Are you on Facebook? If you use the internet, you probably are. And you’re also probably aware of how many other people are using Facebook. But did you know that Facebook also provides some of the narrowest-targeted advertising out there?
In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past five or six years, Facebook is the current front-runner of social media. Everyone has a Facebook page – Julia Gillard, the Pope, your neighbor, your parents – more than 500 million active users.
Facebook allows its users to “like” certain things – Lord of the Rings, Led Zeppelin, Ferris Bueller (Bueller, Bueller, Bueller?)– and tracks those likes for use in advertising. Add that to the personal data that Facebook tracks and you’ve got a very narrow target. Have a product that you want to show to people between 24 and 29 who like Stephen King books and listen to Morrissey? Facebook can help you get that advertising pushed right to their pages.
Each user’s page has a “news feed”, and this is where they keep up with their Facebook friends. “Bob got a new car”, “Sally is having dinner with…” and so on and so forth. However, many companies now have a Facebook business page as well. You can even add a Facebook “Like” button to your normal webpage. Then when people “Like” your page, any updates you post will show up in their news feed.
This can also be set up to allow people to comment directly on your website and can show which of their friends also ‘like’ your page. And remember, social proof is one of Cialdini’s methods.
The average user has over 130 friends. Wouldn’t you like to be able to have five people on Facebook “like” your page and then tell 130 of their friends about it? That’s a pretty good source of word-of-mouth advertising. Let’s do some quick math – ten people click “like” on your page. And let’s say that each of those ten people has 100 friends (lower than the average). When they click “Like”, it shows up on their news feed, and each of their 100 friends sees this. You just got your name shown to 1000 people, and it didn’t cost you a cent.
Then there’s the targeted advertising; you can choose pay-per-click or by impression – they offer both. And with the range of options to choose from, you can narrow it down to pretty darn specific groups of people and demographics.
Watch out for the latest DVD from Melbourne SEO Services for more information on advertising on Facebook and other pay-per-click methods.
This is definitely another reason why most of the online businesses go to Facebook and come up with their own Business Page.
But one of the main concerns of setting up pages like this on Facebook is that the content shared are presented as too sale-sy, that prevents some users from participating right away. That is why it is important to be more careful of what you will share to them, just go lightly on selling your stuff and concentrate more on encouraging interaction especially for those who already liked your page.
@Nins,
I guess you are only one of those who really know what FB biz page is for, unfortunately, a lot of biz owners do not focus as much on using it as a tool to engage. They just throw their stuff out there even if no one is paying attention.
The thing with FB biz page is that some owners just leave it as it is, I strongly believe that they should take time to promote their biz pages too, since that helps in making their presence felt online.
Abandoned, unattended FB biz page is as good as not having one at all. There should be some activities happening on that page like post with engaging comments for it to make sense for the biz in the first place. 🙂