The popularity of social networking site Facebook has soared dramatically over the past year seeing it become the social site of choice for journalists, politicians, bloggers – and businesses. 

But what is in it for businesses? Pascal Fintoni, head of e-business at the North East Regional Portal, looks at how North East firms can use Facebook to reach new audiences.

Facebook has been predominantly a personal social network, but is becoming increasingly recognised by businesses as being a platform to reach new audiences. The average internet user spends three hours a week on social-networking sites, according to research organisation YouGov.

That adds up to six days a year, and makes social networking more popular than online banking, shopping or music downloads. And it’s not only young people who are switching on. Facebook’s fastest growing demographic is those aged 25-years-old and over.

Facebook itself boasts some impressive stats. It’s hooked more than 66 million users around the globe and an average of 250,000 new users register each day. If this rate of growth continues Facebook will have over 200 million active users by this time next year.

As well as the expected advertising deals, Facebook also offers various ways that you can promote your business. This includes creating pages for events, which allows you to invite other Facebook members to a real-life gathering; and pages for groups, which allows other users to join your group and receive updates and converse with you and other members. 

Facebook is also a great research and recruitment tool – you can check people out, see what their career history is like, who they associate with, even what their conduct might be like outside the office.

By setting up a profile or a page for a business, that business will become a member of the community and accessible to all Facebook members across the globe. A business profile can incorporate simple essentials such as contact details and office hours, as well as supporting business related posts, photo albums and blogs.

Once the profile is set-up, the next step is to invite contacts (who must be existing Facebook members) to become ‘friends’ with the business. These ‘friends’ will have more ‘friends’, who in turn will have more ‘friends’. It is this multiplier effect that means business information can be accessed by a potentially huge new audience.

It is essential to log in and make regular postings – leaving comments, event details and news stories will help to generate interest in your business profile and will keep your members up to date with your business activities.

It is also worth joining an appropriate Group. There are groups on Facebook for absolutely everything, but joining a group relating to your business, for example business, marketing or technology, may help you to make connections with other like minded companies/organisations.

Facebook does have privacy settings that helps you control how you share your information and who can see it - make sure you understand the privacy rules. Controversy has surrounded Facebook recently, particularly to do with security issues such as identity theft and phishing attacks but it’s all easily avoided with a little bit of knowledge and wisdom.

Facebook offers a great marketing opportunity so the only question you need to answer is will you seize the opportunity before your competitors?

For more advice and information visit www.webetopia.com

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