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Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past 4 years, and my dear readers certainly have not, you already know how popular and widely used Facebook is today.

Just a couple of years back, and you had to relentlessly encourage family and friends to join this social network (probably not long after others had convinced YOU to join). Nowadays, it’s rare to find someone who isn’t on Facebook.

At last count, Facebook had over 350 million users, and this number is continuing to grow as those final stragglers jump in. Facebook overtook MySpace as the number 1 social networking website on the planet early in 2009, and is now just behind Google in terms of online traffic. So it’s not hard to understand just how important Facebook marketing has become for websites and brands everywhere.

It’s A “No Pitch” Zone

One of the most critical things to remember about social media is that they are NOT places to blatantly or endlessly pitch your brand, product or service. Do this, and you won’t be gaining any favor from most social media users, will get largely ignored, and may even receive bad reviews.

Social media is actually better used for building relationships with potential customers or clients in the market. How can you do this? Start by:

• Post helpful information and links that helps them solve a problem.

• Personally chat with them to assist with problems or answer concerns.

• Create lots of content addressing the needs of users.

The bottom line –you want to be seen as genuine and helpful. This way, word will spread that you’re the “real deal”…and before you know it, people will soon become interested in what you have to provide in terms of products and services.

So the real nitty gritty of what you have to offer shouldn’t be shared on social networking sites such as Facebook. Instead, share helpful information in the form of teasers that will interest people enough to ask questions and wonder if there’s more. Offering free stuff is always a good tactic for garnering attention, too!

Marketing On Facebook

The great thing about Facebook is that from the outset, it has encouraged all users to use the website as a means of sharing information and marketing whatever they please. As a result, it has developed many ways for users to do this. You are not obliged to use every single one of them, but a combination of them can only improve your Facebook marketing.

Fan Pages

This is probably THE marketing tool out there on Facebook. On its website Facebook describes Pages as “a public Profile that enables you to share your business and products with Facebook users.” It is specifically designed for promoting a business and everything it has to provide. People can then become a Fan of your page and when they do this, they let their friends know that they’ve become a Fan of your page via their News Feed. The potential for your Page to gain a lot of popularity in a small period of time is great.

Events

Create events to be held at a certain date and time. Depending on your business type, they can be local, physical events, or virtual ones, for an international audience. The best part about creating an event on Facebook is that it can go viral, and before you know it, people will be attending your event in droves. It can be any one of the following:

• Seminar: It should be introductory and free but you could promote a paid one too.

• Webinar: A seminar conducted online which anyone in the world can join.

• Product/Service Launch: If you’re about to launch a new product or service, this is a good way to gain attention.

Advertising

Facebook finally introduced an advertising service about a year ago where people can put ads promoting their website or their Facebook Page and they Pay Per Click (PPC) or Impression (CPM). (It works in about the same way as Google Adwords.)

Not only can you target your ads to certain geographical locations, but given the nature of Facebook you can additionally attach your ads to various social actions. So, if you are a wedding photographer and wanted to promote your services, your ads could be set up to appear only to females between the ages of 24 and 30 and whose relationship statuses indicate they are “engaged.”

Embrace Facebook

If you want to market your website online, you’re doing yourself a grave injustice if you aren’t using Facebook marketing as one of your key strategies. Just be careful not to get caught up in it too much, or hire someone to assist you in your Facebook tactics, because it can become a very time consuming activity!