Newsletter #135 Should Your Company Have a Facebook Page?

Created on Jul 29 2009 12:00AM

Feature Article

Facebook is the dominant social networking application of our time. According to marketing research company comScore, Facebook was used by 307 million unique visitors worldwide in April, comfortably ahead of MySpace with 127 million.

Love it or loath it, Facebook will be around for a while, so how can you best leverage it for your business? The Facebook Terms of Use prohibit organisations from having their own profiles, like individuals; however you can use a separate area called Facebook Pages for promotional purposes. Facebook Pages can be created by anyone with an individual profile.

It’s not obvious but currently you can create a company page, after logging to your Facebook account, by clicking on the Advertising link in the footer, choosing a category, naming a page and filling in other details. You can then share it with others so that they can become a fan of your organisation’s page. When they do, updates from your organisation’s page appear within their News Feed section the next time they login.

So what can you do with this newly created page?

• You can create events, and Facebook users can RSVP via the system. You can then edit the Guest List, update fans and manage the event details.
• If you want to advertise your event or anything else on Facebook you can easily compose an advertisement that you can pay for in a similar way to Google AdWords, either cost-per-click or cost-per-impression.
• You can add notes or comments and/or start discussions on subjects you are interested in.
• Photos and videos can be added and you can allow visitors to do the same.
• If you have an email newsletter or blog you can import that directly into your Page via an RSS feed.
• There is a tab named Boxes that allows you to create your own mini-applications using HTML or Facebook’s FBML and place them on your Page. You can use Boxes to do things like create newsletter signup forms, downloads of documents and more. You can also use applications developed by others – for example a restaurant may use a reservations application.

There is a huge amount of flexibility in how you setup your organisation’s Facebook Pages; what you show is only limited by your imagination and time.

But will it help bring you more business and develop your brand? I can’t give you a definitive answer of course but while researching this article I have become a Facebook member and developed a Page for Netinsites. My reasoning for doing so was that it only took about an hour to do the initial setup and it’s free. What have we got to lose? Any custom that comes from this minimal effort would be a bonus.

So if you are a Facebook member check us out and perhaps become a fan of Netinsites.

Hot Tips

Newbies

PDFOnline allows you to convert most documents to PDF online and for free (up to 2MB). Just go to the site and select the document from your computer and enter your email address. The completed document will be emailed to you. http://www.pdfonline.com/convert-pdf/

Power Users

PDFOnline also offer a couple of other functions that may be of interest to Power Users:

1. You can add a button to your Website so that visitors can create a PDF of your Webpage: http://www.pdfonline.com/web2pdf/index.asp
2. You can email documents to an address and you can retrieve them in PDF format via an iPhone, Blackberry, laptop or any device. http://www.pdfonline.com/iphone/index.htm

Interesting Sites

Fark.com, the Web site, is a news aggregator and an edited social networking news site. Every day Fark receives 2,000 or so news submissions from its readership and puts a number of them every day on the home page. Here's an example: "The nation that once ruled over half of the world and which stood alone against the Nazis now requires proof of age before it will let you buy a pizza cutter." with link to a Telegraph article. Love it!

Read the About FARK page http://www.fark.com/farq/about.shtml#What_is_Fark.3F  if you want another laugh. http://www.fark.com/

InsiteFul Quotes

"Put inertia on your side whenever you can - it's a powerful force." John Audette, Publisher

You can see our other Quick Quotes on the front page of www.netinsites.com; just refresh the page to see another one randomly selected from our database. Great for presentations or times when you want to appear to be a techno-dude(ss)!

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Best wishes

Alex Garden