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Creating an online entity with Facebook.

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January 6th, 2010 in Social Media by post Rick

I have had a Facebook entity for quite awhile now but I have avoided it like the plague. But, recently I have reevaluated my stance on FB and I have decided to start using it as a tool in my marketing toolbox.

What is Facebook

Facebook is the virtual scrapbook of your life… but it can add some real world value to your online life. For a lot of you, Facebook is considered the platform for the college crowd. That is not necessarily the case, in fact the fastest growing segment on FB is the 50 plus crowd. And what a crowd it is!

I have heard Facebook referred to as the 800lb Gorilla of Social Media and that is a very fair assessment. Facebook has over 355 million users that stay on that site for over 19 minutes a day. That is insane! Most people only spend about a minute on most websites. Google only averages a few minutes… 19 is insane. To top that off about 50% of all their users are on FB EVERY DAY!And those users are active. For instance, there are over 2.5 billion photos uploaded to Facebook each month… that is not a typo. Are you getting the idea? There are more than ten times as many photos on FB as Flickr. Here are a few more stats:

  • More than 35 million users update their status each day
  • More than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
  • More than 3.5 million events created each month
  • More than 1.6 million active Pages on Facebook
  • More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
  • Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans

Add to this the fact that Facebook is ridiculously viral and it is not hard to figure out that if you want to be found online Facebook is a very good place to be.

How do I join?

OK, so we have established that Facebook is appealing. To join, couldn’t be easier. If don’t already have an account head over to Facebook


Fill out the big sign up form and you are done. One thing, make sure you are honest when filling out the forms. They are there for a reason, as you will see shortly.

I am here! Now what?

Well it is time to hook up with your friends. Which is simple enough…


But… what most people miss is the suggestion area. Remember all those questions you were asked when you signed up for FB, there was a reason for that. Facebook was profiling you! Those people they are suggesting to you have the same interest as you or are related to you somehow. They could be friends of friends or simply like the same movies as you. You should try to connect with as many people as you can. I am not going to get into the rules of Social Media but if you aren’t connected with people you are not communicating with them. In FB you connect with people by befriending them.
Another helpful hint is to make your personal page interesting. This involves customizing your wall, there are so many ways to do this, so I’ll leave the actual doing of it up to you but here are a few ideas.

  • Add a note- this is basically anything you want
  • Link to something with a description
  • Add a photo
  • Add a video
  • Add twitter updates
  • Add an entire blog

Best practices

I would recommend that you only upload a little bit of content at a time. Like a blog you don’t want to overload the users with too much stuff or it will simply be ignored. Also if you are into marketing or own your own business than I would recommend that you create a Facebook fan page. This is not that hard to do but there is surprisingly little information on how to do it. Here is a quick overview, go to your FB homepage look for the advertising link on the bottom of the page. After you click it you are taken to the root advertising page. Here you can buy ads but you can also create Facebook fan pages by clicking on the page tab.

Summary

So what exactly is the point? Well like all social media websites it is to connect with a lot of people. If you are a business owner, like I am, the general idea is to get traffic and eyeballs on your business. By connecting with people and staying ‘fresh’ in their minds they are more likely to think about you when they have need of your services. If you would like to connect with me here is the

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One Response to “Creating an online entity with Facebook.”

  1. [Blocked by CFC] unblock myspace said...

    Hey man I just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to write something worth my time to read. I am all over the internet and I see so much useless junk that is just written for the sake of putting something new on their page. It takes devotion to create good stuff, thanks for caring.

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