Why Your Retail Stores MUST Have Local Facebook Pages
Why Do Your Retail Stores Need Local Facebook Pages?
Facebook pages for individual locations are no longer a nice to have. Over the past few years, improvements to local pages such as check-ins, appearance on maps in Facebook’s search engine, and location reviews put it on a level playing field with similar competitors such as Foursquare, Google, and Yelp. More than ever before, brands and small businesses depend on the power of customer opinion for success. The new changes to Facebook’s location pages make them even more vital to locations.
Here are a few things to think about when setting up Facebook for your business:
Page Activity
The social activity from your customers and the impact it has on reaching potential clients and giving a good impression is significantly increased with location pages.
- Post Engagement
- Check-Ins
- Reviews
Post Engagement
The likes, comments and shares on your business page posts will reach far more people than the reach Facebook gives your business page posts on their own. That is, significant organic reach is primarily achieved through the friends of engaged fans as they review the engagement in their timeline. Fans engage most with the locations they frequent over the national page.
Check-Ins
More people are connecting their offline activity to their personal online presence. Through check-ins, customers show their friends where they are and provide a word-of-mouth referral to others. Having a well-branded location page with current information and offers becomes essential when people are directing others to the local check-in page. If a page doesn’t exist when someone checks-in, a page is automatically created on Facebook. Do you have control of all your facebook pages?
Reviews
Whether they’ve had a positive or negative experience, customers are leaving reviews on your location pages. Whether the page has been claimed or not, customers are leaving reviews. Are you aware of, and responding to all your reviews?
Mobile Ready
On location pages you can easily see the address on a map, phone number, hours open, and other location information. If your local page has updated information, a potential customer can easily check it out and decide to visit.
Search Engine Optimization
Major search engines such as Google and Bing index Facebook location pages. That means, when people search locally, often the results include these pages. A national brand page isn’t likely to show up in a local search result. So, local pages provide potential customers another way to connect with the location and review it online.