There are countless things that one should or should not do when marketing a business on Facebook, but some basic points are highlighted in this article. For more information, more comprehensive advice, we have included some useful links at the end of this blog post.

1. You are not on Facebook primarily to sell and make money. You are there to build a community, to benefit your customers and potential clients with useful information –making money is a by-product of this community building. So don’t set off trying to force products and services on people, make meaningful connections and the profit will follow.
   
2. Creating a Facebook page and letting it run its course is not the way to run a successful marketing campaign on a social media network. Once you create a Facebook page you need to commit yourself to updating it regularly, posting new material, sharing articles, pictures or videos as well as commenting on and replying to posts and questions posted by others on your page. Again, it’s all part of community building, showing that your company cares about its customers and potential clients.
   
3. A Facebook page does not replace a website! Facebook should lead back to your website, that’s where the actual business takes place. Facebook is just a rented online space, your website is your property, your home base. Advertise it and use it accordingly. Copyblogger’s Sonia Simone calls it sharecropping, check out her definition!
   
4. To get likes, shares and eventually more business, you need to keep in mind what your audience wants to see. Share news and information relevant to your business and try as much as possible to mix it up – don’t go for all articles, or all pictures, alternate news items with pictures, videos and other media you might think of. Do not be afraid to experiment with different topics or types of posts to gauge what your audience finds most compelling.
   
5. To utilize Facebook properly for your marketing campaign you need to know how to use the different Facebook tools; that’s a no-brainer right? Familiarize yourself with what Facebook has to offer its pages, such as insights for monitoring your page’s activity and the popularity of your different posts, sharing methods and other useful tools.
6. As often as possible, add pictures or videos to your posts; long, all text posts tend to be ignored.
7. Write the way you speak; there is no point in going on social media and sounding like a cold impersonal corporate entity. Make your posts and your page personal and friendly - you are trying to create a friendly and caring image after all - but be careful not to get too personal or too casual. Keep it clean and politically correct.
   
8. Facebook offers you a chunk of cyber space, use that to promote your business, website, posts, products or anything else related to your line of work. Facebook ads are easy to create and publish, and you decide how much money you want to spend on an ad campaign and for how long it should run.
9. Add a link to your company’s Facebook page on your personal Facebook profile to drive more traffic to it - now there’s an easy one :)
10. It helps to plan your next Facebook move in advance. Plan your posts, pictures and other material ahead of time - or at least create a general outline for what your Facebook page will look like for the week or month to come. It saves you the anxiety in the morning of wondering what to post and then ending up with a bunch of uncorrelated pieces of news or articles. Just like a regular marketing campaign, an online marketing campaign needs to be planned and coherent.
11. As well as using Facebook to advertise your website, use your website to advertise your Facebook page: embed Facebook widgets on your website and a link to your business’s Facebook page in your email signature.
12. Final piece of advice: do not get discouraged and give up too early. It takes time to become a popular brand on Facebook, and at first (especially if you are not a gigantic name in the market), you might see very little activity on your page. Stick with it. With the right amount of planning, perseverance and intelligent design you will reach your online marketing goals.

One other good strategy is to promote your Facebook page on Twitter. Stay tuned till next week for our next installment on social media marketing, in particular how to properly use Twitter to promote your business. See you all then!

Check out this awesome post on Copyblogger offering you an ultimate guide to using Facebook to promote your business!

You might also want to read this article on the importance of Facebook shares from Mashable.

Have other strategies for Facebook marketing? Head to the comments section; we’d love to hear from you!