I have many friends that own small businesses in Phuket Thailand where I live most of the year.  Many of them use facebook but more on a personal level.

  Our magazine is about life here in SE Asia and is NOT a marketing Blog.   Large and medium companies have the money to hire a marketing company or pay for online marketing services like Best E-motion which is a very good company and does their job great and we recommend them!   If you are like me POOR  haha  you do the research and do it yourself.  This what my advice is about. FREE

Phuket, where many of my friends are is a tourist destination and most of their business is the tourist business, Restaurants, Bars, Massage ( not sex), Car/motorbike  rentals, etc.  I believe what is not understood is that tourist coming here will book  “online” a hotel, tour guides, and research the area they are going online thru google searches, YouTube, Facebook, google maps, and others.  If I am traveling to Phuket Thailand, after researching online thru travel blogs example is TripAdvisor etc, I book a hotel with Booking.com say in Rawai which is in the southern tip of Phuket Island.  Now I need a motorbike or want to rent a car so I look online for a place in Rawai like Tip Car and Motorbike Rental.  Tourist may also ask is it legal? advice about driving in Thailand. All of this online!

I am going by my own experience and I am NOT an expert!  So How did I find the information and the Experts!  OnLine 

Facebook

source is Hootsuite

Facebook Page vs Facebook Profile— Which one should I use for business?

This question is an easy one to answer because using a Facebook Profile for business is a violation of Facebook’s Terms of Service. If you use your profile to share content for profit or not using an individual’s name, Facebook can delete it. However, you do need a Facebook Profile in order to create a Facebook Page, or you can convert your existing Profile to a Page.

Why should I use a Facebook Page for business?

Besides violating Facebook’s Terms of Services, small businesses without a Facebook Page face serious disadvantages. Having no page can create the perception that your business is out of touch with technology and social media users. It can raise questions about the progression of your business as a whole and significantly reduce customer trust.

Facebook pages, unlike Facebook profiles, allow small businesses to quickly build a following without any limitations. Profiles force you to send a friend request before you can make connection, which can be problematic as people are hesitant to hit ‘accept’ if they don’t already know you. Pages, on the other hand, only require a “like” to start that relationship with a fan, prospect or client.

Being able to track and measure results is another reason why you should use a Facebook Page for business. Facebook Insights allow you to track the positive impact and results of your social media efforts. To improve those results, a Page also allows you to take advantage of Facebook Ads and launch contests. Think of your Page as a microsite that you can use for commercial purposes and to directly engage with customers.

One of the things I notice many are using a personal page for business or have a business page that is not used.  On a Business page you can have a map which is useful for a tourist but need to make sure the map shows your location correctly!

Your own website

and it can be free!  I use WordPress

but others you can find.  Wordpress has free templets that will get you started and almost as easy as Facebook to get started.

source is Smarta

Why you need a website

• If you get it right, your website will be the best tool you have for promoting your business. Your website will essentially become an online shop-window, accessible to customers all over the world, which means the better it looks and more and up-to-date it is, the better impression it will make on consumers.
• Whether it’s three o’clock in the morning or Christmas day, the internet never closes – which means your business is open all the time, without any extra effort from you. If you choose to have an online store, your customers will be able to dictate when they want to buy, rather than limiting themselves to your opening times.
• If you are locally based, having a web presence will open your business up to new markets outside your local area, giving people from across the world the chance to browse your products or services.
• A well-designed website will make your business appear more professional. In fact, a well-considered website can fool customers into thinking your business is larger than it is and could even level the playing-field between your business and its more established competitors.
• If you’re starting a business on a shoestring, the costs of putting together a website will be cheaper than buying or renting premises, and could attract business from further afield than a high-street based business would.
• Feedback is often a difficult thing to attain and more often than not, feedback on your business will be limited to the negative. The internet allows you to enter into a dialogue with your customers, though: use surveys, questionnaires and feedback forms on your website to do market research and find out exactly what your customers’ expectations are.

Google Maps

Using a google map is free!  I think as a business it is crazy not to add a map to your FB or website.  That is how a tourist will find you!  Now there can be a problem as google does not have every business located on their maps or sometimes the location can be wrong.  So be careful when using a map.  If you find that your location is not pinned on google you ask them to add or correct.  What I have done if the location I am searching is not pinned, I will copy the map where I have located the business or address and mark it using my app Skitch 

YouTube

YouTube is now the second most used search site.  Tourist use it to learn, places too see  etc

example a tourist is interested in Kata beach here in Phuket  or heard about a bar in Rawai called the Sunshine Bar

Google+1

I came to Google+1 late but it has paid off for us and again free to use and the best reason Because everything you post on G+ is immediately indexed by Google.

Source postcron 

In this post, we’ll let you know which features make this social network so great, where it’s potential comes from, and why your brand needs to be part of Google+ NOW. And last but not least, we’ll show you exactly how to do it.

Before officially starting this article, we wanna set two things straight (even though they might seem obvious), as the saying goes “common sense is the least common of all senses”.

• Google Plus isn’t Facebook. It’s not Twitter either.

So, what do we mean by that?

Google Plus isn’t just Facebook or Twitter’s “competition”, nor was it created so that Google wouldn’t “fall behind”. And it’s by no means trying to replace either of these social networks. G+ is a completely different (and awesome) experience. It’s part of a bigger plan launched by Google, in order to evolve the way we relate to one another, how we communicate with the world and with our OWN personal world. That’s why it’s SO exciting to have the chance to participate and do something about it before it’s all over and stops being news.

• Google Plus and the “ghost town” myth.

Many of you out there probably already have a G+ profile, but when surfing through it you get the feeling that “nothing’s happening” or that “no one you know is there”. This feeling makes sense because Google Plus wasn’t created specifically so you can “spy” on and find out about the life of your long-lost love or look at pictures of your highschool classmates or take a look at how your niece’s birthday party turned out. On the contrary. 

WHY USE GOOGLE PLUS: 10 IMPLACABLE REASONS.

1- G+ isn’t a space for temporary, limited, 140 characters updates like on Twitter. And its not for meeting up with people like on Facebook. What makes it different is that Google Plus is promoted by the biggest technology platform on the planet. And that, my friends, should be taken advantage of, because what happens on G+, you know will be prioritized by Google.

2- Because in only a year and a half it grew exponentially and established itself as the second biggest social network in the world. And guess what? You have the chance to be part of this new experience, one which sooner or later EVERYBODY will be part of. Remember Twitter’s story? At the beginning no one was sure about how to use it or why to use it. But, the brands that got there first got the best part of the deal.

3- Because everything you post on G+ is immediately indexed by Google. Thus, influencing search engine results positively. We know this is huge for companies and professionals, because the websites that appear on the first page of Google, and especially in the first few positions, get 54.8% of all clicks from users, according to a study by Optify.

4. Because entering the world of Google Plus means having a great deal of resources in one single place: Hangouts, Communities, Youtube, Google, Gmail, Google Maps and other dozens of products. Each of these was created to benefit and optimize your marketing strategy and take your brand even further.

Twitter

I have use twitter for several years now and after setting up my first web site Jackie littletaylor photography and a business Fb page I was not getting much traffic.  It is hard to sell Fine Art Photography so need all the help I could get.  Twitter was the answer to increasing my traffic/visits to my web site.  Again Twitter is free!

I would like to add one last bit of advice I have learned. DO NOT BUY LIKES for Twitter or your Facebook page.  The likes are just a like and will not support or follow your business!!!!