Social Marketing The benefits of social marketing for a business can be huge, as it allows a business to gain popularity by using the different types of social media available, such as blogs, video and photo sharing sites, social networking sites and social bookmarking websites.

The top six benefits are:

Increased visibility
Better targeting
More effective than PPC
Better return on investment (ROI)
You don't need special skills
You can start and participate at any time

Social marketing is an effective and cost efficient method of building your brand and your web site.

Popular Social Media

Consider using popular social media tools, websites and/or widgets to connect with your customers on a more personal level. Some popular examples include You Tube (video sharing), Flickr (image sharing), Blogs (blogging), Twitter (microblogging), Facebook (social networking), Bebo (social networking), Friendster (social networking), Linked In (business networking) and Digg (news sharing) and Delicious (social bookmarking). Read an introduction to social media or watch this fun 'Social Media in Plain English' video clip for practical examples on how it can work.

A Facebook Fan Page for your Business We have created a "Fan Page" for our business on Facebook rather than a regular account. There are lots of reasons to do this but these reasons were the most motivating us:

People can see the page without logging into Facebook first
We can link directly to the Fan Page from our official website
People can become fans without needing us to approve them first
There is no restriction on the number of fans we can have in the future

We have used a different name for our Fan Page from our personal account to avoid confusing the Facebook Search Engine (and to avoid confusing ourselves in regards to whether we are looking at the account or page when making updates).

Would you like to sign up to our Facebook Fan Page? Visit this link to "become a fan":

It's free and anyone can join.

Facebook has become an incredible online community that is a gold mine for anyone interested in advertising or creating brand awareness. Not only does Facebook have over 100 Million active users, but it has many great ways for business owners to reach these users in a legit way.

1. Facebook Profiles You will need to create a profile if you wish to create a group or page. You can talk about your business and plug your website URL. You should start adding friends to your profile each day. The Current limit is 5,000 friends. Now that you have your profile created and optimized you can create a Facebook group or even better a Facebook page, both of which we will go over below. Follow this link to start your Facebook Profile http://www.facebook.com/

2. Facebook Groups Groups were available before pages and are more of a place for users to discuss topics such as graphic design or cars. Its almost like a mini forums. The benefits for group owners is they are very viral and you can bulk invite all you friends to join your group. The problem is they are not indexed and not available to view unless you are a member of Facebook. You may like to create a Facebook group for your business, but honestly Facebook pages are really where its at and you should focus your efforts on your page instead of your group.

3. Facebook Pages Pages are a good option for small or local businesses that want to establish a presence on Facebook. Like groups, they’re another free and easy way to do viral marketing. The main benefit of "pages" is that they are indexed by Google and available to view even if you are not a member. When creating your page make sure you use your most important keyword as the page name so that it shows as the page title, making your page more SEO friendly. You may like to fill out your Facebook page with all relevant information about your business, website URLS and so on. Whenever some one becomes a fan of your page it shows up in their profile and looks something like this: Person’s Name, Became a fan of Your Business Name. This is the easiest way to to give your page a good jump start. There is no limit to the number of fans that you can have. So if you wanted to focus on one thing I would highly recommend creating a Facebook page, instead of a group. Follow this link to create a page http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

Facebook Pages Product Guide: View the user guide from Facebook

Tips for a successful page:
- Create a page that is useful for viewers.
- Make friends and build your fan base by starting conversations.
- Provide good content by starting Facebook groups to interact and engage with your Fans.
- Promote your Facebook business page.
- Drive traffic to and from your blog or website by promoting your website URL and monitor your sites web statistics results.
- Decide whether to use paid advertising or not.
- You also want to add your URL to your email signature, and use the free badges and widgets Facebook provides that you can add to your website.

4. Facebook Applications The introduction of Facebook Applications is probably the most popular move made by Facebook to date. They released their API so developers and business owners could collaborate to create fun and cool applications that engage users. The applications created so far vary in purpose; some are games, some are useful and some are directly related and tied into businesses. You may like to check out the Facebook Developers page. Once you have an application created, be sure to add it to your profile, group and page.

5. Facebook Ads These are a great way to really increase your exposure using highly targeted CPC and CPM Advertising. You can target users by age, gender, location, interests, and even attach friend-to-friend interactions about your business to your ads. The best part is you can either advertise an external website or a Facebook page. So if you created a page for your business and you are looking to build up your facebook fan page you can do so easily by driving the traffic form your advertisements directly to your page.

6. Facebook Events This is a free application developed by Facebook that anyone can use to promote marketing events, sponsored parties, or even product launches, transactions, or company milestones. When you create an event, it gets a fully-featured page, much like a group, that includes a wall, discussion, photos, videos, and links. You can invite all of your friends to the event; friends you invite will receive a special notification requesting their RSVP. You can also add admin's to the event, who can also invite all of their friends. Facebook Events makes it easy to get the word out to hundreds of people, manage your guest list, and build community around your upcoming event.