Here's how to use Facebook page to your advantage

"Brands with local businesses: Learn the key methods of driving sales through Facebook and understand how fans really work to increase your revenue."

Nearly all Singaporean businesses have been given the business mandate: create a business page on Facebook. But for a brand with local outlets (let's say retailers or perhaps a restaurant chain) doing so is a bit trickier than the mom and pop shop. In fact, if you don't follow certain principles the impact to your sales will be paramount.

So, what does a company with both a well-known brand and lots of local businesses do? Follow these steps to be on the road to happy fan and customer building!

Step 1: Remember the 40:1 rule. For a brand that has local businesses, the last thing you want to do is create one single business Facebook page. And the reason is simple. At the end of the day, the underlying theme of Facebook and using a social internet is that the closer a company is in proximity (the social circle) to its customer base, the better.

In fact, so much better that 1 fan of a local business brand page has the same revenue impact than having 40 FANS on a singular corporate brand Facebook page! If you do the math, a brand with 100 local outlets each running local facebook pages that each have 400 fans (100 business Facebook Pages x 400 fans on each page = 40,000 fans) is EQUAL to the same brand running only ONE Facebook corporate brand page and needing to amass 1.6 MILLION FANS!

So, which is easier? Building and engaging with 400 fans on 100 pages or building 1.6 million fans and trying to engage...

Step 2: Interactive Apps are a MUST on your Facebook business page. Again, the reason is simple. Apps are your constant reminder on a Facebook business page that engage with a fan... EVEN BEFORE they get to the content section of your Facebook business page.

If you look closely, the app section of a Facebook business page sits ABOVE the web fold. All the story content sits BELOW the web fold. So make sure to have the hardest hitting apps running on your page as these will prove to be extremely useful when it comes time to create memory touch points for sales.

Step 3: Now that you have local business Facebook pages, learn how content versus paid content works. Facebook is built around circles sharing content with each other. To make the most of this, posting stories every other day is ideal to getting your message to your fans who then can also chat and share it with their friends. The problem? These posts actually don't hit 100% of your fan's newsfeed or ticker.

In fact only 16% do hit their feed. And this number goes down significantly if you are not running a local Facebook page (can be as low as 5%!).

Ways to boost that number: Include photos and links to your stories. Create milestone stories. Feature and pin stories onto your timeline.

Once you've done those initial things start running Facebook ads. If you are running local Facebook business pages, the cost per click will actually be LESS than those running a singular corporate brand page. Why? Again, it is about proximity. Because the page is already targeted, your ad cost per click will be reduced.

At the end of the day, the business winners on Facebook will heavily rest on brands with local outlets... but only if they focus on building their local network and not relying on a single corporate page to do the work. 

Carmen Benitez, is the founder and Managing Director of Fetch Plus, a preeminent global software technology company specializing in building SaaS social media and mobile technology for brands and their local businesses worldwide. Her company's newest technology FetchFans a social media design platform is used by major global brands and media companies worldwide.