Facebook Oppurtunities
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn have become more of a business round table rather than a cafe shop online for friends. Facebook has put forth a viable and affordable alternative to shared hosting. Instead of blogging or publishing a personal website, people are increasingly getting inclined towards using something like Facebook to fulfill that role. Features like this can assist a lot along with
SEO of website and
maintenance of the Search Engine Optimisation.
Question of utmost concern that arises here - How would Facebook assist my business? Some of out of the various ways are -
Facebook Pages » Facebook "Pages" which were created to give businesses their own profile on Facebook. Pages render an identity to a business. With a Page, those interested and following your brand can become "fans", and when they do so, all their friends will see this. Photos, videos, information about company, custom applications, all can be uploaded on your Page. All activity on Pages gets posted back to your Mini Feed for all your friends to see.
Groups » Groups on Facebook are similar to Pages, but are meant to be built around a group of people rather than an individual business or brand. The difference being that this feature does not have "become a fan" feature, neither does it share as much information with users' friends as users interact. You can use the groups to expand your database, join other groups in a similar industry which then allows you to network with a targeted market and you can ask the creator of other groups to message their members and do the same for them. But yes, you can also post photos, links and other information, as well as being able to message your whole group at one time.
Applications » Facebook has a very powerful API that you can have developers write software for to help promote your business on Facebook. Applications give you full power to say or promote anything you want about your business, and use the social tie-ins provided by Facebook to do this. For instance, Visa created the 'Visa Business Network' application, which takes information about users and allows them to better network with other small business owners.
Advertising » Facebook has a powerful advertising engine that enables businesses to specify a specific demographic target, see how many people that demographic will hit, and advertise to that demographic.
Polls » Facebook Polls are great for those who are looking to get a quick answer about a particular feature they'd like to implement, or just to achieve information and opinions from a specific demographic.
Facebook Connect » Facebook Connect enables your website to easily integrate with Facebook. Through this, you can integrate Facebook into your log in process, retrieve user's friend information, and even post data back to user's Mini Feed so all their friends can see their activity.