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Facebook for Business Use

By Jo Shaer

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 14Feb2012 Word count: 736 Viewed: 99 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Research has shown that the average amount of time spent on Facebook is 33 mins, compared to 13 minutes on Google and 20 minutes on YouTube so it's not surprising that entrepreneurs want to tap into the opportunities offered by Facebook for business use.

Over half of the 800m users of Facebook log in every day with a high percentage starting the day to see what's going on. To hear about news events and to chat with their friends. It's replacing newspaper and the radio and the telephone.

So, where is Facebook heading? Marketplace opportunities are definitely coming to Facebook within the next year or two with more and more people using it as their ecommerce platform.

But not many marketers use Facebook successfully because of what is seen as the high cost and ineffectiveness of ads. The problem is that they use the wrong types of ads because they don't understand how to get into the right mindset for Facebook for business use.

We see this over and over again with people asking questions about personal logins vs business logins - people don't want to have their business mixed with their personal profile, without realising that Facebook has it set up so business use is separate from personal log in.

Although you have the same log in, when you're at your page, you are actually interacting as the admin of your page - it doesn't show you as you but as the admin so no risk of personal stuff getting mixed in. Status updates for pages do not show on personal profile and people cannot access any business pages from personal profile unless you like your own page - so there is no personal connection between you and your page.

How can businesses use Facebook as part of their social media marketing strategy?

1. It's a traffic generation method regardless of the type of business you're running. It can be used to drive traffic to your websites or affiliate links

2. You can build a list if you have an opt-in form on your Welcome page. Build a blog follwoing

3. Offline marketing - it's great for communication of events. Restaurants and hair salons can let their clients know what's going on with promotions and coupons.

4. Branding - you can use your Page to get your business name out there, especially as the domain authority of Facebook can help your Page to rank higher than your website for particularly competitive keywords.

5. Groups - set up a community for people to talk about a similar niche

6. Build a blog following

Facebook Advertising for Business

There are two types of advertising on Facebook - Ads and Sponsored Stories.

The huge amount of information that Facebook retains about its users allows advertisers to target the demographic rather than just keywords - location, gender, age, educational level. Demographic targeting is what makes Facebook powerful - you can literally handpick the perfect people for your product/service. The tighter the target demographic, the better the response and the more people are going to like your page.

They're easy to use/create and cheap. Bid prices on a CPC basis will be above $1/click but you don't end up paying that. Once you get going and get people responding the ads will become much cheaper. If you bid for that high amount, if you get a good response by clicking and liking, the ad cost will decrease. Often down to 50c/click in 24 hours.

It's a good idea to split test and get the ads effective and the cost will go down because the ads are targeted.

Sponsored stories allow you to target the friends of people who have already liked your Page.

Facebook is a different marketing strategy - friendly and social, not products and product numbers. If you use your status updates to talk about niche topics, you can suggest products later. It's a conversation not a send out of your link to the website/affiliate link.

With Facebook for business use, you should use your Page to build relationships and be a friend not a marketer.

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