by Mary Killelea, July 1, 2009
Here are some facebook marketing tips, guidelines and facebook facts that I share with my clients:
(1) Create a profile -People cannot befriend someone who doesn’t have a profile. Create a profile today and use your own photo and be real. You can create multiple levels of privacy restrictions on your information. Facebook facilitates social networking because it enables you to share who you are and what you like. It is not the place for blatant advertising.
Facebook enables you to create friends with whom you can share as much as you want through your posts, profile, applications and RSS feeds. You get to accept or reject friend requests. Friends enable you to share more about what you are doing and what you are interested in. You can develop strong support relationships and even joint ventures through your friends. You will be amazed with the people you find or who find you.
Facebook only allows you one profile but you can create as many business pages as you like. So I encourge you to create a business page which essentially a separate profile for your business. But pages allow you more flexibility for marketing masses of people vs. personal profiles. I like to have a main profile I tend to keep more personal and friend oriented and then on my business page I put links to articles that I’ve written, you can add your LinkedIn profile, and links to any articles about you. Talk about successes and specific goals.
There are over 2,000 Facebook applications that enable you to share information, have fun and learn about other people’s likes and dislikes. Choosing the right applications can have a BIG impact on your effectiveness in marketing on Facebook.
(2) Utilize your status update - This is a short line keep it 141 characters or smaller to state what you are doing but be specific and smart about your status update. You could say “I’m shopping” << but that’s boring & no-one will care. or you could say “I’m buying the new flip camera to capture tonight’s Smart Event www.smartevent.com“ Now that’s interesting and I may just click on the event and bingo you have just marketed without being a pitch man! I recommend you update your status 1-2 times a day.
(3) Go thru the search feature and find personal friends and invite them to be your friends. Accept friend invitations. If your goal is to strictly use Facebook as a marketing avenue accept all friends but just don’t reveal personal info. Stick to surface stuff about you and keep it focused on what you can contribute to the social network thru your experience and expertise.
(4) Join a Facebook Group
You can create or join groups on Facebook and share information with others. After you join a group, you can text-message other members, send them emails, comment on their profiles or contact them. You’d be surprised at the range of types of groups there are.
(5) Buy Advertising Space
- You can buy an ad on Facebook. It’s called Facebook Flyers Basic so you can create banner-like advertising on networks. This is a great way to target advertising to a specific demographic.
- Facebook also has Flyers Pro — a cost-per-click advertising program that’s triggered by keyword searches (like Google AdWords). The article has more in-depth tips on how to do this and I’d be interested if anyone reading this has tried either advertising method.
On your business Page (business profile)
- Host an event and post it — a promotion or event you have coming up.
- Create a contest - your fans become a great test market for your products.
- Ask for Input from fans - ASK them for their opinions. People love to be included!!
- Share business videos or product pictures
- Post pictures -These could include candid shots of products, people, or other silly related items. If Facebook users are in these photos, either they or their friends can tag them, and these tags can show up on the news feed.
- Post news articles -Offbeat news involving a person or organization is a great item to share.
- Write a note - make yourself come across sincere, and contribute worthwhile information. Maybe share something that happened in your business day that you found frustrating, or rewarding the point is it’s unique and you are sharing this with others.
Now a lot of these principals apply for marketing on other social media sites as well.
Two important things to get out of this article:
- Be real, be human, and make your contributions worthwhile and people will follow you and your posts will begin to have power.
- Stay focused. Facebook can be a big time suck if you allow it to be. Train yourself to check it twice daily once in the morning and once in the evening. Respond to others quickly and move on. Do not let it distract you from your daily objectives. Participate & Contribute and move on.
As of today July 1st, 2009 Statistics for Facebook that are incredible!!
General Growth
- More than 200 million active users
- More than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day
- More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college
- The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older
User Engagement
- Average user has 120 friends on the site
- More than 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
- More than 30 million users update their statuses at least once each day
- More than 8 million users become fans of Pages each day
Applications
- More than 900 million photos uploaded to the site each month
- More than 10 million videos uploaded each month
- More than 1 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each week
- More than 2.5 million events created each month
- More than 35 million active user groups exist on the site
International Growth
- More than 50 translations available on the site, with more than 40 in development
- About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
Platform
- More than 950,000 developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries
- Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications
- More than 52,000 applications currently available in the Facebook Application Directory
- More than 100 applications have more than one million monthly active users
- More than 10,000 websites have implemented Facebook Connect since its general availability in December 2008
Mobile
- There are more than 30 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
- People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
- There are more than 150 mobile operators in 50 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products