Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Assignment 5: Facebook as a Marketing tool

Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with friends and family, but companies can also benefit from using the opportunities offered by Facebook. I found four different websites that offer some advice on how companies can use Facebook to market their products and broaden their client base.

The first site I found: The Facebook Marketing Bible: 24 Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook. I found this site to very informative about Facebook and offered good advice to marketers considering Facebook. One statement I found interesting was on whether Facebook is right for your company.

“Inherent in the current state of Facebook is a culture of transparency that devalues and ignores inauthenticity. If you’re afraid to show the real people behind your campaign, that’s okay–but save your time and money and go somewhere beside Facebook.”

Besides discussing whether Facebook is right for your company, the site also suggested using Facebook groups as a way to build a strong customer base and market your company. A company can post discussion topics and photos to promote business and inform others of an event or new product associated with your company.

Other than listing ways how Facebook can be beneficial for companies, other articles I found during my research on this topic suggested Facebook and other online networking site are becoming such a useful tool that communities are getting involved to inform other of their importance.

For example, the Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce offered a seminar on social media and gave reasons why businesses should get involved. Most of the reasons are similar to why companies should work with Facebook.

According to Vicki Parry, marketing manager at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center, people use Facebook and other social media to “Connect and engage with current and potential customers and increase awareness about products and services.”

It is interesting to see how communities are getting involved with spreading the word about how helpful Facebook can be to companies. The third site I found was structured the same as the first. It list about 32 different ways a company should use Facebook to attract business.

This site listed tips like: “Share useful articles and links to presentation” and use “valuable resources that interest customers and prospects on your wall, to establish credibility”. Another important tip is to combine Facebook with other social media tools like Twitter. For example, when someone asks question on Twitter, you can respond in detail in a blog post and link to it from Facebook.

Even though the pervious sites I mentioned listed helpful tips about Facebook, I found another site that was even more helpful for companies who are deciding to use Facebook. This site lists 100 articles on how companies can use Facebook. The site features articles on targeting the right demographic to how-to guides. It was list some dangers of Facebook, which could also be useful for a company to know.

So if any businesses are considering working with Facebook they should check out any of the sites I have listed above.

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