Use Facebook to promote your business

Social Networking websites like Facebook are increasingly becoming the place to find more clients and business partners.  These websites are not just for social networking, but for networking, period. In the first month of 2009 alone, more than 20 million new users opened a Facebook account. Tapping into that market is free and fairly simple. Here’s how to create a Facebook page for your business or organization.

This tutorial assumes you have already created a Facebook account. You need a personal account before you can create a Facebook page for your business.

1. Log into Facebook and scroll to the very bottom of your screen.
2. Click on the Advertising link in the footer links.
3. Click on the “Pages” link (there’s a flag next to it at the top of the page in the links for the Advertising section)
4. On the Facebook Pages page, click the button “Create a Page”
5. Select the type of business, enter the name, and proceed through the setup for your new page as prompted.
6. Upload your logo and make sure to add your phone numbers, website address, fax number, email address, etc.
7. To activate your page, you will need to “Publish” it. There will be a link to prompt you to do this.
8. Now that you’ve created the page for your business, post it to your wall on your personal Facebook page so your friends will know about it. You can even email your friends (Facebook only allows you to message 20 at a time) to encourage them to become fans of your new page.
9. In the future, to manage your Facebook page for your business, a link named “Ads and Pages” will appear on your Facebook page. To manage, you will click this link to access both areas.
10. That’s it!

So you’ve created a Facebook page for your business, now what?  What can it do for you?  How do you utilize it to create new business?

• When other Facebook users ”fan” your page, a mini version of your logo will show up on their profiles. You can’t “friend” people with your page, but people can “fan” your page.
• From within your Facebook page for your business, you can send “Updates” to your fans to tell them when you have a new product, specials, events, or anything else. This is probably the best use of the Facebook pages for your business.
• Post “Links” on your page that go to specific pages on your company website, such as your products or services page. Or post a link to an article you wrote on your website that will garner interest.
• Create and run Facebook ads for your business and send the click-throughs to your Facebook page and ultimately to your company website. There is a cost for this, but it’s fairly affordable compared to other forms of online advertising.

There are many social networking websites, but Facebook is currently the leader in users and buzz. Don’t miss a chance to market to the hundreds of millions of users that lurk on Facebook every day.

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