A Beginners Guide to: Using Facebook for Social Media Marketing

Introduction

Unless you've been living on a desert island for the past decade, you'll have heard of Facebook. It's used by millions of people the World over and it's a great way to connect with others.

This fact has not been lost on Marketers and Advertisers and they've moved to Facebook in their droves. Social Media Marketing, as it's become known, is a hot topic. Do it right and your organisation will benefit massively. Do it wrong and you'll disappear off the site like you never even existed.

What is Facebook?

Before talking about how to use Facebook for Social Media Marketing (SMM), it's important to take a moment to clearly understand what Facebook is. Facebook is an Internet based social networking application accessed via an Internet browser. The important element here is that it's for social networking. It's not designed for marketing or advertising (unless you want to pay Facebook to carry an ad for you). Abuse this fundamental viewpoint at your peril.

Everyone that joins Facebook MUST create a profile. It can be a Business Profile or a Personal Profile but you are only allowed one profile.

Creating multiple profiles is a violation of Facebook's Terms of Use and can result in all of your accounts being terminated.

I emphasise the above statement because it's really important. If you spend some time carefully crafting your online persona, it can be devastating to have it all taken away.

Business Profile or Personal Profile?

Facebook has only two primary profile types. A Business Profile or a Personal Profile. The personal profile gives you full access to all the features in Facebook. The business profile gives you access to administer your Pages and ad campaigns only. This is from the Facebook FAQ:

Business accounts are designed for individuals who only want to use the site to administer Pages and their ad campaigns. For this reason, business accounts do not have the same functionality as personal accounts.

Business accounts have limited access to information on the site. An individual with a business account can view all the Pages and Social Ads that they have created, however they will not be able to view the profiles of users on the site or other content on the site that does not live on the Pages they administer.

In addition, business accounts cannot be found in search and cannot send or receive friend requests.

Deciding upon whether to create a Business or Personal profile is a big topic on it's own. But, in short: If you intend to do Social Media Marketing, I strongly urge you to create a personal profile.

Security

Now you've created a personal profile. the very first thing you'll want to do is to check your Privacy Settings by selecting Account > Privacy Settings from the menu at the top right of the Facebook page. Take some time to work through these options before you start to use Facebook.

For example, one of the default settings is that your Family and Relationships are public. I'd suggest that you might want to limit this to friends only.

As another example, you may well want to keep some of your contact information, ie: your home phone number, private.

Completing Your Personal Profile

Once you've created your personal profile, Facebook gives you lots of hints on how to complete your personal information. Most of it is great advice and well worth following. Remember, what you're trying to do is setup your online persona. It will reflect you and your business. Let this guide your actions as you add information and photos.

Your aim is to have as complete a profile as possible so that your own friends will recognize you and will befriend you on Facebook. You'll also want your profile to be engaging enough so that you can make new friends online.

Adding Friends

Once your profile is ready, it's time to add some friends with whom you can communicate. Again, Facebook helps by offering to search through your eMail, Instant Messenger, Skype and other accounts to create a prospective friends list. Select 'Find Friends' from the menu at the top right of the Facebook page, next to the Account menu option you selected earlier.

You'll be presented with a list of contacts that also have accounts on Facebook and you can choose who you'd like to add to your friends list.

Adding current friends is the best way to get started with Facebook. Later, I'll show you how to add other friends.

The Wall and the News Feed

Facebook can be confusing at first so for now, I advise that you limit yourself to two main views when using it, the Wall and the News Feed. 

• The Wall. When someone first visits your Facebook page (or you visit theirs), the default view is the Wall. The Wall is a place to post and share content with your friends. The visibility of the items posted depends upon your Privacy Settings (see above, under Security).


• News Feed. The News Feed is a constantly changing list of stories from friends and Pages (more later) that you follow on Facebook. It's only visible to you.

To get to your News Feed, choose the 'Home' menu option at the top right of your Facebook page.

To get to your Wall, choose 'Profile' from the menu at the top right of your Facebook page and then select 'Wall' from the menu at the top left of the page, just under your profile picture.

