Building a Presence on Facebook

Earlier It’s been said that if Facebook were a country, it would be the sixth most populated nation in the world. Imagine being able to get your message in front of the Facebook nation free. That’s exactly what Facebook is offering companies with Pages: an online location for businesses, organizations, and individuals looking to market themselves to the Facebook community. Not just for businesses, Pages can be created by not-for-profit organizations, public figures, entertainers, photographers, and professionals of all types. Facebook Pages are fun and easy to set up, provide a powerful set of online tools for engaging with your customers (or, as they are called in Facebook, fans), and easy-to-understand metrics to measure your success. Every day, 3.5 million people become fans of a Facebook Page, according to eMetric’s February. 2009 Facebook Usage Metrics Worldwide study. That’s a lot of fans. Although popular consumer brands, such as Apple, Coke, and Skittles enjoy large installed fan bases, smaller brands, business-to-business (B2B) companies, consultants, and personalities can also build a loyal following by using Facebook Pages to enhance their businesses. Prior to online social networks, companies centered their Internet strategies on their Web site. Typically, advertisements and promotions focused on driving traffic to that site and success was measured by traffic metrics and conversions, such as how many forms were completed or how many items were purchased. Now, the market is throwing these companies a twist: With the growing popularity of social networks in general, and Facebook in particular, people’s online consumption habits are changing. For one, they’re spending a lot of time on Facebook. The average Facebook member visits the site an average of nearly 18 times per month, according to recent figures by Web traffic analytics provider comScore. That’s why marketers like you can no longer be content to stay on your.dot-com islands. In response to the challenge, many marketers are adapting their Internet strategies to include these major hubs of social activity by using a mix of advertising, promotional, and word-of-mouth campaigns to drive awareness, traffic, and engagement. And they’re interacting with their customers in new and unprecedented ways. Facebook has remade itself to satisfy marketers’ needs to take part in the conversation. They’ve managed to balance commercialism with its members’ strong desire for privacy while fostering an open, transparent environment where discussion flows freely between consumer and marketer. It’s within this new Facebook marketing paradigm that the role of traditional marketing is changing. It’s no longer a question of whether your business should have a dedicated marketing presence on Facebook. Now, the only question is do you really need a Web site anymore! Think again.