Facebook and Your Business

Most of us have been conditioned to view Facebook as a tool for ‘fun.’ We see it is something we can use to take our social lives to the next level, but the idea of using Facebook to take businesses to the next level remains foreign to many of us. Yet the truth of the matter is that Facebook is, at the moment, one of the best tools you can leverage upon to improve the fortunes of your business. And, by the way, contrary to what many of us imagine, using Facebook to promote your business is not just a possibility if you are in the ‘light’ or ‘fun’ business fields, such as the ‘showbiz’ industry. Rather, as we will soon see, whatever the nature of your business and whatever the nature of your specific products, you can benefit from Facebook.

How you can use Facebook to promote your business

There are several ways in which you can use Facebook to promote your business. One of those is by creating ‘pages’ for your business or products. This is pretty much the same way you would create an individual profile, but with special features. Once the pages are up and running, you can have people become ‘fans’ of your products/business. That would motivate their friends to either try out the product, or at the very least, become fans themselves. The net effect is that of spreading word around your product/business; creating ‘buzz’ around it, if you like. This works, whatever the nature of the business you are in. We have seen Facebook pages not only for soaps, cafes, electronic products and pretty much anything – with some ending up getting very impressive fan numbers.

The other way you can use Facebook to promote your business is by creating groups for your products or business. This would be followed by people joining those groups. And that would motivate their friends to join the groups, or try the product in question. The end result is increased buzz around the product (which has a lot of promotional value), and soon or later, increased sales on the product.

What makes Facebook an Ideal Tool for Business Promotion

There are several factors that make Facebook an ideal tool for business promotion.
One of those is the website’s demographics. That is where we are told that Facebook has half a billion plus members. What this means is that even only a small percentage of these people chance upon your product promotion pages and groups, that would still be great publicity.

Still on Facebook demographics, it is worth noting that Facebook is no longer the ‘website for broke high school and college students’ it was previously said to be. Today, well over 30% of Facebook users are well-earning, college graduate professionals. Moreover, recent trends show that the growing segments of Facebook users are those of older (and typically, financially better-established) people, whom every advertiser and business promoter dreams of successfully targeting.

The way Facebook works also makes it very ideal for business promotion purposes. This is like where anybody who opts to become a ‘fan’ of your products or businesses, or anybody who opts to join your business/product group has usually such ‘news’ posted on their (individual) Facebook pages. That way, even their friends who haven’t become fans to your products or joined your product/business groups automatically get to know about the business/products, and their associated pages and groups. In a way then, for publicity-building purposes, each person becoming a fan of your business/product, or each person becoming a member of your product/business group has a huge multiplier effect. Many people nowadays have dozens, sometimes even hundreds of friends on Facebook. What happens when such a person becomes a fan to your product/business or when they join your business/product groups is that the dozens or hundreds of their friends are informed about the development. This will motivate them to become fans or join the groups. Since becoming a fan or joining product/business group is also a sign of approval, their doing so would motivate their friends to make use of the said products: on such implicit recommendation of those friends.

Of course, promoting your business through Facebook is one of the most cost-effective promotional approaches. In fact, it costs nothing, beyond the time you spend creating the pages or groups (typically less than ten minutes), and the time you spend getting the first members, who then have the ‘multiplier effect’ described earlier.