Using Facebook

Now you've set it all up, I suggest using Facebook for a while and getting used to it. Start some conversations and join in others. Write on peoples Wall or comment on what they've said. For now, it's not so important what you say (but remember that this is your online persona for you and your business so do apply caution) but it is important that you get some practice using Facebook.

And so, to Business...

Now that you've got to grips with the basics, it's time to create a Page for your business. To do this, go to your 'News Feed' page and select 'Pages' from the menu on the left side of the page. If you can't see that menu option, click on the 'More' button and it should then appear.

You should now see a button titled 'Create Page'. Click on that and then follow the simple directions.

The team at Facebook have written a number of documents that will help you create your Page. You can download the manual on creating Pages or visit facebook.com/FacebookPages#%21/FacebookPages?sk=app_7146470109 and follow a number of useful links from there.

Your Business Page

Once your page is created, visit it and you'll see a series of steps to get you started. At the top of the list is a button to 'Suggest to friends'. This is where setting up a personal profile (as opposed to a business profile) really helps you. Basically, Facebook will send an invite to any of your friends that you select, asking them to 'Like' your page. This is important because once you have 25 'Likes', you can get a custom URL for your Page that is then easier to find, pass on to others and even use on your business stationery.

Why is a Business Page Important?

The primary reason for creating a business Page is to separate your business life from your personal life. Many business users don't like to mix their personal and business life. While they may be very happy to share some information with friends and family, they may not want that same information made known to their business contacts.

Once you've created a business page, you can invite your business contacts to 'Like' your business page and communicate with them there. This way, you can enforce a separation between you the person, and your business.

Note also that you can add other users as administrators on the business page thus reinforcing the fact that the business Page is a separate entity from individual users.

If Facebook is for Social Networking, How Can I do Marketing?

Earlier, I said that Facebook is a social networking site and that you should abuse this notion at your peril. What I meant by this was that users do not log on to Facebook to suffer interminable advertising messages or to be marketed at. They come online to socialise. If you try and push your business on them, they will desert you.

But, with over 500 million active users on Facebook, there's a very good chance that some of them will be interested in what you have to offer. The 'trick' is to find who those users are, engage with them, provide them with content of value and then promote your product in the right way. I've come across a great phrase that sets the standard for how to do that via Social Media Marketing:

Seduce, don't molest.

However, the topic of actually doing Social Media Marketing on Facebook is large enough to warrant a whole series of articles on its own so I'll cover that in future articles.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6355843

Ultimately Who Owns Your Facebook Business Page?

Facebook pages are all the rage and with good reason: Every business that deals with people needs one because Facebook is where the people are!

Problem is most small to medium sized business owners are busy, don't have the time and would simply prefer to have someone else do it for them.

Facebook "experts" everywhere are offering to help create with the 'difficult' task of creating Facebook pages for busy professionals who want them.

Fact is, a basic Facebook page is very easy to create and sometimes you'll hear someone say "sure, I can do it for you," but before you let them, here are a few pointers to ensure that your Facebook Page is the property of your business.

Now there was a time when this was major no-no. At that time the creator of a Facebook page could never be removed as an administrator. Simply, whichever employee uses his or her personal Facebook account to create the company Facebook page would forever have access to it. Even if that employee left the company. Even if you fired that employee for gross negligence or criminal activity - like illegal use or abuse of your Facebook page.

Luckily that has all changed and now page creators can be deleted as administrators. This is true, however, only if the Page creator adds someone new as an admin. Thus, it should be company policy that whoever creates a company Facebook page must immediately add a second administrator as soon as a Page is created. If that doesn't happen, a Page creator will control your company Facebook page forever.

All this jargon?

For those confused by the nomenclature 

• a Facebook Profile is the account used by a person
• a Facebook page is the account used by a brand or business.

The distinction is made because multiple people (Profiles) can work for or administer a single business or brand (Page).

What was the Fan page thing?

Ah yes, one of the most common questions we get. This is simply the OLD name for a Facebook page. It came out of a MySpace like thought that bands and singers had public pages for their FANS to.

