Research has shown that the average amount of time spent on Facebook is 33 mins, compared to 13 minutes on Google and 20 minutes on YouTube so it's not surprising that entrepreneurs want to tap into the opportunities offered by Facebook for business use.
Over half of the 800m users of Facebook log in every day with a high percentage starting the day to see what's going on.
To hear about news events and to chat with their friends.
It's replacing newspaper and the radio and the telephone.
So, where is Facebook heading? Marketplace opportunities are definitely coming to Facebook within the next year or two with more and more people using it as their eCommerce platform.
But not many marketers use Facebook successfully because of what is seen as the high cost and ineffectiveness of ads.
The problem is that they use the wrong types of ads because they don't understand how to get into the right mindset for Facebook for business use.
We see this over and over again with people asking questions about personal logins vs business logins - people don't want to have their business mixed with their personal profile, without realising that Facebook has it set up so business use is separate from personal log in.
Although you have the same log in, when you're at your page, you are actually interacting as the admin of your page - it doesn't show you as you but as the admin so no risk of personal stuff getting mixed in.
Status updates for pages do not show on personal profile and people cannot access any business pages from personal profile unless you like your own page - so there is no personal connection between you and your page.
How can businesses use Facebook as part of their social media marketing strategy? 1.
It's a traffic generation method regardless of the type of business you're running.
It can be used to drive traffic to your websites or affiliate links 2.
You can build a list if you send traffic from your status updates to a relevant opt-in form.
3.
Offline marketing - it's great for communication of events.
Restaurants and hair salons can let their clients know what's going on and give discounts with Offers.
4.
Branding - you can use your Page to get your business name out there, especially as the domain authority of Facebook can help your Page to rank higher than your website for particularly competitive keywords.
5.
Groups - set up a community for people to talk about a similar niche Facebook Advertising for Business The huge amount of information that Facebook retains about its users allows advertisers to target the demographic rather than just keywords - location, gender, age, educational level are just the starters.
There are now Interests and Behaviour and in the US, there are also Partner Categories which allow you to put your ads in front of people based on their earnings and whether they have purchased a new car recently! This demographic targeting is what makes Facebook powerful - you can literally handpick the perfect people for your product/service.
The tighter the target demographic, the better the response and the more people are going to like your page.
It's a good idea to split test and get the ads effective and the cost will go down because the ads are targeted.
Facebook is a different marketing strategy - friendly and social, not products and product numbers.
If you use your status updates to talk about niche topics, you can suggest products later.
It's a conversation not a send out of your link to the website/affiliate link.
With Facebook for business use, you should use your Page to build relationships and be a friend not a marketer.