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Should Your Salon/Spa/Beauty Store be Using Facebook Places?
Our answer is a resounding …
Why not? It’s easy to set up, and although most mobile check-in services are primarily populated by younger, web-savvy techies (only 1- 4% of the on-line adult population according has used the leading on-line check-in service), location-based marketing is still the hot ‘comer’ and early adopters will profit from the small effort it takes to set it up. Also, many of your clients/customers may well include these younger mobile-heads.
Also, don’t forget Google gets fed the ‘Local Business’ listings from Facebook.
First, You Decide
Important … You’ve already (hopefully) read our recent Facebook post on making sure your personal profile is protected from ‘friends’ randomly tagging you using Facebook ‘Places’.
On to getting your business ‘on the map’ and tied into your Facebook page.
How to set up your ‘Place’ on Facebook
You can only access ‘Places’ from a mobile interface. We suggest you use Facebook Touch access on your desktop for this part, it’s more convenient than the Facebook mobile interface on your phone (I hate little keyboards).
- Select ‘Places’.
- Search for your business name – Unless someone else has put their version of your business name there, you won’t find it.
- If it doesn’t exist, add it. – Type in the name you want your business to have. Another reason to do this now is to ensure your business name gets listed as you wish it to be, not as someone else adding your business name decided it for you (although you can make changes when you claim your business.)
- Put your business description info in at this point. – I still haven’t figured out how to go back and add or edit the description field so now is the time to do this. (If anyone reading does, please post your comment)
- Lastly, claim Your ‘Place’ on Facebook. – Log into Facebook on your computer. Search for the name of your business you entered in ‘Places’. Click on the Places selection. At the bottom of the screen, click on the question, “Is this your business?”.
- This part may surprise you. Apparently, if FB doesn’t find your listed phone number you have to send them an official doc for your business. The choices ar:
- Articles of Certificate of Incorporation (for a corporation)
- Certificate of Formation (for a partnership)
- Local Business License (issued by your city, county, or state)
- Better Business Bureau (BBB) Accreditation
For starters, Gowalla, Foursquare, Booyah (MyTown, Nightclub City), and Yelp will integrate with ‘Places’.
Went through the set up to claim my Place, and read the help section, but nowhere does it say if it will link to my business Page already on Facebook.
Hi Aura Mae,
In the official Facebook doc it says, “Please note that not all Pages and Places can be merged at this time. If you are not prompted to merge your Place and Page, please continue to manage each entity separately on Facebook.”
Facebook rolls our new features out in chunks. I guess it takes time to roll out to 500 million people 🙂
Also, I’m still not completely clear on what the final ‘merge’ of pages accomplishes. I do not want my entire ‘Esche & Alexander’ page to be listed as a “Local Business” because we are not a local business like a salon or spa, but at the same time I do like having the local page presence. What to do? What to do? 🙂 I’ll leave it as it is and watch and then share what I learn later.
I think it is good to use Facebook Places for Spa Business.