So simply, they used to be Fan pages, but then Facebook in their wisdom decided that "fan"  didn't really describe the relationship customers had with their brands and companies. More than be a "fan" they though you could "like" it a lot better. So they really only swapped the "Become a Fan" buttons for "like" buttons on brand pages.

The Page Creator has the Power (initially!)

Facebook Pages must be created though an existing Facebook Profile. The profile that creates the account will initially have primarily administrative control over the Fan Page forever. So what does that mean? It means that any person made with administrator role has indefinite control over the operation and destiny of your Facebook Page.

I know you may be thinking: What could Possibly go wrong? Well here are a few examples:

The Upset Employee

So you have an employee who's a Facebook 'expert' and they offer to create the Facebook Page for your business and even manage it. Well, six months from now, there is a slow economy or something else that forces you to lay them off or fire them and they decide to delete your Page and all the 800 people "like" your company page you've generated and you have no legal discourse.

The friend or associate who claims to be a 'Facebook expert'

Expert? First of all, there really is no such thing as a Social Media or Facebook 'expert'. Event he guys and girls that we all see as 'experts' themselves claim not to be!

Second, similar to the upset employee, friends often have disagreements that lead to ended friendships. You never want to be pessimistic about friendships, you have to be realistic as a business owner and know that you have to be prepared for the worst and in this situation, it isn't much to ask a friend to give you primary control of what's already yours.

Other stuff...

What if the person who owns your account gets flagged for spam? What if their account gets deleted or they delete the account themselves? Consider all these factors considered when creating your Fan Page and make your final decision to be that the page will be created in your name through your profile OR get ownership in writing!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7308503

3 Tips To Selling On Facebook For Beginners

If you already have your own online store but would like to expand your business influence on social media like Facebook, here are some selling on Facebook tips which you will find useful. However, please do take the time to set up your company's Facebook account properly first.

Is Your Store Ready?

Setting up an online store is pretty easy once you get hold of a reliable shopping cart software. The main thing to consider is that you need a proper store first which will act as a focus point so that when you have a Facebook store, your clients could choose to check out your actual online store for a better perspective on what you sell. While selling on Facebook seems ideal especially if you have tonnes of friends on your list, don't forget that your online store is more important as it will need to cater to those who are not on your Facebook list. So get everything created properly online first. Your store needs to be running on live.

What Do I Need To Sell On Facebook?

Lots of friends, customers and clients. If no one knows about your Facebook store, how are they going to buy anything from you unless they go direct to your online store? The idea of setting up your own Facebook store is to try and convert whatever 'likes' into people being willing to buy your products. But that is easier said than done. You may need to run a few marketing campaigns on Facebook first to encourage your current pool of contacts to 'share' about your products and store to others. Getting them to 'like' a product is just the beginning. And you need to have all your products and categories successfully posted from your online store to Facebook store. This can be done if your shopping cart provider offers it as a feature.

Keep Your Facebook Store Updated

Make it a point that you post something new once a week so that you continue to maintain a level of communication with your customers. You could new product launches, sales or interact with your customers to get their feedback on how they find your products. In short, communication is key. And don't be surprised that your customers will want to reach you faster via your Facebook. Keep your cool if there are any angry or grouchy feedback and remember to remain professional and courteous at all times.

Summary

So remember to get your own online store up and running first before starting your Facebook store. Grow your Facebook store customers by running marketing campaigns there encouraging people to 'like' and 'share' your products. Happy selling!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6929255

The 4 Easy Steps to Creating a Presence on Facebook

If your website is not promoted on Facebook, your competition's website probably is...

Facebook drives large amounts of traffic on the internet. It is the third largest search engine in the world and has enormous power in pushing and driving clicks of people's mice. It is almost mandatory to create a presence on Facebook if you want your website to succeed.

I just finished creating my Facebook page for my business, and it was surprisingly easy. I'll walk you through the steps directly.

