Free Marketing: 101 Low and No-Cost Ways to Grow Your Business, Online and Off

CHAPTER 46

FACEBOOK AS A MARKETING TOOL

While the marketing potential of Facebook.com is still being discovered and experimented with, we now know for a fact that social media should probably play a big part in most businesses' marketing efforts. Entire books have been written about how to market on Facebook, but in this chapter I attempt to summarize my overall thoughts on Facebook as a marketing tool, and I give you a few tips that I've seen work.

Ultimatbely your success on Facebook isn't about some magic formula or checklist. It's all about applying the same principles you'd use if you were at a large informal gathering of prospects at a party. You'd never spend your time at a party walking up to each guest and asking them if they will buy something from you, so of course you shouldn't act that way in an online social setting either. Find creative ways to connect with people on social sites and the rest will happen naturally.

As the most popular social media website online, Facebook is visited daily by more people than any other website online as of the writing of this book. This means that you cannot participate in the Facebook community effectively without having an ongoing strategy for interacting with the visitors that your Facebook page will inevitably have. This serves as a caution for you if you're thinking that a Facebook page is something you set up once and then walk away from.

Facebook offers a free “Official Page” to any business, organization, product, musician ...