The Business Benefits of using Facebook

Roshan Mehta, 30 December 2010

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Sharing Content.
Most of us use the “Share” feature of Facebook almost every day. This functionality is a simple way to instantly get your message across to each of your Facebook friends. These updates are displayed on their news feeds as soon as it is shared. Your friends then have the ability to comment on the message, or choose to share it with others using the “Like” feature.

Establishing Relationships.
With Facebook friends and groups, we can quickly establish relationships between different people and businesses.  This allows us to keep up to date with what is going on in our industry and share ideas, as well as listen to what our target audience has to say. We can also find out more about our customers likes and dislikes and use these to our advantage to establish longer lasting business relationships.

Pages for your Business.
Facebook allows you to create pages for your business and best of all they’re FREE! Pages include many of the items you see on a regular Facebook page for an individual, including profile pictures to display your company logo, a wall to allow you to share messages for your target market to read and perhaps comment on, an information tab to display basic information about your company, a simple discussion forum, links, events, videos and much more. This means you can create a simplified version of your company’s main website on Facebook for potential customers to find out just enough about what your company does, and also give them the opportunity to interact with you in a number of different ways.

Facebook Widgets.
Facebook offers a number of widgets which you can add to your company website. This allows your target market to easily find your Facebook page and perhaps become a follower in order to more easily gain updates to what is going on in your company.

Some of the more popular widgets include the “Like Box” or “Like Button” which allows you to share website content with the world with the click of a button. For a complete list of the widgets offered by Facebook, visit the Facebook Social Plugins page.

Search Engine Optimization.
Having a company profile on Facebook will increase the chance of your business being found by popular search engines such as Bing and Google.

Price.
You’ll be surprised with how well you can advertise your business on Facebook without paying a cent. A free Facebook page for your business can very easily gain more interest in your company by other individuals or businesses. There are also paid services available if you wish to raise your marketing effort, as well as business analytics to analyse exactly how well Facebook is working for you.

* Image 1 source: http://www.manifestlondon.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/facebook_523415a.jpg