Facebook for Grownups- Are you Marketing with Social Media?

Written by Jeff Bullas - View Comments
Categories: Facebook For Business, Social Media Marketing


Facebook Social Media Marketing For BusinessStill think Facebook is for kids and college students?   According to O’Reilly Media (2009), over half of all Facebook users are out of college, and their numbers are growing each year.  Why are so many adults getting on board?  Well, while younger people are using Facebook primarily for socializing, the older crowd is using Facebook to market their businesses.

Facebook offers several tools for business promotion, and there are also a number of apps available that give Facebook marketers even more options.   Facebook can create buzz and help you stay in touch with customers.  If you’re interested in getting started, here’s a basic tutorial:

Profile Page
This is where you create your business profile.  Enter information that will help people find you, based on what you want to promote.  This is a good place to tag your page so that both consumers and the search engines can find you, so make sure you choose the correct category.  Profile pages can generate a lot of page views, so make yours interesting!

Facebook Pages
Your Facebook Page is where you’ll post everything you want people to see- photos, news, videos, messages and any other information.  Establish your brand presence on your page, and customize it with Flash, apps and relevant content.  Anything you do here is broadcast to your fans, so they can get updates in real time.

Facebook Groups
Once you create your profile, you can build groups centered around people who share your interests. This creates awareness of your business and brand through conversations and interactions.  Users can’t become fans with this feature, but you can communicate in a more personal way with members by sending messages to their inboxes.

Facebook Events
Facebook Events is a free application that you can use to promote events, such as parties, contests, upcoming sales and product launches.  Each event gets its own page where fans can request invitations and sign up for notifications.  Facebook marketers use Events to build a community of interested people who want to become involved.

Notes and Photos
These are applications that allow you to share blog posts and pictures.  They offer a way to create branded content that helps your Facebook pages rank.  Just be sure to stay away from salesy verbiage, and don’t spam people with a lot of company information or logos.  You’ll maintain your credibility if you just stick with text and photos that are more educational in nature.

Another nice feature for marketers is the ability to tag photos and notes.  If you want to bring them to the attention of certain people, you can tag them to be sent to those people.

Messages
Facebook Messages help you target your marketing efforts.  You can look at it as an alternative to email.  While it doesn’t have all of the functions and features of email, it does prevent spam by monitoring the volume of message sent to users.

Marketplace
The Facebook Marketplace is like a classified, or ad section.  If you’re looking for goods or services or want to offer yours to fans and members, you can post your ads here.  This has the potential to generate leads and sales by targeting people who are likely to be interested.  All Marketplaces are tied to actual Facebook accounts, so you can see the profiles of all respondents.

News Feed
The Facebook News Feed gives your posts wide exposure by syndicating it, like an RSS feed.  When a user joins your group, responds to an invitation, or engages you in any way, Facebook automatically adds that transaction to each user’s “mini feed” in the form of a “recent news” stream.  This stream unifies all actions so that everyone can see what’s been going on with your business.

As you can see, there are many ways to market your business using Facebook.  There are also a lot of useful apps available to anyone who wants to take advantage of Facebook to promote a product or service.  The best way to learn is to get in there and play around with it to see what works for you.  So, get started!

This is a guest post by Beth Hrusch who is Senior Editor at Interact Media, a content marketing software company



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  • http://f ehab
  • http://www.gatewaybizdev.com ElizabethL

    Jeff,
    You did an excellent job of providing some really useful information. It was a good read, thanks. I’ll be sure to share this is colleagues.
    -Elizabeth

  • http://getglobalassist.com Claudia Guzman

    Thanks for sharing this great post!

  • http://www.greggmorris.com/curated-stories-mar-22-2010 Storytelling Social Media Marketing PR Technology & Business Curated Stories Mar. 22, 2010

    [...] Facebook for Grownups- Are you Marketing with Social Media? Published: March 22, 2010 Source: Jeffbullas's Blog Still think Facebook is for kids and college students? According to O’Reilly Media (2009), over half of all Facebook users are out of college, and their numbers are growing each year. Why are so many… [...]

  • http://www.residerealestate.com david doucette

    jeff, what is your opinion about using our personal profile to promote our business, in a smart way i might add, versus creating a fan page for the business?

    the problem i’m having is i have alot of facebook friends and much fewer fans. and i don’t want my fans to get my content double posted to them (if they are also friends) if i post it both on my personal profile and fan page. i also don’t want friends to miss some of my business content that are not fans.

    this has stumped me for awhile. any thought?

