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Most internet marketers realize that social networking sites are an important part of the online business strategy. However many times if you ask these same people what their exactly strategies are for using these sites, they don’t really have much to say.

If you will be using Facebook to promote your online business, you need to understand that you absolutely have to have a clearly defined strategy in place.

Using social networking websites to promote your online business puts the reputation of your business on the line. You want other social networking sites to have a good image of your business and the only way to do this is to use these websites in the correct way.

Spamming the websites with your advertisements is definitely NOT the right way to go about this. People who are spammers and also come across to users as insincere are quickly exposed on these websites.

Many times people seem to forget that the primary purpose of social networking sites is to be social and not to directly sell! The members of these social networking communities respect new members that have something worthwhile to say and will add value to the community.

This doesn’t mean that you can not promote your products on these websites. Yes, they can become a good source of sales revenue. However the only way that you will get to this point is to first focus on building relationships.

The Facebook Strategies Guide will show you how to apply very specific strategies that will help you to create a winning Facebook Page or Facebook Group that can help you to take advantage of the viral effects of Facebook in order to grow your business.

This guide also explains why different types of businesses need to use somewhat different strategies on Facebook to become successful.

Aside from using Facebook to create new customers, you will also learn how to use Facebook to develop relationships with the top leaders of your industry. This is probably the most important secret to using Facebook because it is nearly impossible to achieve exponential growth if you do not have the industry leaders as your colleagues.

By following this guide to the unwritten rules of Facebook you will avoid all of the mistakes that Facebook newbies make while trying to become popular on Facebook. Not only can using Facebook the wrong way put your business’s reputation on the line, it can also result in you getting banned from Facebook!

The Facebook Strategies Guide is a six book series that was developed by internet marketing experts to guide you through the difficulties of learning to use this site to your advantage. Stop wasting time trying to figure things out on your own by guessing and get ahead of your competition by reading this guide.

A recent study by Comscore, the Internet information provider, indicates that over 20% web users have visited Facebook in December 2008.  Comscore has also noted a gradual demographic shift from college students to professionals aged 35 years or older in the number of Facebook users. Majority of these users are using Facebook for professional and business networking.

Facebook is blooming into a platform to conduct business deals and professional meetings. Hundreds of professional Facebook groups are created every day for online marketing and customer-centric   public relations campaigns. The line between social and professional networking is slowly blurring.

If you’re planning to use Facebook platform for professional networking, follow the 7 steps outlined below to separate your Facebook social life from the work life in the virtual world.

1. Create a professional profile. This is your second resume. Use resume writing techniques to polish up your existing Facebook profile. List your expertise and accomplishments in the “Write something about yourself” section. Uncheck everything in the “Looking for” section except Networking. 

2. Use business related information in the Personal Information section, including the business book that you have recently read, some quotes from top business leaders in your field, your favorite business related TV show , and business magazines that you frequently read.

3. In the About Me sub-section of the Personal Information section, elaborate on your past achievements and list skills that you used in the past to solve business problems.

4. Remove all beer drinking pictures with your college buddies and fun poking applications from your profile. If you were a speaker in some seminar and you have pictures, upload them to your profile. If you have pictures with business leaders or intellectuals in your professional field use those pictures instead of your spring break surfing pictures unless you are looking for networking with surfing professionals.

5. If you want to keep your Facebook social life, create a second profile for your work life. People who are migrating from college life to professional career will find it beneficial to keep the two profiles separate so that they can poke their college buddies and make business deals at the same time using the Facebook platform.

6. Start reading and publishing contents related to your industry in various online magazines and post links to interesting and informative online contents and tools in Facebook status. If you already have a blog, publish your blog RSS field in Facebook’s My Notes.

7. Select only a few dozen friends and keep in contact with them using Facebook email and chat. Check out the Facebook group they subscribe to and join those groups. Post thought provoking comments in those groups to make yourself more visible. Help others by offering solutions to their problems.

The important thing to keep in mind is that whatever you share in your Facebook account, it is visible to everybody in your network. So be careful about how you professionally project yourself to the world while using Facebook. While there are dedicated professional networking sites like LinkedIn, you can still use Facebook for establishing professional relationship and conducting business deals.

Facebook is the second largest social network on the web, behind only MySpace in terms of traffic. Primarily focused on high school to college students, Facebook has been gaining market share, and more significantly a supportive user base. Since their launch in February 2004, they’ve been able to obtain over 8 million users in the U.S. alone and expand worldwide to 7 other English-speaking countries, with more to follow. A growing phenomenon, let’s discover Facebook.

Facebook’s shares have already gone up significantly since the company’s early days. According to filings with the California Department of Corporations, Facebook’s common shares were priced at 78 cents in January of 2006. By May of that year, they had jumped to $8.05. In August of this year, they were $6.61. Incorporation filings in Delaware show that Facebook split its shares 4-to-1 in July of 2006 so on a split-adjusted basis the shares were priced at 19.5 cents in January 2006. That means Facebook’s sense of its own worth has risen by more than 33-fold in less than two years. Facebook hasn’t filed the price of its common shares following the Microsoft investment. But on October 18, if filed with the State of Delaware to split its stock four for one again.

History

Facebook is a social networking website that allows people to communicate with their friends and exchange information. Launched on February 4, 2004, Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, a former member of the Harvard Class of 2006 and former Ardsley High School student. Within months, Facebook and its core idea spread across the dorm rooms of Harvard where it was very well received. Soon enough, it was extended to Stanford and Yale where, like Harvard, it was widely endorsed. Before he knew it, Mark Zuckerberg was joined by two other fellow Harvard-students – Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes – to help him grow the site to the next level. Only months later when it was officially a national student network phenomenon, Zuckerberg and Moskovitz dropped out of Harvard to pursue their dreams and run Facebook full time. In August 2005, the Facebook was officially called Facebook and the domain facebook.com was purchased for a reported $200,000.

