Promote Your Products Using Facebook

Facebook is the most popular social networking site in the world. It is one of the greatest applications alongside Twitter and MSN Live Messenger to keep up with your friends.  But did you know that you can use Facebook effectively to promote your products and/or services as well? Facebook is also an execellent vehicle to create or reinforce brand awareness.

Here are two effective methods you can use Facebook for business purposes:

1. Facebook Ads. Advertising your products or services with Facebook Ads you can reach upto 200 million active Facebook users. These advertisements are the small ads you see on the right hand side of your profile page. For some reason I tend to get a lot of beer ads (?). As a marketer you can advertise to your potential audience by using their age, gender, location or personal interests as a targeting factor.  You also can target people with specific keywords they have written in their profiles. This type of advertising is one of the most targeted marketing vehicles in the world! There are very few competing medias where you can use so many specific factors as how to reach your audience.

2. Fan pages. Another way of advertising on Facebook is creating a fan page about your product or service. A lot of rock bands use this method very effectively. For instance, a great Finnish Goth Rock band Nightwish have over 250,000 fans! Do you think you could do some serious marketing to that audience? Yes, you could! You can start discussions, post photos and write announcements on your page for your fans to see. You can also send official updates to all of your fans, or just a segment of your fans who, say, are female and live in Sydney Australia. (Image by Andy Warhol.)