Starting a Facebook Page

Most people only know about creating personal pages on Facebook, but Facebook allows companies, bands, causes, and basically any kind of group to create their own areas. The following are the types of groups you can create pages for:

1. Local Business or Place
2. Company, Organization, or Institution
3. Brand or Product
4. Artist, Band or Public Figure
5. Entertainment
6. Cause or Community

Just like on a personal page, there are photo and wall areas. The primary picture for the top left area can be any picture up to 200 pixels by 600 pixels. We'll talk more about this later on.

The URL for a basic Facebook page for a group looks like the following: facebook.com/pages/xyz...where "xyz" is the name of the company or group.

Now for the simple steps in creating your new page...

1)Go to facebook.com/pages

Click on the link in the top right of the screen that is labeled "Create Page." This link starts the process of defining the page and you will soon need to give some basic information about the page you want so that Facebook can create it for you.

2) Now you have a bunch of options to choose from. These are all the types of non-personal pages you can create...

1. Local Business or Place
2. Company, Organization, or Institution
3. Brand or Product
4. Artist, Band or Public Figure
5. Entertainment 6. Cause or Community

Click the type of page that you would like to create.

3) Answer the few questions Facebook gives you...

Every one of the types of pages above has different options. For local pages, Facebook asks for a name and location. For all others, subcategory and name are required. Overall, Facebook does not ask for very much information at all.

Just like a personal Facebook page, the left sidebar includes the high level menu options. They are listed below. These are the same options shown as a default on personal pages.

1. Get Started
2. Wall
3. Info
4. Photos

4) Market Your New Page

Once your basic page is created, the "get started" option is shown which gives you a to-do list for promoting your new Facebook page.

1. Invite your friends
2. Tell Your Fans
3. Post Status Updates
4. Promote This Page on Your Website
5. Set Up Your Mobile Phone

Once you've posted status updates and received fans (people who click the "Like" button), the Get Started option goes away.

You have access to more detailed options in editing your page by clicking on the little "edit info" link in the top center of your site page. This gives you dozens of simple options for controlling how your page looks and who can access it.

Now that you've created the site and have people starting to look at it, you need to post regular updates to it to make sure your following increases. Posting great content is a surefire way to attract more and more people.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6297638

How Does Facebook Work?

The Facebook phenomenon has literally taken the world by storm. Market reports suggest that Facebook has more than 500 million registered members. However, there is still a large chunk of people out there who pose this question, "How does Facebook work"? In all likelihood, these individuals spend little or no time on the web. Needless to say, they may be completely immune to the massive benefits that Facebook offers at one's fingertips.

Basically, Facebook works by connecting individuals. It's a platform where people from all parts of the world can communicate with each other. In theory, it's a massively popular website that allows registered members to come together at a common platform for social networking. Facebook has grown by leaps and bounds over the years. Users are allowed to create their own homepage and connect with millions of other online Facebook users.

Registered members are allowed to send an email invitation to their friends and family members to join Facebook. One can send notes to other individuals and also write on their Facebook walls. Other mesmerizing features of Facebook allows one to play games, join groups, create fan page, build online reputation and also promote one's brand. So, Facebook is not just another social networking site that allows you to connect with each other for social reasons.

If it's your first visit to the Facebook website, you will have to register with them to enjoy all the above said benefits and much more. Registration is absolutely free and it barely requires a couple of minutes. Facebook is open for the worldwide audience. One simply needs to provide some basic information such as name, gender, email address etc to fulfill the registration process.

Once you fill out the basic information about yourself, you will be sent a confirmation email. You will have to visit your inbox to click on the confirmation link in order to complete the registration process. Facebook is programmed in such a manner that it will ask you whether you want to search for individuals who are already on your email list. You can choose to add these individuals on your friend's list or send them an invitation to join Facebook. You can also hunt for old friends by using the search feature on their website.

The recipient is required to accept your invitation to start networking with you on Facebook. It merely takes a mouse click to accept a friend request on Facebook. Pictures, videos and messages can be shared amongst common friends on Facebook. Most users update their profile very often to let others know that they are currently doing or thinking.

