What promotions would you advise for a professional services B2B Facebook page?

I want to be honest here, it is harder to engage people on a B2B Facebook page than on a B2C page. Having said that, it is not impossible.

In terms of promotions on Facebook you need to make sure that you are aware of the Facebook promotional guidelines. Basically they say that you can’t run a competition on your page wall. This means that you can’t add a post saying “To win X tell me in 25 words or less in the comments why you want to win it”, or something to that effect. You will see hundreds of companies still doing this on their Facebook page, but if Facebook sees you doing it they will shut you down – you need to know that!

The way that Facebook want you to run competitions/promotions is using the FMBL tab, which is basically a tab that uses HTML (the same as websites) to allow you to add images, text and video. You can run your competition here and drive people to your website, or to email you to enter.

In regards to promotions, other than competitions, you want to work out what is it that your audience want? Why do they visit your page? What’s in it for them? Here are some examples of promotions that can work really well:

• Like only content such as free eBook giveaways, eg if you like the page you can download a free eBook.
• Incentives such as when we reach X number of likers I will release a free how to guide on X.
• Daily/weekly tips on your specialty.
• Checklists that are available for download (tip: use the PDF application) that help people avoid problems.
• Run a promotion whereby when your likers promote the page to friends and they like the page, that person gets a reward.

Promotions and competitions on your Facebook page should be looked at the same way they are for your other marketing promotions and competitions. Don’t just do something on a whim, think it through, decide if it fits with your marketing objectives and if it will be useful to your audience. If all else fails you can always ask your page likers what they would like to see, or win!

If you need more ideas, there are industry reviews every week on my website, if I haven’t reviewed your industry let me know and I will.

Lara Solomon is the founder of Mocks, mobile phone socks www.MyMocks.com, founder of Social Rabbit – your guide in the world of social media www.Facebook.com/SocialRabbit and author of ‘Brand New Day – the Highs & Lows of Starting a Small Business’. Lara’s business LaRoo was the winner of the NSW Telstra Micro-Business Award in 2008.