Use Facebook for Your Online Success
From its humble beginnings as a communication tool for friends to interact, Facebook has grown to become one of the largest social sites on the internet. More and more people are joining the social media giant and so Facebook has enormous customer potential if you want to fire up your online business success!
Do you need convincing about why it is time to promote your business on Facebook? Here are the latest Facebook statistics:
- As of 2010, there are more than 500 million active Facebook users
- 50% of these active users log on to Facebook in any given day
- An average user has 130 friends
- People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
- An average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
- About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States (which translates to a global market)
What do all these mean to you?
One of the biggest advantages of creating a business online is that the internet has vast market potential. Thanks to social networking sites like Facebook your business gets the opportunity to be promoted on a global market. With this site having more than 500 million users, your business can never go wrong on Facebook.
Get started!
The first thing you have to do is to create a Facebook account. Once you have your own personal account, you can create a Facebook Fan page for your online business. People can simply “like” the page and voila! You are now ready to promote your product or service on Facebook.
Facebook is very easy use so even if you’re new to it, I’m sure you will easily learn all its features quickly. You can add your company logo and customize your page. You can add photos, some basic information about your online business and even put a link to your online business website. You can keep your fan page simple or add many features to it. If you aren’t confident setting up your own fan page it is not expensive to get an expert in FBML to develop a fan page that will look very professional and help to promote your business. Content is essential, so consider the content that you will add to appeal to your target customers. Do not be afraid to experiment with all the options that Facebook offers.
Promote your business fan page
The first thing that you have to do once you have already created your page is to get more people to “like” your product or service. I suggest inviting all your Facebook friends to “like” your fan page. Once you have an established a fan base, you can now start to actively promote your online business. Create status updates regularly. Add videos and interesting links to your page. The key to successfully promoting your online business on Facebook is to add quality and interesting contents to your fan page. You can also post news and blogs related to your business, offer deals, special discounts and create contests for your members to join.
Another great thing about having a Facebook fan page is you can promote interaction among members by creating polls related to your product or service, encouraging members to post fan photos in relation to your page, creating events and so much more. Facebook is a social community so make the most out of it. Always remember to give your members reasons to come back to your page!
A Few Words of Caution
Facebook was created for the purpose of social interaction. Creating a Facebook account to promote your business is strongly discouraged. Facebook is strict about creating personal profiles for businesses and is serious in preventing spam. They can detect when the Facebook account you created is not under a real person’s account and can delete it. Just recently, Facebook launched a new feature in which a pop-up statement which says, “If you send a friend request to a stranger, it will be considered spam and your friend request will be blocked temporarily,” appears after making friend requests to people you do not know. Facebook is a good place to promote your business but be extra cautious because they are pretty serious about their terms and conditions.
Want to have the total Facebook experience for your business? Seek help! Facebook is one of the most user-friendly sites on the web but to maximize your opportunity of promoting your virtual business, I strongly suggest learning its platform and all Facebook marketing techniques. It helps if you belong to an online community of experts who provide personalized coaching and regular trainings in social media marketing.