By Doreen Nicastro
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28 Jan, 2019
On January 24, 2019, a group of business owners from Boston gathered at Harvard I Labs in Brighton, MA for a presentation and discussion on Facebook business pages and Facebook/Instagram Ads. The session centered on how business owners can expand their brand, product and/or services using social media, email campaigns and website. Attendees are either women working for themselves, starting a new business, re-starting or re-inventing their careers. At the beginning of class three questions are posed: -what industry are you? -what brings you here? -what do you want to leave with? The answers help guide and facilitate the discussion. The content focuses on the needs of the group: business to business, business to consumer and consumer to consumer in the fields of health, education, hospitality, construction, home maintenance, technology and media and non-profit. Invariably people are seeking social media to drive action: increase customers, revenue, put people in seats, find applicants, etc. Many want to get their heads and business objectives around the concept of how to use social media. The basics are still important. What's the difference between a Facebook personal and business page? One can have a personal account and presence on Facebook and create another page. However, if you decide to start a business, become a celebrity or start a cause, you need to create a page which you use to promote that activity. If I don't personally want to be on Facebook can I have a business page? No. Most importantly, you do not want anyone: employee, friend, customer, setting up social media business pages for you with their personal credentials. Can I place Facebook/Instagram Ads? You need to have a Facebook personal account and business page. Decide if you want to set up a business Instagram account and connect it to Facebook. You will be able to create Ads that you can post to Facebook business page and or to Instagram. What's a hashtag? A word or phrase preceded by a hash sign (#), used on social media websites and applications, especially Twitter, to identify messages on a specific topic. What's the difference between Likes and Follows? Here's a great post that explains it much better than I will. Most attendees came for a better understanding about social media, how to use and engage on their Facebook business page. It was followed up with an email of resources and next step.