What is FACEBOOK and how YOU should use it for your Business

For adults between the ages of 18 and 24 Facebook is more popular then search engines, more popular than email, and more popular than porn. If the internet were a popularity contest than Facebook is captain of the football team, class president, and king. What does this mean for advertising and marketing campaigns? If you’re not utilizing Facebook, you probably should. But because of how Facebook differs from traditional media outlets, the way in which you advertise on Facebook changes as well. Without overcomplicating the issue let me give you a simple overview of how Facebook works and how to utilize it for advertising.

1.      What is Facebook and why are people interested in it?

a.       Just in case you’ve been living under a rock for a couple of years I’ll give a brief explanation of Facebook. Facebook started as a social website at Harvard and then moved on to anyone with a valid college email address. It’s kind of like the post puberty version of MySpace, and now it’s available to anyone with an email address. At this point, if you don’t have a Facebook account, stop reading this and go sign up. Here’s what’ll happen when you do. You create a profile that can have as little information as your name, or as much as your entire life story and a detailed list of everything you like, dislike, or are indifferent about. I’d suggest going somewhere in between the two.  Now, because you’re late to join the Facebook fad you’ll be inundated with friend suggestions: Your mom(yes, she probably beat you to Facebook), your cousin, that person that looks familiar from high school but you never really talked to, and a myriad of other friends and acquaintances or even people you don’t know at all. If the first time you logged on to Facebook you spent 5 hours reading status updates of people you hardly know, don’t worry, it happens to the best of us, and you just discovered why people like Facebook. It’s social. People like to be nosy and find out what their friends are doing without actually talking to them. You can sit at your computer, see what everyone is doing and only respond to the things you want to. It’s important to realize why people log onto Facebook when you consider how to advertise to them. No one logs onto to Facebook to shop, or check to see what new corporate products are on the market. They log onto to see what their friends are doing, maybe talk to a few and to have fun. However, this does not mean that Facebook users are against advertising, it simply is not their primary reason for logging on. In this blog we’ll give you some basic tips on how to use a Facebook page, banner ads, apps, and how to measure your success. But first, let me give you a little warning before you jump into the deep end of Facebook and social media marketing.