The importance and role of social media in the success on any online venture cannot be denied. Any online business worth its name has used social media to spread awareness about it’s brand, to create advertisement and to find the target audience. All this leads to more awareness of the business which again leads to prospective customers becoming actual customers and the income of the business increasing many fold. By social media it is meant the many social networking websites online which are primarily for the purpose of interaction between individuals. But today, these social networking websites are used profoundly to spread the awareness of one’s business or profession and to build a loyal customer following.
Facebook is one such extremely popular social networking website which has over 400 million users worldwide. The user friendly interface adopted by Facebook and the various individualistic options provided to the users is what makes Facebook so successful and such a big revolution. Whether you are an individual seeking friends, or a professional seeking clients or a business wanting to find target customers, having a Facebook account is extremely beneficial. When you are a user of the social networking website, you are on the network of so many people that you are actually or should it be said ‘virtually’ famous!
Originally developed for individual to individual interaction, Facebook has now become more for professional to professional interaction. This is because of the many commercial tools provided by the social networking website which are easy to incorporate for any business and they lead to very good results. Facebook offers the ability to establish specific topic membership clusters called Groups Pages. Once these groups have been made then you know the entire group can be your prospective customers. Plus others who are friends with members of certain groups can also generate good amount of interest in the groups of their friends.
Face book also provided the option of setting up company/commercial/brand pages called Fan Pages. These fan pages allow custom html pages which are static to be added to them so that you have custom branding and all its advantages on the pages of Facebook. Suppose your company has just had a promotional event then the Events Pages on Facebook allows for great advertisement of the program. Via this Event Page you can add photos, video clips and comments about the event and you can see the comments of the participants and others before and after the event. Such great form of promotion which can be viewed by countless people together cannot be achieved by any other medium of promotion.
To lay the foundation of the social networking path of your concern you first have to create and launch a Fan Page for your company and for each of the individual programs undertaken by your company. The primary focus of doing is to enhance visibility and also to create more awareness about your company by creating a fully integrated and connected virtual presence of your company and each and every one of its signature products. The individual Fan Pages of your products should be thoroughly inter-connected and form an integral part of your company’s Facebook network. Each and every Fan Page of your products will have a set of clear objectives and goals and also tools and applications for the achievement of these goals and objectives.
Facebook is clearly the leader in social networking websites because it provides the user great and wonderful options based on their requirements and needs. You can set up individual networks of colleagues or friends and can share videos, pictures, files and information as a community. Another great option provided by the social networking website is that of updating the status. You can tell your contacts, friends and friends of friends what is on your mind, what you are doing and where you are headed off to. The same principle of being there in everybody’s face should be applied to the network pages of companies. The Fan Pages should be constantly updated with the latest developments in the products. Being innovatively creative and bringing out new ideas is one sure shot way to keep contacts and friends interested in your Face Book page.
Another thing about Facebook is the great option of creating games and applications for each Fan Page. You can create and come up with great games, lucky draws and interesting contests for you product Fan Pages. This will generate a lot of interest in your page as people like to indulge in fun activities like playing games and contests while they are doing other work online. The more updated you keep your pages, the more interesting and innovative you make them, the more they will stay in the focus of customers and prospective customers.
When you choose to advertise and promote your business with Facebook you have an advantage over other mediums of advertising which is; targeted grouping. With Facebook you can advertise to targeted groups. This is primarily because Facebook has access to personal and private information about its users. You can try advertising by targeting a particular age of people or by a similar preference of people. By using the targeting options you can easily filter out the groups you do not want to advertise to. This will drastically improve the conversion rate for your company website.
Using facebook can be one of the best marketing tools you could have applied to increasing your business revenue. In this day and age when presence is everything and when what is ‘out of sight is out of mind’, social media and Facebook in particular is a strategy which shouldn’t be let out of your hand. There are many tips on how to successfully market your business using the social networking leader. With a little bit of research and a few tips you can prepare one of the most successful marketing campaigns for your company; The FaceBook way!
