Facebook Business Basics (Lesson 1): Facebook Status Updates and How They Work So That You Can Better Understand How to Use Them to Your Advantage

Welcome to the first lesson in the Facebook Business Basics Crash Course. Over the next few weekly posts you will receive several lessons that will help you learn a few basic ways that you can build your business and increase your profits with Facebook .

In this first lesson let’s talk a little about Facebook status updates and how they work so that you can better understand how to use Facebook to your advantage.

Because there are so many social network terms out there, let’s start this lesson by distinguishing early on what a Facebook status actually is. A Facebook status is a post that appears for your contacts to read. Whereas before, Facebook statuses were immediately broadcast for everyone, now there are plenty of privacy settings to protect the person by letting them choose who can actually read their messages.

You can also interact through your Facebook status. Friends and other contacts are allowed to comment on the Facebook status or simply Like the status. Recently, Facebook has added a tagging feature to Facebook statuses. Put @ in the beginning and you are allowed to tag as many as 6 people in a post.  Friends and contacts that are tagged will be notified in the same way that they are also notified when somebody else or the status owner has replied a status he  commented on.

How are Facebook statuses important for professionals, you may ask?

Well, Facebook statuses are what many consider as the very essence of Facebook. Here, customers, potential customers and other interested parties can interact on a particular piece of information in a casual manner that is way more convenient and conversational than email or even Twitter actually will.

With Facebook statuses also, almost everyone can join in the conversation (that is if you want them to) which makes for a casual promotion of your product, service or company. The Facebook status is a powerful part of using Facebook for your business. The number of Likes and comments for every Facebook status will help your page climb up in its search engine position.

Facebook statuses can also help you with branding efforts. For your Facebook marketing to be successful it is important that you monitor your page carefully, that you keep your status posts enthusiastic and professional at the same time.

While it’s tempting to place something instantly catching, hilarious or even shocking, you need to ask yourself first whether this will help the business reputation in the long run or will it just server as temporary entertainment?

It is important to optimize Facebook statuses in order to make them more searchable for potential customers. A good feature to use is Facebook status tagging. What makes this so advantageous for business owners is that when you tag affiliated companies in the post, it will also appear on their page. Therefore exposing your company to customers who may be looking at a related site. You can also do this with community pages. When you tag a community page, you will gain access to millions of potential customers who may have the same interests as your business.

While it’s important to organize your Facebook status updates, it isn’t recommended that you leave all the work to organizing sites like Hootsuite. Checking through a Profile or Fan Page that are dominated by RSS Feeds is a turnoff for most potential customers. Clients want to feel like they’re interacting with a real person in the company, so be mindful of interaction.

We have a lot to go over in the next few days if you want to learn how to use Facebook for your business, so make sure you look for your next lesson soon. We will be talking about how you can use Facebook to attract new customers.