Facebook should take up a whole book in itself but I will try and give a brief overview of how the online phenomenon that is Facebook works. The essence of Facebook is connecting your offline world online. You can add your immediate group of friends and discover that you know their friends so invite them to join you on their network and also search via names for friends you have lost touch with. With Facebook you can then share content, post status updates about how you are feeling, write on each other’s walls, post photo’s in albums and tag those who appear on them which will then appear in theirs and their friends feed, you can also become a fan of or “like” brands, TV shows, music bands as well as create groups. The power of social media via the use of Facebook is massive and should not be overlooked in an online marketing strategy.

You may think that this is all for the user but with the use of Facebook advertising which makes use of person information that users give away in their profile makes Facebook advertising very targeted towards the intended audience, a quick example of this would be if a user has in their profile that they are engaged, a local advertising strategy for a wedding cake service would be ideal. This type of targeted advertising does cost, however for those that are willing to put a little effort in with their strategy they should consider starting a “page” for their business, once you have a page users can then become a fan/like your page and when they do this all of their status updates will appear in their feed – this means you can continually market to them. A word of warning though: try and engage with them before selling to them.

Twitter should be explained in 140 characters. It is a social network to get “short, timely messages from a user”. This is less like a social network where you take your offline world online in that people often have followers and follow people based upon interests, and most of these people have probably never met offline. The concept of twitter is tweeting short messages to your followers who have elected to get your updates and in turn you can follow other’s to get their updates. For businesses, if they can attract followers by posting exclusive deals and information about their stores they have a free medium in which to market. Once you have followers all of your updates will appear in their feed – this means you can continually market to them. A word of warning though: try and engage with them before selling to them.

LinkedIn is the original business social network. Through the use of connections, users can connect with those who have done business with before, those you have worked with at different jobs and build an online network of people in the business community. Again, you can join groups to further connect your network, ask for reference requests as well as search your list of contacts to find someone who can help you with. For help with Online Marketing See marketingontheinternet.