Sometimes Baby Boomer Business owners attend my social media workshops because they seek the answer to a question that perplexes them a lot: why should my business be on Facebook?

Though they themselves use the Internet to make purchases; and though 49% of them use Facebook, on the flip-side: very few of them know how to succeed in using social media to market their own companies. These silver-haired businessmen just don’t get it. Who can blame them? After all, they didn’t grow up with the Internet. They grew up using the Yellow Pages to advertise their companies, instead of Google or social media. So many of these seniors (and many younger folks, too) still resist using Facebook to market their business or they’re using it totally wrong.

Are You a Baby Boomer Business Owner Still Resisting Facebook?

If it’s hard for you to understand why a marketing budget should be invested in Facebook instead of Saturday morning TV infomercials, read the rest of this blog post.

So, here’s an attempt to help you understand how social media marketing has revolutionized the way brands and consumers interact and how this new way of marketing increases business –when it’s done right.

Content is the Cornerstone With Your Social Media Marketing

Remember the Subaru commercial of a family of dogs (Labradors) with the dad dog driving the car and little puppy Lab is buckled into a child safety seat? Suddenly, they all start barking at something they’ve seen approaching. The camera cuts to a mail delivery truck pass, going the opposite direction in the other lane. Remember?

Chances are that if you saw that Subaru commercial on TV or YouTube, you remember it now that I’ve reminded you about it.

It made you laugh. It entertained you.

No words were spoken. At the end, this appeared briefly: “Dog tested. Dog approved” and the commercial ended.

Subaru figured it out: use entertaining content to get your message across to your audience. As long as you educate, entertain or enlighten your audience, you’ll usually do well and keep them part of your tribe. They like and trust you. After that happens, they’ll buy from you or say nice things about you to their friends, which is the ultimate word-of-mouth marketing.

So here’s why your business should be in Facebook:

We’ve reached an age in which attention is not easily gotten and so you’d better either entertain us or educate us when you DO have our eyeballs on your post or Tweet or video for 30 seconds, sometimes only 10 seconds. If you bore us, we’re outta here. And if you dare say to us: “Buy our stuff now!” we know you’re not going to get our money, let alone, our attention because we loathe commercials. In fact, people under the age of  25 time-shift their media so much that they manage to easily avoid commercials and other ads. How do you reach THAT audience?

You reach them by having interesting content that either educates, entertains or enlightens. It’s gotta be memorable.

That’s assuming you get the attention of your potential customers first.

If you do get our attention and you entertain, educate or enlighten us, then we might become part of your tribe–also known as a community of fans, friends and followers. At this point, we like you.  After a while, if we fans see that your brand treats its fans with respect and consistently puts out useful content that fulfills one of the three E’s (Entertains or Educates or Enlightens) then we reach the TRUST phase of our relationship with your brand. Now it’s only a matter of time before we buy from you. We are certainly going to recommend you to our friends in Facebook and elsewhere. (And if we’re Latina(o), we’ll tell our siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, about you, too).

THAT, my friends, is why your business should be on Facebook.

That’s how Facebook for business works: when you create memorable content for your fans to enjoy –even in a small way– you’ll rarely have to actually say “buy our stuff.” Just be sure to show it to them in a way that’s not intrusive.  Once they like you and trust you, they’ll either buy your stuff or tell their friends about your company.

The more authentic, helpful and human your brand is, the more humans your brand will attract. 

Of course, this could possibly backfire on you if a complaint was not properly handled by your staff, which causes the unhappy customer to come to your Facebook page to complain in a very public place. But don’t worry: there are ways to handle this and make your customer feel better and feel satisfied while thousands of others are reading what you reply. As long as you have many, many other positive reviews and comments, your fans will know that nobody’s perfect and that you tried to make things right. A complaint is an opportunity when handled correctly.

Just remember this: many of your Facebook fans haven’t come to your Facebook page to buy from you. They’re not quite ready for that yet – especially the newer fans. They’re in the research phase. They have to get to know your brand first, before they’re ready to trust you enough to buy from you.

Hopefully, by now, you’ve done such a good job of letting them know they can stay in touch with you via your Facebook page that they became a fan. Eventually you’ll get to the point in which many more fans have bought from you. These fans can actually become Brand Ambassadors, spouting good reviews, good comments and sharing your posts now and then.  And now they get reminded about you now and then, in a good way. And voila! You’ve got more customers, more revenue and a thriving business because they’ve felt inspired by your brand through content shared via social media and through the way they act with fans . It’s not quite as easy as it sounds. But when managed by an experienced Social Media professional, your social media can, indeed, increase revenue.

Did you know that you already have “pre-fans”? These are people who are interested in your company or product or service but before they spend money with you, they want to get to know you. After all, this is post-recession 2016 and we consumers are still careful with where we spend our hard-earned cash.

The word “Social” is the key to understanding HOW to do your social media marketing. Just be SOCIAL. Don’t be “media.” We already know the name of your brand and what you sell. We want to see how you treat people first. Then we’ll decide whether or not to buy your stuff.

The Next Step To Take Now…

Once you’ve grasped this concept about why you should use Facebook to grow business, the next step to take now is to decide on your goal and how to achieve it.

Subscribe to my newsletter to read to stay informed about digital marketing via my blog posts when I publish them. Here are a couple of samples:

How to Create a Social Media Strategy

Why Should My Business Be On Facebook?

Thanks for reading! What tip did you find to be most helpful to you? Please share in the comments below. 

About Lori Gama

Lori Gama is The Online Visibility Expert and founder of DaGama Web Studio, an Internet Marketing firm she started in 1995. She and her team (all located in northern Colorado) work with business owners to create visibility, credibility and profitability by leveraging SEO (Search Engine Optimization), web design, social media marketing management, social media marketing training, video marketing and content marketing.