Last month we kicked off our series on the business application of social media tools by giving a brief overview of the development of these tools over the last decade. This month we’ll be focusing on the dominant social media tool at the moment – Facebook – and the ways in which your business can utilize it.
There are two main ways that your business can utilize Facebook as part of your overall marketing efforts: creating and maintaining a Facebook page for your business, or advertising on Facebook.
FACEBOOK PAGES:
Facebook is predominantly made of of two types of content: profiles and pages. Profiles are the accounts that individuals set up for themselves. Usually when people say they’re “on Facebook,” they mean that they have a Facebook profile for themselves. Pages, on the other hand, are designed for businesses and organizations to use, rather than individuals. Whereas Facebook profiles are designed to help people get in touch and communicate with their friends and family, Facebook pages are designed around organizations connecting and communicating with their target audience.
When you set up a Facebook page for your business, it will initially appear very similar to a profile – it will have the same layout and the content such as a Wall to write on, a Photo gallery and an Info tab. But there are several differences between the two. In Facebook profiles, you build a list of friends to socialize with, whereas in Facebook Pages, you build a list of fans to communicate with. In Facebook profiles, for privacy reasons you have to manually approve any friend requests that others send you, whereas on Facebook pages, anybody can become a fan of your page without any approval needed. Facebook pages can also send mass messages to everyone who is a fan, whereas Facebook profiles are limited to sending messages to 20 people or less at one time. But one of the most important differences is that, on Facebook pages, you can build custom page content, layout and even whole applications, whereas on Facebook profiles you cannot. This customization opens up a whole world of marketing activities. You can run contests on your Facebook page, where people can enter their contact information for a chance to win prizes. You can have special “fan-only” coupons and discounts – your page visitors have to become fans of your company before they can access them. You can build custom tabs and layouts, designed to match your company’s branding, showing off your products and services. You can run surveys to get feedback from your audience about your organization, or have a contest for user-generated content, with all your fans voting on their favorite. Companies are coming up with new ways to interact with their audiences through Facebook every day, and the sky’s the limit on what can be done.
ADVERTISING ON FACEBOOK:
In addition to creating custom Facebook pages, the other way companies and organizations can utilize Facebook is through advertising. One of the key innovations of Facebook’s advertising platform is that it allows you to micro-target your advertising to the exact demographics that you’re looking for, based on the information that its users have listed in their profiles. For instance, a company that sells superhero action figure toys could target only boys aged 9-14 interested in cartoons or science fiction. Or a baby accessory company could target only people aged 20-35 who have children. One of the most interesting targeting methods is to target only the friends of your Facebook Page fans; when your ad is displayed to those people, it will tell show their friends’ endorsement: “(Friend’s name) likes this.” This level of micro-targeting and ad customization is simply not possible through other forms of internet advertising such as Google search ads or regular website banner ads, in addition to being impossible through traditional advertising mediums such as print ads or television ads.
These are just some of the ways in which you can use Facebook to connect with your business’ target audience, but hopefully these ideas have given you some good starting tips. Remember, every company and organization is different, so the best thing to do is to set up an account, try out some different ideas, and see what works best for you and your audience.
Social Media For Business - Facebook
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