Growth with Facebook

Facebook currently has more than 500 million active users totaling over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook.  These statistics prove the fact that Facebook is an incredible opportunity for organizations, schools and businesses to have an open audience to promote their products, services and ideas.  I would venture to say that most people that spend time on the internet will spend more time checking their Facebook than they do anything else.

Here are a few ideas on how to utilize Facebook to grow your business or organization.

• Personal Facebook Profile - Create a Facebook profile for yourself.  This is a great way for you to network with long lost friends and new people you meet.  You never know when an old friend might be the answer or connection to your new business venture.  Also, this is a way to link to your websites and other social networks on your profile.
• Company Facebook Profile - All the information above would apply for this section as well.  This would also help create brand awareness as people cruise Facebook.
• Fan Page - This is an incredible opportunity to create a hub for people to follow whatever you are promoting.  A fan page will allow you to post company information, gather customer reviews with a 5 star rating system, post photos of your product, to interact with current or potential customers and for people to choose to "Like" your page.  (Check out my wife's Fanpage >>)
• Facebook Group - This is very similar to a Fan Page, but instead of becoming a fan "Like" you are able to become a member of the group.  You are able to post events to group pages, allowing your members to see upcoming events and meetings.  This is a great way to communicate to members.  (Check out a Group Page my marketing students helped start >>)
• Status Updates - A status update is something you can do on your profile pages.  Whenever you make a comment in the box that says "what is on your mind?" it will post on your network of friends news feeds.  This is a great way to promote a new web link or to guide people to your Facebook page.  Also, you can have friends or family make a comment or post your link to their own Facebook Status.
• Wall Posts / Comments - Another word I would use for this would be "Seeding".  A great way to drive traffic back to your own Personal or Business Profile page is to go on other people's walls and make comments to them or to other comments that are made on their walls.  When you make comments, friends of your friend will be able to see those comments and then have the ability of clicking on your Facebook Picture to go to your profile.  This is called "seeding" because it is like planting seeds throughout the internet hopefully leading to growth or more connections.
• Tagging - This is one of the best ways for my wife to promote her photography business.  "Tagging" is where you connect a person's Facebook profile to a picture or graphic that you post.  As an example, my wife will take pictures of clients and will then tag those clients when she posts them to her own facebook profile page.  This will then lead her clients and her clients friends to her Facebook page because they will click on the picture to look at it and it will then lead them to my wife.  GREAT PR!
• Updates - Each time you update your Facebook page, it will inform your network of friends.  So if you want to indirectly lead people to your website link without seeming arrogant or pushy, then you could delete it from your profile for a moment and then repost it so that it pops up on your friends news feeds as a new or changed website link on your profile.  This will then intrigue them to click on that link to check it out.
• Profile Pictures - Many of you might have seen this take place.  Right now, the popular thing is to change your profile picture to your favorite cartoon.  If you are wanting to promote an idea, service, product or event you could always change your profile picture to a graphic that would help you in doing that.  This would capture your friends attention and will surely make them check it out.  Make sure your new picture does a good job of getting your message across.
• Events - You are able to create events on Facebook so that people can either reserve, decline or say maybe to if they are coming or not.  This will also hit the news feeds and gain exposure for your event.
• Applications - If you are a programmer, you can create an application on Facebook that other people want to post on their very own profile.  You will of course have to be able to program this to make it happen.
• Videos - You can post videos.  This can be a creative and fun way to get a message or idea out there.  (Check out a video I helped create, manage and promote >>)
• Advertising - As mentioned in my previous blog post, you can do paid advertisements on FB based on two methods of cost: PPC or PPI.

There are more ideas out there on how to utilize Facebook to promote your business, organization, idea or event, but hopefully these can get you started.  I can honestly say that my wife's photography business has seen a lot of success over the past few years and these ideas are ones we have on our top to do list when developing our annual promotional goals and campaigns.

For more expert advice, please check out this book: Facebook Marketing