Getting Facebook traffic to Internet marketing offers was the Holy Grail that avoids most marketers.
Only those who dig into Facebook mechanics really understand its power. How do you break the code?
To put Facebook’s current rate of expansion into some kind of perspective-15,000 new users registered a day a year ago.
By the end of 2007, this figure amounted to over 100,000 new registrations every day and the site is expanding at a super-charged rate of 3 percent per week, according to the latest statistics presented by Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Perhaps you will be pleased to know that Zuckerberg also claims that the fastest growing demographic group of new Facebook users is in the 25-year-old group.
This would suggest a maturing of the Facebook community and the beginnings of a move away from the original bias towards those with a background in college and high school. This already proves to be a lucrative demographic for marketers.
Indeed, over 60 percent of registered Facebook users are now non-college students, and this figure is expected to rise to over 75 percent (50 million users) in the next six months.
Non-college students spend more money on the web than the so-called highly educated. This is money for marketers in the bank who can see Facebook with different eyes.
Facebook is currently attracting 70 billion page views per month and was the sixth most trafficked website in the USA, having recently surpassed eBay and is now rapidly closing on Google’s traffic figures.
This type of traffic adds up to a major marketing field for marketers who know how to connect to social networks.
You need to see this globally, as Facebook is not as focused on the USA as it used to be, with over 10 percent of Canadians now holding accounts, with similar levels in the UK.
If you then add that Microsoft paid $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook (which values the company at around $15 billion in total), you clearly have a picture of a company and a social networking model that is going very quickly.
It is clear that Facebook is a website and social community that enjoys phenomenal growth from a relatively close and deeply specialized background.
These numbers would also clearly indicate that Facebook could represent a potentially huge marketplace for any business or organization that can create advertising means that are effective with the website members. If you think this is only for internet marketers, you would be wrong.
Many marketers who used MySpace to pack their bank accounts have tried and failed to duplicate their success on FaceBook. The reason for this? They tried a cookie cutter approach to Facebook (members).
In other words, they argued that MySpace and Facebook are both social networking sites, so why not use the same tactics for both? This is wrong because the members of each site differ in social composition and have to be wooed differently.
Let’s just look at one of the free advertising options on the Facebook community site.
CREATING FACEBOOK PAGES
To create ” Pages, ” you need to go to the first screen to create? Social Ads?. You will be given the option of sending your visitor to pages on your website outside Facebook or the option of creating a new Page?
Creating a Facebook page is the obvious choice, because we will design the page that leads to our Facebook website.
Create such a page? Cost nothing and allow you to create a one-page mini-site about your business. It’s essentially a full one-page advertisement for your business.
When you first visit the Page, you will immediately see that there are three drop-down menu boxes at the top of the page. The first of these boxes is to list a home-grown business locally.
The drop down shows all the different types of businesses that you can list, such as Automotive, Banking, Cafe, Grocery etc. There are many of them to choose from.
The next drop lists companies by product or service. You’re going to want to focus on this. This is where you will probably focus your marketing efforts.
One of the categories that should meet your needs in this second drop?? Online Store?
This is the category in which most smart internet marketers promote their services! Remember that this is a free advertising tool, so it will certainly be worth making a little effort to take advantage of this resource.
I not only recommend that you use this category listing and create your own page, but that you build it as passive? As you can, a voice. In other words, don’t sell hard simply because you won’t outsmart Facebook veterans.
Instead, try to make your online store a place that is entertaining enough to attract visitors, rather than shouting at them that they must visit you. Shout and they’re gon na flag you as a spammer!
Make your page as interesting, engaging and exciting as possible. Can you do this by adding extra applications? To your page.
To your page. Add things like videos, photos, flash content, reviews and so on. Make your page stand out from others in your niche, but use common sense and good design.
As Facebook expands, there’s never been a better time to start building your page than right now. What’re you waiting for? You should act immediately!