Overall, Facebook has a very user friendly interface. There are many other preferences and applications that you can play around with once you register as an active member. If you are still wondering why the world has gone crazy after this social networking website, you will have to explore Facebook to experience the world of benefits it has in store for users.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6091406

A Beginners Guide to: Using Facebook for Social Media Marketing

Welcome to this beginner's guide to setting up Facebook for Social Media Marketing. In this article, I'll illustrate how a beginner can set up Facebook to raise the profile of their organisation. I assume you already know how to use a computer, connect to the Internet, and use a browser.

Introduction

Unless you've been living on a desert island for the past decade, you'll have heard of Facebook. It's used by millions of people the World over and it's a great way to connect with others.

This fact has not been lost on Marketers and Advertisers and they've moved to Facebook in their droves. Social Media Marketing, as it's become known, is a hot topic. Do it right and your organisation will benefit massively. Do it wrong and you'll disappear off the site like you never even existed.

What is Facebook?

Before talking about how to use Facebook for Social Media Marketing (SMM), it's important to take a moment to clearly understand what Facebook is. Facebook is an Internet based social networking application accessed via an Internet browser. The important element here is that it's for social networking. It's not designed for marketing or advertising (unless you want to pay Facebook to carry an ad for you). Abuse this fundamental viewpoint at your peril.

Everyone that joins Facebook MUST create a profile. It can be a Business Profile or a Personal Profile but you are only allowed one profile.

Creating multiple profiles is a violation of Facebook's Terms of Use and can result in all of your accounts being terminated.

I emphasise the above statement because it's really important. If you spend some time carefully crafting your online persona, it can be devastating to have it all taken away.

Business Profile or Personal Profile?

Facebook has only two primary profile types. A Business Profile or a Personal Profile. The personal profile gives you full access to all the features in Facebook. The business profile gives you access to administer your Pages and ad campaigns only. This is from the Facebook FAQ:

Business accounts are designed for individuals who only want to use the site to administer Pages and their ad campaigns. For this reason, business accounts do not have the same functionality as personal accounts.

Business accounts have limited access to information on the site. An individual with a business account can view all the Pages and Social Ads that they have created, however they will not be able to view the profiles of users on the site or other content on the site that does not live on the Pages they administer.

In addition, business accounts cannot be found in search and cannot send or receive friend requests.

Deciding upon whether to create a Business or Personal profile is a big topic on it's own. But, in short: If you intend to do Social Media Marketing, I strongly urge you to create a personal profile.

Security

Now you've created a personal profile. the very first thing you'll want to do is to check your Privacy Settings by selecting Account > Privacy Settings from the menu at the top right of the Facebook page. Take some time to work through these options before you start to use Facebook.

For example, one of the default settings is that your Family and Relationships are public. I'd suggest that you might want to limit this to friends only.

As another example, you may well want to keep some of your contact information, ie: your home phone number, private.

Completing Your Personal Profile

Once you've created your personal profile, Facebook gives you lots of hints on how to complete your personal information. Most of it is great advice and well worth following. Remember, what you're trying to do is setup your online persona. It will reflect you and your business. Let this guide your actions as you add information and photos.

Your aim is to have as complete a profile as possible so that your own friends will recognize you and will befriend you on Facebook. You'll also want your profile to be engaging enough so that you can make new friends online.

Adding Friends

Once your profile is ready, it's time to add some friends with whom you can communicate. Again, Facebook helps by offering to search through your eMail, Instant Messenger, Skype and other accounts to create a prospective friends list. Select 'Find Friends' from the menu at the top right of the Facebook page, next to the Account menu option you selected earlier.

You'll be presented with a list of contacts that also have accounts on Facebook and you can choose who you'd like to add to your friends list.

Adding current friends is the best way to get started with Facebook. Later, I'll show you how to add other friends.

The Wall and the News Feed

Facebook can be confusing at first so for now, I advise that you limit yourself to two main views when using it, the Wall and the News Feed. 

• The Wall. When someone first visits your Facebook page (or you visit theirs), the default view is the Wall. The Wall is a place to post and share content with your friends. The visibility of the items posted depends upon your Privacy Settings (see above, under Security).


• News Feed. The News Feed is a constantly changing list of stories from friends and Pages (more later) that you follow on Facebook. It's only visible to you.

