Facebook

Facebook still remains the undisputed king of the social media world.

By now, most people know this archetypal nerds-make-good story. Started during their college days at Harvard by Mark Zuckerberg and others, what became known as Facebook has grown at a phenomenal rate.

So much so that as I update this page in the autumn of 2011, Facebook has more than 800 million registered members. When I first wrote the page about 18 months ago, our minds boggled at the then seemingly huge membership of “only” 350 million !

So just what is Facebook ?

(If you’re an old hand at Facebook, you might want to skip to this bit where you can find out why you should be using Facebook for your business. Facebook beginners, read on !)

What is Facebook ? Well, to some extent, that depends on how you use it.

Profiles, Groups and Pages – Facebook for everybody !

When you sign up as an individual, you are creating a Profile and it’s as if you are getting your own mini-web site. Under your profile page, you have an area known as your wall. This is a place where you can post details of your news, ideas and activities. You can also include pictures and videos as well. Your friends can post here too, as well as add comments or indicate that they like what they find there.

These updates are a little like Twitter, but without the restriction of 140 characters that you have there. But unlike Twitter, your becoming friends with somebody on Facebook is something that you do on a mutual basis. In other words, you have to approve friend requests, unlike on Twitter, where anybody can just “follow” anybody else.

As I write this, Facebook are gradually rolling out a new feature for profiles called the Timeline, which allows you to create a personal history of your life online by sharing wall posts, pictures, videos, etc.

The other place you’ll spend a lot of time on is your “news feed” which represents the latest postings of your friends. If you’re already familiar with Twitter, it’s similar to the Twitter timeline.

You can also interact with your friends from here with “likes” and comments but most importantly by sharing content. These are the features that make content “go viral”, the effect that can be so devastating in terms of the spread of an idea or message.

Organisations are not allowed to have profiles, but they can have a Page devoted to their activities. They have most of the same basic features as individuals’ profiles, such as the wall, the news feed, and so on.

But pages do not have the two-way “friends” relationship. Instead, there is a one-way association known as the “like”. (This replaced the idea of being a fan of a page, which I always used think was a better name for the concept.)

When you “like” a page, that fact shows up in your own personal news feed, tying in to the viral effect. Importantly, Facebook have also extended the “like” concept to allow webmasters to add the Facebook Like button to regular sites.

“Likes” looks like this …

You’ll see “likes” popping up all over the place (including here !) and you can click on them in the same way that you can when you’re on Facebook itself. Once again, these likes feed the viral effect.

Pages also have full access to Facebook’s extensive technical infrastructure which allows pages to be very sophisticated in the way that they interact with visitors. These include Facebook Questions, Facebook Places and Facebook Deals and Facebook Messages.

At this point, it’s also worth mentioning Facebook Groups, but these are more likely to be of interest to informal groupings of people with a shared interest. They are also popular for certain types of organisations like charities.

So what ?

As a business owner, you may well ask. Too often these social media sites are just full of inane gossip, none of which relates to business.

And it’s a fair question. However, here are three very important reasons why you may want to have a Facebook presence.

It has more than 800 million members world-wide and this number is growing exponentially.
Advertising can be had at very advantageous rates.
You can target your ad’s audience very precisely.

Facebook for business: the Big Thing nobody’s telling you !

The last of these is the best ! For example, using Facebook you can target who receives your ad according to:

Country
City (depending on which country you are based in, you can also target your ads for surrounding areas within a specified radius)
Gender
Age
Birthday
Education
Marital/relationship status
By keyword, that is according to information provided in users’ profiles
Languages spoken
Workplace

So, for example, if you sell wedding dresses, would you be interested in advertising to women between the ages of, say, 21 and 40 that are engaged to be married and who live within a 20 mile radius of your shop ?

Or if you’re a solicitor in London that has a lot of French clients and you’re looking for new staff, would you like your ad to be seen by French-speaking graduates in law between the ages of 21 and 30 ?

Or if you have a sports shop and you’ve managed to get a large consignment of the latest must-have Manchester United home strip, would you want your ad to be seen by all those who include the words “Man Utd” in their profiles, no matter where they are in the world ?

This is the kind of incredible power that Facebook brings to those that use its ads.

If you want to know how we can help you to establish and grow your Facebook presence, call 0117 911 4187 now or send an email to info@italicmarketing.com.