Availability

Unlike its competitors MySpace, Friendster, Xanga, hi5, Bebo, and others, Facebook isn’t available to everyone — which explains its relatively low user count. Currently, users must be members of one of the 30,000+ recognized schools, colleges, universities, organizations, and companies within the U.S, Canada, and other English-speaking nations. This generally involves having a valid e-mail ID with the associated institution.

Business & Funding

Given the situation other social networks on the web are facing, Facebook is in a good position financially. While it hasn’t managed to get acquired like its rival MySpace (despite some rumors about an $800m deal with Viacom), it’s been quite lucky in most aspects. For its initial funding, it received $500,000 from Peter Theil, co-founder of PayPal. A few months later, it was also able to get $13 million from Accel Partners, who are also investors in 15 other Web 2.0 startups, and $25 million from Greylock Partners, making their overall venture equal to approximately $40 million.

The Future

Facebook is a massively successful social networking service that grew to prominence in virtually no time. It’s not hard to see why: its features and tools are highly appealing, and Facebook users are extremely well networked in real life. Rumors of an acquisition continue to circulate, with some estimates putting the price in the billions of dollars. In the short term, however, Facebook plans to go it alone, continuing to build out one of the world’s most successful social networks.

For more details on Facebook visit www.halfvalue.com and www.halfvalue.co.uk

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In this article, I am going to go over the different between Facebook Ads and its predecessor Facebook Flyers. They are both great services that have really changed how people are advertising on the Internet. Let’s look in depth the changes since flyers.
Facebook Ads, formally Facebook Fliers are getting a lot of attention around the Internet. Since Facebook started offering advertising solutions, it seems their way of providing value to the marketer has improved with every update. At first, they had a program called Facebook Fliers. The basic concept of Facebook Fliers was you paid for per thousand impressions. While this was a good concept, it didn’t work as well as it way supposed to. The current program being used is called Facebook Ads, which has the option of paying per click or per impression. The targeting, pricing, and setup seemed to improve with Facebooks newest creation. The general consensus found with everyone I have spoke to is they are experiencing much better results using CPC versus CPM. If you think about it, if your visitor actually takes the time to read your ad, and then click it, they have to be interested.
Let’s look at the difference between Flyers and Ads:
With Facebook Flyers, this is what the user would view, with no impressions. Facebook first offered these as a way for students to get the word out about clubs, jobs, and other campus activities. After Facebook opened up Fliers to any marketer they realized they were going to have to switch it over to “Facebook Ads.” Notice on our 2nd image the ad says “Sponsored” at the bottom; this signifies that Facebook is being paid per click through the promoter.
Let’s think, what is really better, Ads or Flyers? Would you as a marketer and promoter rather pay per thousand impressions or pay per qualified click you receive? Well, lets look at the pros and cons of paying per click vs per thousand impressions.
First, an impression is just that, an impression. What are the chances that someone looking at their messages, groups, and comments is going to glance over and look at your advertisement? Probably not that good, out of 1000 impressions you could probably expect a 0.5%-1% click-through-rate or about 7.5 clicks. Now, let’s look at the other side of things. With Ads, you are only charged per click every time someone actually wants to visit your webpage. This means the user is qualified as being a real and prime lead for your offer.
In my opinion, being charged per click versus per thousand impressions is definitely the way to go. I would feel much more comfortable in paying for advertising knowing that I was only charged when a user actually wanted to see my ad. Sure, you are going to have the users that click the ad because they are bored or really just want to play around, but that is with any advertising.
Facebook Ads is great and really changing the way people advertise today on the Internet.

 

Internet marketing is a hard thing to do. You will need to work hard in order for you to effectively attract targeted traffic in your website. However, if you want an easier way to market your business website on the internet, you might want to consider marketing on Facebook.

First of all, Facebook is a social networking website that now has over 62 million active subscribers from all over the world. Most subscribers in Facebook are in the 18-25 demographics. So, if your business is targeting people between the ages of 18-25, Facebook is the perfect place to market your website.

So, how will you be able to market your website in Facebook?

Unlike other social networking websites, Facebook will be able to offer you a lot of tools that you can use in order to market your products or services as well as your business website more effectively and efficiently. With the number of people subscribing to Facebook each day, you will definitely generate a lot of targeted traffic to your website.

In Facebook, there are quite a lot of ways to market your products or services. In Facebook marketing, advertising is by far the most common way to market in Facebook.

Here, you will be able to purchase mass banner ads. You can also use flyers targeted to specific people. These flyer advertising can be purchased for as little as 5 dollars and it is already featured in the website.

If you are interested in advertising to featured groups or promotions, then you can take advantage of what is called Next Steps. This tool can be inserted in your homepage with links to a corresponding sponsored group.

You can also embed ads within your homepage’s news feeds.

Another way to advertise in Facebook is through word of mouth. Try asking your network of friends in Facebook if they are willing to advertise for you in their own network of friends in Facebook. Here, they will be the ones doing the advertising for you by recommending your products or services as well as your Facebook profile page and business website to their Facebook network.

You have to remember that word of mouth marketing is one of the best marketing strategies available. Try to remember that people are three to four times likely to buy a particular product or service if it is recommended by someone they know.

You can also market your products, services and business website on the notes section in Facebook. This particular tool acts almost like a blog. When you write or post something on the notes section, it will be sent out to all of your friend’s news feeds, which can be read by other people. This is a great way to get messages across.

These are some of the great ways to market on Facebook. By using some of these tools, you can be sure that you will be able to attract more people to visit your Facebook profile page and let them know what you have to offer.