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Facebook is known for being a social network – a place where you can spend hours and hours of precious time that you’ll never get back. If you’re looking for a way to be more productive with that time, how about using Facebook for your business?

advertising

The most obvious approach, of course, is to advertise on its pages. Facebook allows you to target your audience using its demographic and psychographic filters. You pay per click or view and set a daily budget for your advertising expense.  Also, for a fraction of the cost of traditional media, you can launch a new product or drive traffic to your Facebook page, brick and mortar store, or website. Example: Dunkin’ Donuts recently asked its fans to take a picture of themselves drinking a “Coolata” – offering prizes for the winners.  Fans had to post the picture on the Dunkin’ Donuts page and use it as their profile picture – thereby proclaiming their Coolata preference to all of their friends.

create a Facebook page for your business

If you don’t have the dollars to give away fabulous prizes, you can still use Facebook as a way to listen, through comments and discussions, to what your customers are saying. Not to mention the fact that Facebook is handy as a word-of-mouth marketing tool – try creating a page for your business and let your Facebook friends know about it. Any time one of them becomes a fan, it gets posted on their page – letting all of their friends know about you. You can also create events (perhaps a sale at your store or website?) and invite people to them. Again, any time someone accepts or puts it on their calendar, you get the chance to pique their friends’ interest.  Anyone who sells a product or offers a service that benefits from the recommendation of one of their clients can find a use for a Facebook page. Even non-profits can use this to their advantage. Check out this Facebook page done for a local private school (you’ll need to sign up or be an existing Facebook user to see this one).  This page provides basic info about the school, along with pictures and updates to its fans. If a reader is a parent looking for a school for their child, the extra (and up-to-the-minute) information the school provides may help them with their community outreach and give them a leg up in the admissions race.

take the personal approach

You can also take a more personal approach and think of Facebook as a conversation starter. Your profile is always there and people who want to know what you do can find out any time (not all of your friends know what you do, right?).  Also, as Facebook’s audience gets older you may find that you’re reconnecting with more of your college and high school friends, many of whom will be curious to know what you’re up to now. An updated professional profile and links to your company’s website will give them that info without you having to be the annoying salesman who only talks about work in their status updates: “…going to write an insurance policy today…”

At this level, the theory is that people like to do business with their friends and with friends of their friends – it’s like meeting business prospects at a barbecue.  The downside of using the personal approach (as opposed to a separate page for your business) is that these new “friends” have access to your personal life – to the extent that you’re willing to post it on facebook for all the world to see.

Tags: facebook, marketing, social media, word of mouth

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 at 12:04 pm and is filed under marketing, social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.