  • http://briancurrin.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/facebook-for-grownups-are-you-marketing-with-social-media-%c2%ab-jeffbullass-blog/ Facebook for Grownups- Are you Marketing with Social Media? « Jeffbullas’s Blog « Brian Currin

    [...] via Facebook for Grownups- Are you Marketing with Social Media? « Jeffbullas’s Blog. [...]

  • http://www.aboutdeangraziosi.com dean graziosi

    You have given all information in detail for marketing with social media specially Facebook.More and more people are using Facebook for marketing and their business as they know that its very easy and convenient way to connect with other people and let them know.

  • http://balsamponds.blogspot.com Carol

    I have to say I have stopped using facebook because of that kid and college group. I found it fluffy. I might have to think about it differently after your blog. Thanks

  • Maggie Holley

    Jeff,

    It is an interesting phenomenon that all those Parents who thought FB was juvenile..are all getting on board!

    It IS a great platform for ‘grown ups’…
    As always, a great post with solid content. :)
    Thanks!

  • http://www.rinforsideweb.com/blog/ Rinforsideweb

    Interesting and very informative. I am now more knowledgable when it comes to optimizing my Facebook marketing campaign. Thank you for the post.

  • micvadam

    Jeff,
    as usual good stuff well summarized in a short text!
    Mic

  • http://jeffbullas.com/2010/05/24/10-ways-to-make-money-from-your-blog-without-selling-your-soul/ 10 Ways To Make Money From Your Blog Without Selling Your Soul? « Jeffbullas's Blog

    [...] Facebook the social media monster has gone from “Mainstream” to “Madstream” and almost daily is mentioned in the mass media for all the right and wrong reasons, from its manic growth to the latest privacy concerns. [...]

  • http://www.coconex.com Mark

    Great article about business and facebook. We were looking to engage a business using social media but with the business’ own identity ie its own profile and not a page or group and we just couldnt find one surprisingly. So we started our own a few days ago, just like facebook but for businesses. Your feedback would be appreciated.
    Regards
    Mark

  • http://twitter.com/cristy_fl/status/16810803292 Cristy

    RT @jeffbullas: Facebook for Grownups- Are you Marketing with Social Media? http://bit.ly/dAKUQB

  • http://twitter.com/eeegeee/status/17010569724 Elizabeth Grenier

    RT @jeffbullas: Facebook for Grownups- Are you Marketing with Social Media? http://bit.ly/dAKUQB

  • Raquel

    What about organizations that want to become more known by other orgs not just individuals? Is it possible to link an organizations fan page with a personal one? What if an organization’s cause is good, but may not look as interesting online for people to want to become interested in?

  • http://twitter.com/jumpstartmatrix/status/17313231784 Maggie Holley

    RT @jeffbullas: Facebook for Grownups- Are you Marketing with Social Media? http://bit.ly/dAKUQB

  • http://twitter.com/annamarketave/status/17315772210 Anna Woolliscroft

    RT @jeffbullas: Facebook for Grownups- Are you Marketing with Social Media? http://bit.ly/dAKUQB < fantastic summary of tips here, eps. Apps

  • http://twitter.com/micrommm/status/17315828059 MicroMediaMarketing

    RT @AnnaMarketAve: RT @jeffbullas: Facebook for Grownups- Are you Marketing with Social Media? http://bit.ly/dAKUQB < fantastic summary of tips here, eps. Apps

  • http://twitter.com/joefblaze/status/17704115254 Joe Blaze

    RT @jeffbullas: Facebook for Grownups- Are you Marketing with Social Media? http://bit.ly/dAKUQB

  • http://twitter.com/eyecommdevon/status/17899212069 Devon

    RT @jeffbullas: Facebook for Grownups- Are you Marketing with Social Media? http://bit.ly/dAKUQB

  • http://twitter.com/iandavmcg/status/18394910508 Ian McGonnigal

    Facebook for Grownups- Are you #Marketing with #SocialMedia? http://bit.ly/dAKUQB RT @jeffbullas

  • http://twitter.com/olleh1958/status/18395250638 구기문

    RT @jeffbullas: Facebook for Grownups- Are you Marketing with Social Media? http://bit.ly/dAKUQB

  • Jennie

    Great article. Facebook contains many resources that go untapped my most business. You should check out this article as a compliment to yours. It goes into more detail about using facebook to market with.

    “Using Facebook as a Strategic Marketing Channel”

    http://www.greenbuzzagency.com/using-facebook-as-a-strategic-marketing-channel

  • http://twitter.com/commtracker CommunicationTracker

    Very well summarized. Thank you for the coverage of the multiple options. One question though: don’t you think FB is a bit weak in helping one promote the product page to potential customers? We find twitter quite good at it. Finding FB being used more for ‘friends and family’ and less for business. (Would love to be corrected here.)

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