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Who uses Facebook?

 

Facebook has been one of the biggest internet success stories over the last couple of years, and having such a big user base, it's no surprise that they are trying to reap the rewards. The idea of Facebook is to keep in touch with people around you. You have your location and personal details all stored, and with it being easy to share information, it looks like a great advertising platform. But is it?

 

Though Facebook started in the student demographic, it's quickly growing out of it with the fastest growing demographic being the over 25s. Around 34% of users work as professionals, including people who are in sales, are executives, educators or hold a technical role. So, whether your organisation provides a product or service, chances are that at least a few of those 400 million active users (of which 50% log on in any given day) are prospective customers of your business. The question is, what do you do about it?

 

Facebook Business Pages

 

Rather than creating a personal profile page, businesses can create official pages providing an introduction to what they do. Photos, videos, links and forum discussions can also be added. Businesses, for example, can use Facebook to announce latest news, press releases or special offers. You can even automatically update your Twitter page when making an update on Facebook.

 

Uniquely, your business Facebook page can gain reputation from users who choose to like your page using a thumbs-up icon. Naturally, this attracts their friends to take an interest, so suddenly the page can be distributed widely. Further connections can also be made by creating adverts that direct users to your page.

 

Facebook Advertising

 

Facebook's advertising platform works in a similar way to Pay Per Click advertising models used by popular search engines. As an alternative, you can also Pay Per View too. The word 'per' is a little misleading though, as you don't actually pay for individual clicks, but for a set amount of people.

 

Naturally, you can change advertising settings at any time, including the time of day the ads run or city you're targeting. There is a full reporting system too, but it's fair to say that overall Facebook Ads aren't as easy to use as Google AdWords'.

 

The adverts currently are image based with supporting text underneath (135 characters). They appear on the side bar with two other advertisements. Rather uniquely, users can literally give the adverts a thumbs up or down if they don't feel they are appropriate.

 

With Facebook showing only three adverts on a page, if you're advertising at a broad base it may be expensive to run your Facebook Ad. However, being 1st or 3rd is largely irrelevant as you are not competing for space like on search engine results.

Creating an effective Facebook Ad

 

Being image based, the design is very important. Not only has it got to grab attention, but it has to look professional and trustworthy, otherwise you simply won't get the clicks.

 

In most Pay Per Click campaigns, you would normally link to your website. However, to increase viral opportunity, you can link the advert to your Facebook Business Page. This makes it easy to share, and with the more people in a network that join up as a fan, the more other people will see it on their Facebook homepage.

 

Unless you are advertising an extremely general product, and have masses of advertising revenue, there isn't a reason not to be targeted. As with tried and tested Pay Per Click alternatives, if your product/service does appeal to many, you can at least create separate ads for different locations or age groups to test effectiveness.

 

Community Pages

 

Facebook has also now launched 'Community Pages', serving as an alternative to the official Facebook Pages for businesses. The aim is to let people create unofficial pages around topics, themes or ideas that don't fit easily into more narrowly tailored Facebook Groups. Feasibly, this would increase viral activity of any Facebook advertising.

 

The new initiative will allow Facebook users to link information from their profile pages directly to community pages about related interests, affiliations and favourite activities, according to a company blog post.

 

Facebook has begun prompting users to edit profile information to link either to either official Pages or the new Community Pages. When they go to their profile pages next, they'll see a pop-up box recommending Pages based on interests and affiliations they've already added. Users can select which pages will be made public to people who aren't Facebook friends or who aren't logged in when looking for someone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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