dan Levy, director, Small Business at Facebook  shared his insights on how businesses can use their Facebook presence to drive business outcomes and as part of their marketing mix. He shares tips below:Bright, colourful images appeal to local as well as overseas markets. Yvonne Tan, the owner of Singaporean brand Ministry of Retail, harnessed the power of bright photographs to showcase her products. She managed to achieve three times increase in sales in one month, over 53 times increase in Page fan base in three years, 50% y-o-y growth on sales with 20% of sales derived from overseas.Initially, the brand targeted the domestic market but had global ambitions after seeing the fast success of the brand on Facebook. With 60% of website traffic in the first year attributable to Facebook, their success on the platform has inspired and spurred them to enter the Malaysia and other regional markets such as the Philippines.Be authentic, not a robot. A Facebook page is for conversations and a place for starting relationships or deepening existing ones. Levy mentioned that many of the small businesses he has spoken with were worried about what to post and how to post initially. Later on, they realised that the more conversational they were, the more human and authentic they appeared. This gave the brand a voice which people could relate to.Scoot achieves its brand awareness with audience participation by keeping engagement light-hearted and previously reported a 14 times ROI using Facebook to drive ticket sales for its Japan flight launch. Customers are able to relate to the brand and that posts had a ‘Scootitude’ personality which is fun and young. More than 9,000 entries were received for Scoot’s call for audience participation to christen the first two planes in the Scoot fleet.Explore and experience. Don’t be afraid to try. Small businesses generally know their customers well. However, sometimes it takes trying new types of promotions on Facebook to figure out how one could get the best response.Tattoo parlour DublinInk’s owner posts images of tattoos which appeal to potential and current customers. However, by making the call to action clear, they have created urgency around the posts by featuring art from a visiting tattoo artist who will only be in residence for a certain amount of time. This helped the company direct more people into the tattoo parlour. The tip here is to test, refine and repeat to increase sales.Ask other business owners.Never be afraid to speak with other business owners and ask. Getting direct feedback beats wondering about what may work or what may not.