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Berkshire Businesses Learn How To Utilize Facebook As Advertising Tool

Jim Levulis
/
WAMC

Representatives from about 200 western Massachusetts companies recently gathered in Pittsfield to get tips on how to use Facebook to boost business.

Facebook team members gave pointers on how small businesses can extend their reach and productivity by interacting with current customers and attracting new ones through the social media giant. Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Richard Neal kicked off the event.

“Facebook is an extraordinary achievement,” Neal said. "I think it’s a reminder of the success that you can have with a company that’s less than ten years old. It’s no longer building a company over course of the 40 or 50 years. What Mark Zuckerberg has done is nothing short of extraordinary and I think it’s a new tool in enhancing opportunities for business. It also rallies the argument that globalization is not going to go away.”

Bess Yount from Facebook’s small-medium business team travels around the country helping companies build advertising campaigns through social media.

“Most of you probably started using Facebook as people on Facebook and really there’s not that much of a difference between using Facebook as yourself and as your business,” Yount said. “It’s connecting with the people you care about, the customers that you care you about, telling stories and creating relationships.”

Yount says there are more than 25 million business pages on Facebook and almost 75 percent of internet users in the United States utilize the website. Yount says that usage is increasingly becoming mobile, as 21 percent of total time spent on a cell phone or tablet is taken up on Facebook or Instagram pages.

“You’d be amazed the amount of people that forget to have their store hours, their address,” Yount said. “These are all really important ways for people to actually know how to contact you, know how to come to your business or know when you’re open when they’re searching on their mobile to see what business, restaurant or gas station is nearby.”

Yount says a recent independent study of more than 6,000 consumers showed that 38 percent made an online or in-store purchase because of something they saw on Facebook. She says Facebook can help boost customer numbers for the kinds of businesses you might not necessarily go on social media to research, like plumbers.

“He’s not obviously posting pictures of the toilets he’s fixing because that’s probably not what people want to see in their news feed,” she said. “He’s posting really funny memes and pictures of all sorts of things, not necessarily just having to do with his business. But, he’s actually found that people love feeling like there’s a plumber in the area who they can laugh with and relate to. So when people need a plumber, which isn’t every day, normally they call him because he ends up feeling like someone that they know and are friends with.”

Three area organizations, Clean Image Labs, Soldier On and Berkshire Tiling, were each randomly selected for a $500 advertising credit to boost their outreach on Facebook. Mike Giulian started Berkshire Tiling in 2009. Being an independent tiling contractor with customers from Northampton to Albany, Giulian doesn’t have a physical business location, so the company’s Facebook page is essentially his storefront.

“Facebook is very convenient when I finish a job I can just take my phone out and take a picture of my work and put it right to my Facebook page,”  People can see it immediately and it’s really no effort or time on my part to put some free advertising out there.”

Jim is WAMC’s Associate News Director and hosts WAMC's flagship news programs: Midday Magazine, Northeast Report and Northeast Report Late Edition. Email: jlevulis@wamc.org
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