Many businesses underestimate the power of Facebook and the potential clientele this social network can create for your products and services. Here are five simple tips to help your business get the most out of its Facebook marketing efforts.

While it is true that marketing your business through Facebook and other social networking sites can be very time consuming, it doesn”t take a lot of effort to see positive benefits for your business. The Pareto Principle (also known as the 80–20 rule) applies: for 20% of the effort you can create 80% of the results from your Facebook endeavors.

Great results with minimal effort

Minimal effort with Facebook means you won”t be spending more than a few minutes a day marketing your business. Furthermore, the minimal time you do spend will be simply implementing ideas discussed with your marketing team at a previous meeting. For instance, many companies try to create 1-2 quality posts per day on a topic in their industry for their Facebook followers. This can include a simple link to audio, visual or text media, or a short comment or note based on a particular focus.

The important thing is that the time spent on Facebook and similar media be completely focused and productive around a specific marketing effort.

Automate as much as possible

If you already have a blog you update regularly or have a writing team who updates it, then you”ll want to automate any posts to also appear on your Facebook account. This reduces the amount of manual posting needed to reach your Facebook network of users. For example, there are many social marketing WordPress plugins available that can help automate the process for you. Likewise, you can synchronize this type of automation with a variety of services including Linkedin, Twitter, and Pinterest, depending on the type of content you”re creating.

Customize your Facebook page

Just as you would customize and brand your own office or business assets, you should also seriously consider branding your Facebook presence. A skilled graphic designer can quickly and inexpensively “skin” your Facebook account with your company logo and colors. They can also create designs and banners for you. You might want to hire and incorporate a graphic designer or visual content creator into your marketing team as well so that they can continually create high-quality content for posting on Facebook and other social media.

Extend business presence through your employees

Apart from having your own company Facebook account that represents your main focus and products, you might want to encourage key personnel to develop their own focused blogs and Facebook presence as well. This is a great way to extend your marketing efforts while adding a personal flair to your company that many clients truly appreciate and value.

Encourage social sharing

A simple way to help promote your business is to encourage your Facebook fans and blog readers to share your posts with their network. One of the easiest ways to do this is including social sharing buttons on your site – like the buttons you see to the left. This makes it “one-click easy” for people to share information they like. A second component to encourage social sharing is to simply ASK readers to share your content. You”ll be surprised what people will do if you simply ask them.

Another good Facebook marketing tip is to include visual content in your Facebook updates. Posts including photos or other graphic images generate 53% more Likes than the average post. And an interesting tidbit is that both guys and girls prefer photos with girls.

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There you have it, five simple steps – and just a few minutes a day – to use Facebook marketing to your advantage. If you have any addition tips you”d like to suggest, please drop them in the comments below.