I would think that most of us in the kitchen business would agree that Facebook is a good marketing tool. It's easy, low cost and you can see at a glance how many people are engaged on your content.
I suppose easy is a relative term.
It's easy for me after I got my daughter to set it up and teach me how.
I now maintain five Facebook sites, in about 45 minutes per week, typically about 10 to 15 minutes per sitting.
On the personal side, I typically check Facebook on my home PC, and normally my wife has been on before me. She asks me all the time why I always scroll through her news feed before logging onto my own Facebook?
“You checking up on me?"
My reply: "I check yours, it's more interesting and besides, I've got no friends."
On the serious side, I actually don’t have as many friends and my site is not as active as hers.
For the Avondale Kitchens site, it was a bit tricky to figure out what our followers really wanted. After about two years, I think I have finally found a winning combination. They seem to love before and afters with three or more photos on the same subject in one posting.
I tried a fancy one page with before and after photos, but it took far too long to process without great results. It is possible that they could or were seeing it without opening it up, therefore I was not getting tracking numbers. That's a bit of what I know now and that will certainly change very quickly.
A quick tip you may not know about is that it is very easy to put your posting on a time delay. Just before posting, check the lower left corner. With that you can load up postings for the next few days or weeks. It is also a great way to have your posting coincide with your other marketing projects such as magazine, newspaper, radio or company events or sales.
The two latest Facebook sites that are now up and running are the Canadian Kitchen Cabinet Association and CKCA Manufacturers.
Suppliers, dealers and manufactures can get involved and post to both.
The Canadian Kitchen Cabinet Association Facebook page is for consumers or kitchen buyer content. The Facebook page CKCA Manufacturers, is more of a CKCA industry forum or chat line.
Current example of content on this site is that we are keeping everyone updated on the upcoming Jan 2015 CKCA National Forum in Las Vegas, that is tied in with KBIS & Builders show. Of course we hope to see you all there so mark your calendars.
Hopefully there will be info on both sites that you will find interesting and you may find it feasible to post to and share some of the content back to your personal or business sites.
Sorry to plug Facebook, but if your business is not using Facebook, you should at least check it out to see if it would work for you. At Avondale it does work very well.
On a final note, if you are on Facebook and have no friends you can always log into the CKCA Manufacturers site.
Jim Lawrence is the owner of Avondale Kitchens in Jacksonville, N.B. and president of the Canadian Kitchen Cabinet Association. He can be reached at: Jim@AvondaleKitchens.com
