Facebook never ceases to build new features and also improve existing ones that are already in place to make the top social media platform better. On personal Facebook pages, features like Nearby Friends – which helps you determine which of your friends are nearby that way you can meet up with them for lunch or a movie, A Look Back which tells you the highlights of your Facebook experiences since you joined, Trending which tells you the relevant stories worldwide by which you can participate in, and so many other features that makes the daily 1.01 billion users sign in and use the platform.

In the business world, Facebook is unanimously the top marketing and advertising platform too and looking at all the statistics, there’s no reason to doubt its supremacy this year either. That could be the reason why Facebook is emerging as a customer service tool for businesses and a platform for social commerce too. What changes do we expect this year? How do your Orange County business plan to make use of it?

Facebook Messenger

Communication with your customers is important, and with e-commerce sites, doubly so as a great service prompts buyers to buy and spend more. In the next couple (or so) months, we are expecting to see Business on Messenger (although the existing messenger service is still available now) which will let you communicate with your e-commerce customers. Some e-commerce developers are already creating apps that will let you interact with your customers via Facebook.

Local Business Directory

The local business directory will allow customers to view businesses that have the best reviews or ratings in Facebook thus giving more opportunities to businesses and at the same time making the platform more useful to users. The difference with Yelp? You’ll see reviews written by friends and friends of friends instead of ratings and reviews uploaded by strangers.

What do this mean for Your Business?

In order to drive a better customer service and encourage friends on your Facebook business page to write a review for your business, owners are encouraged to:

• Answer messages and respond to questions in a timely manner. When your business page has a repsonse rate of 90% and a response time of 5 minutes, facebook will award your page with “the very responsive to messages” badge.
• Request testimonials and reviews from your clients who happen to be your friends on Facebook too.

Remember that social is the new SEO  and the better your customer service or engagement is on this social media platform, the more ‘Likes’ you’ll get, the more followers you’ll acquire which will increase your organic search ranking here in Orange County and your post reach too.

Need help with your e-commerce social media accounts? Call us at (949) 800-6990 and receive free online reports for your Orange County business.