Facebook

You may have asked yourself what is the big deal with Facebook.  Maybe you’ve said, or heard it said, that it’s just another one of those social networks that people waste their time with.  Is that accurate?

Read this page and then see what you think.

Social networking has already held up the promise of being the next biggest marketing arena in town.  However, the rules are far different on social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter for marketers than they are for conventional formats like television ads or direct marketing campaigns.  A more subtle approach is required because of the policy that many of the social networks do not allow direct solicitation of their members.  Even so, you will soon see that making money online on a place like Facebook can be done, just not as directly as with other types of revenue-making sites.

BE GENUINE

Let’s start with the 1st and most important rule of any and all social media sites.  Perhaps a better term would be:  Be Transparent.  And, the truth is, this applies to any area of business.  It applies more in today’s socially driven era more than ever.

One of the ways that marketing on Facebook differs tremendously from other traditional types of sites is that authenticity counts.  You can’t just put up a Facebook page and expect to gain fans or to be befriended, unless you have something to offer people in these networks. Generally, the currency is yourself and how interesting and how much you contribute to the community.

Set up a profile that shows who you are and why people would like to befriend you, and they will be more likely to associate with you.  Place tons of links and spam about your commercial ventures before generating a personal relationship with your audience and you’re either likely to get ignored or to lose friends.  In the worst cases, the administrators of the site might suspend your account if you actively solicit people via Facebook email like you would during a regular Internet marketing campaign.  There are some things you can do on these sites to make money, and there are some that are clearly against the terms of service.  Spamming people’s inboxes for commercial purposes is strictly forbidden.

HOW DOES THIS APPLY TO MY BUSINESS

Obviously, you have to start by generating traffic to your profile.  From there, you have a number of social strategies to gain attention from your friends and to have sales opportunities.  In some cases, like the Marketplace, an application that allows you to buy and sell things to users of Facebook, you are allowed to sell something directly on Facebook.  Other times, you are going to have to get creative and learn ways to make things that people on Facebook want, like applications, and use them to generate income.

There are also Social Ads, a place to buy advertising for your products and services online.  You can even use them to advertise affiliate offers that you are marketing.  You can use leverage from one advertising program, like Google, and combine it with Social ads to get more traffic to your offers and get some clicks too.

THE MARKETPLACE

You can load this application from the main Facebook page via the toolbar at the bottom of your Facebook interface.  It will allow you to add items via geographical location to the Marketplace.  There are different areas in the Marketplace.  There is an “Items for Sale” area, Housing, Vehicles, and Jobs.  You can add your own listing to any one of these areas, but the audience will be filtered by geographical results.

LOCAL SALES

Your results and the results that others see are based on the geographical region you put in your profile. This can be changed to view a wider geographical region of sales, but for the most part, they will be local sales that you see, and you have to deliberately change this setting to see results from other geographical regions. That means that if you are a local business, it can be a great way to advertise some of your offerings. If you want buyers from all over the globe, it’ll be harder to use this part of Facebook for your offerings. However, there are other ways to get people back to your sites to market to them later.

ADVERTISE YOUR LOCAL EVENTS TOO

Maybe you want to know approximately how many people might attend an offline event, but don’t know how. Add it to your Facebook event page and then notify people of the event via email. There is an option for people to RSVP, and that will give you some idea of which of your online friends is expecting to attend the event. It’s also a good idea because, if your friend clicks that he/she is attending or may be attending, it shows up in his/her status feed, and their friends see it too. Thus, you automatically notify more people through advertising it on Facebook via an events page. It’s also a great way to spell out the details of the event and to keep everyone updated. Is there an entrance fee or is it free? Will you be giving away prizes? Anything you can add to the event to bring people in is a good idea.

THREE WAYS TO ADVERTISE

1.    Sell It
Pretty self-explanatory. You are going to put a price on some item and try to sell it. There are multiple categories that you can choose from to keep your sales item more highly visible.

2.    Give It Away
Used for pets, but could be used to give away a freebie that is associated with your business. Just because you’re not selling something doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try to collect more friends or traffic back to your profile via this way.

3.    Ask For It
Generally, this is for buyers who are wanting a particular item. It isn’t for selling things, but it’s still in the Marketplace because people may have trouble finding what they want. You can check these ads to see if you have something someone else wants and then sell it to him/her.

WAYS TO USE THE MARKETPLACE

Even if you are selling real estate, you can go and post a ad in housing. If you are a car dealer, you could use the vehicles area to sell a car. Any other type of item will most likely go in the “Items For Sale” area. Try to stick to the terms of service and only offer products that don’t get your account banned.

SOCIAL ADS

Advertising is a viable way to get traffic to your sites and offers, and Facebook has its own version of advertising called Social Ads. These advertisements can be very finely tuned due to the demographic data that Facebook collects on all of its users. You can use social ads to advertise your own offerings or applications on Facebook that you create. There is no restriction to advertising your own offerings even though it’s a social network site. You do have to pay for the service, and it is one of the ways in which Facebook generates income, but it also can generate income for you too if properly used.

CPC AND CPM

All you have to do is to set up a campaign, either a CPC (cost-per-click) or CPM (cost-per-impression) model. In the CPC model, you will pay an agreed upon price for each click that is generated from your advertising. In the CPM model, you will pay per every 1000 impressions, which is how many times your ad was loaded onto a Web page. Either way, you can set up great advertisements within a budget that is suitable for you.

UTILIZE FACEBOOK’S DEMOGRAPHIC DATA

Next, you will want to figure out who you will target with your campaign. You can set various demographic restrictions on your ad, which would be nearly impossible to do elsewhere. That’s because Facebook collects all of this data and serves up ads based on who you tell it to serve, not based on keywords or large groups of undefined or unknown people. When you create an ad campaign in Facebook, you can be assured that it is being served up to people in the demographic you have targeted, thereby increasing the potential for income.

MAKE MONEY ADVERTISING WITH FACEBOOK

In addition to advertising your website, your links, and your affiliate offers, you can also advertise your events and applications within Facebook. This will generate a lot more attention for these areas and can produce income if more people attend your event or if your application goes viral. At some point, you can sell the application and generate income that way too.

Social ads appear to the left of everyone’s profile. They show up exactly how you tell Facebook to post them, and they are very popular with users. As long as you only advertise things that are in accordance with Facebook’s policies, it is an ethical way to promote your offerings on Facebook without offending anyone by spamming.

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