To get to your News Feed, choose the 'Home' menu option at the top right of your Facebook page.

To get to your Wall, choose 'Profile' from the menu at the top right of your Facebook page and then select 'Wall' from the menu at the top left of the page, just under your profile picture.

Using Facebook

Now you've set it all up, I suggest using Facebook for a while and getting used to it. Start some conversations and join in others. Write on peoples Wall or comment on what they've said. For now, it's not so important what you say (but remember that this is your online persona for you and your business so do apply caution) but it is important that you get some practice using Facebook.

And so, to Business...

Now that you've got to grips with the basics, it's time to create a Page for your business. To do this, go to your 'News Feed' page and select 'Pages' from the menu on the left side of the page. If you can't see that menu option, click on the 'More' button and it should then appear.

You should now see a button titled 'Create Page'. Click on that and then follow the simple directions.

The team at Facebook have written a number of documents that will help you create your Page. You can download the manual on creating Pages or visit facebook.com/FacebookPages#%21/FacebookPages?sk=app_7146470109 and follow a number of useful links from there.

Your Business Page

Once your page is created, visit it and you'll see a series of steps to get you started. At the top of the list is a button to 'Suggest to friends'. This is where setting up a personal profile (as opposed to a business profile) really helps you. Basically, Facebook will send an invite to any of your friends that you select, asking them to 'Like' your page. This is important because once you have 25 'Likes', you can get a custom URL for your Page that is then easier to find, pass on to others and even use on your business stationery.

Why is a Business Page Important?

The primary reason for creating a business Page is to separate your business life from your personal life. Many business users don't like to mix their personal and business life. While they may be very happy to share some information with friends and family, they may not want that same information made known to their business contacts.

Once you've created a business page, you can invite your business contacts to 'Like' your business page and communicate with them there. This way, you can enforce a separation between you the person, and your business.

Note also that you can add other users as administrators on the business page thus reinforcing the fact that the business Page is a separate entity from individual users.

If Facebook is for Social Networking, How Can I do Marketing?

Earlier, I said that Facebook is a social networking site and that you should abuse this notion at your peril. What I meant by this was that users do not log on to Facebook to suffer interminable advertising messages or to be marketed at. They come online to socialise. If you try and push your business on them, they will desert you.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6355843

Basic Facebook Features

There are different features that Facebook can offer its members and some of these are the most basic ones that can also be seen in other social networking variations. Even if it seems these features are unique to the system, it is not that unique when compared with other applications.

Photos
Pictures of you or your friends can be uploaded any time you want. This is considered as the most popular features on Facebook wherein users can have the freedom to upload tons and tons of photos, comment on other photos and even tag friends. It is a fact that the system has:
· Almost 1 billion photos uploaded and is still posted
· 2 billion friends being tagged in the user photo
· 160 terabytes of memory for photo storage used with extra 60 terabytes just in case
· more than 60 million photos added every week which is equivalent to about 5 terabytes of space
· more than 3 million photos served to members everyday
· more than 100,000 images served every second during peak hours of traffic

Feed
It was on September 6, 2006 when Sanghvi introduced the newest home page of Facebook which is regarded as News Feed. In an original sense, when users are logged into the service, they are typically presented with a profile customizable to their own degree. By contrast, the new layout presented created a different alternative to the site's home page. Here, users can hold track of constant updates of their friends' activities. Some of the highlights of the news feed was informing the user about their friends' profile changes, birthdays, and upcoming events. There are also conversations showed by news feed made through walls of a friend.

In its initial work up, some users aren't contented with how it's helping them. A lot of complaints were made about the news feed causing undesirable information and cluttered ideas which are pretty much irrelevant to know. But through redesigning the pages, the news feed was redefined giving user the liberty to make their news feed function for their own desire.

Wall
In Facebook, the Wall is regarded as the space wherein friends of the user, displaying the date, post messages and time the message was written. There are walls that show anyone the profile of the user and some show the news feed of an individual. A lot of users take advantage of the walls by leaving short notes.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2051496