In our past issue we went over a few tips for money making on Facebook. In this issue we are going to talk about using Facebook marketing and Facebook Groups for your business.

This Facebook Group Application has just recently been revived by the social networking site, allowing it to be more efficient and beneficial for its users. As a strong point, the Facebook Group Application can not be used for professional purposes in order to build a target market. A group can be kept secret or open should the moderator chooses to do it. With Groups, one is allowed to chat, send emails and post photos to a given group of individuals.

While the Groups feature has its share of strengths, it also has some limitations when compared to Fan and Business pages on Facebook. To get the most out of this application, some businesses either assign a staff to take care of it using a personal account or be cautious when including contacts to their Facebook business page. Even the business page owner can do this task directly.

Let’s quickly look at a few ways to apply social media management and using the Facebook Group Application to your advantage:

- As Connection to other Industry Figures

Whatever industry you are a member of, a good conversation on the key points and issues of the community is one way to build your reputation whether through official community forums or through casual discussions in a medium like Facebook. For other business owners, this could indicate talking to competition and disclosing things that they aren’t expected to. Even so, they’d be amazed to know that a lot other online marketers are willing to talk about what they know. So don’t be afraid to talk about and moderate a closed or open discussion (whichever you prefer) with other online marketers. It might just be a peg for a prospect to choose you later on.

- As An Assistance Group

Do you have several queries concerning marketing campaigns and other aspects of operating a small business? In case you need to discuss some internal issues with the admin, how do you go about it? With Facebook for Business, you can easily do this with as much openness or privacy as you want.Your team will be thankful for the written support. It is also a way to celebrate small milestones in the department you belong to or with the company at large.

To Start A Corporate Social Responsibility

Are you organizing a fundraising activity? Or what if you want to connect with the charity or advocacy group that you’re organization is involved in? Facebook will give your efforts a strong sense of accountability. Not only that, it will also help you become more organized should there be a need for some volunteers from your team. Making the discussion open will invite other individuals to connect and share their own views.

As A Way To Keep Up With Staff Members Not all sectors need a closed office. Besides conducting meetings, businesses also need ways to quickly and easily keep in touch with each member of the team. Any issue that need to be handled within the staff can be done online with the use of Facebook Groups. Discussions can be done through chats as well as posting of updates at the wall.

Make sure you look for your next issue soon. We are going to talk about the right way to interact with you Facebook friends & fans.

Are you already using Facebook for Business? If not, what’s keeping you? You can learn more tips about Facebook marketing here.

In our earlier issue, we explored the techniques on how to get individuals to like your Facebook business page. Today, we will be talking about using advertising campaigns, competitions and give-aways to pull in more fans.

Utilizing a social media management site solely for promotions, contests and giveaways is a wonderful way to gauge whether these said advertising tactics is working for your company. Based on the given analytics provided by the website, you can determine how much traffic the tactics were able to produce during its run.

This can be a double win situation too because making the promotion exclusive will get a new set of Facebook fans which is crucial to the progress and maintenance of the company’s social network page. Contests give a touch of thrills to your site.

Now that you know this, let’s move on to how you can implement Facebook marketing and begin making traffic-pulling contests and promos.

First of all, make certain all essential contest mechanics and updates are accessible to the Facebook users only. Be certain that you don’t promote it in your newsletters, social networks or even in the official website. You can however say that the contest is exclusive for Facebook users only. Additionally, the mechanics have to be clear and simple. Overcomplicating matters would make contestants think you’ve set the bar too high and can discourage them from joining.

As an early warning, contests, incentives and promotions tend to be costly as the applications needed to develop and run it are also expensive. For example, the application Wildfire has a $5 setup fee and charges $0.99 for each day the campaign runs. In addition to that, Facebook has demanding rules when it comes to running competitions inside their network. In general terms, almost all competitions are not even allowed. You won’t be able to post an official contest in your Facebook wall.

However, you may qualify for an exception. In order for a contest to be applicable, the company must be able to purchase $10,000 worth of Facebook ads in a length of three months.

To be able to cut costs, there are plenty of business applications which can assist you in creating a contest for your Fan page. Wildfire features all the necessary tools to create photos, videos, and graphic entries to develop a contest campaign. Not only that, these tools also allow you to tailor-make. You can edit campaign mechanics, deadlines of contests, the number of votes allowed per person and the level of response of your network. To make navigation very easy, consider placing a contest widget in your Fan Page so the members will be able to link straight to a mini site. You can also construct your contests and sweepstakes using tools like Vertigo and Strutta.

To really attract a lot of participants, make sure you present incentives which people can’t refuse. As an example, Regus, a workplace supplier ran a contest campaign and offered a fully furnished office for the photo entry that showed the messiest work area. But you shouldn’t stop there. More one of a kind prizes include dinner with celebrities or a chance to attend a star-studded party.

A successful contest will generate a lot of leads for the company and will help them connect with their consumers at a very personal level despite the online medium. Despite the expenses and additional effort, projects such as these are really worth it if only for the brownie points you win with present and potential customers.

Be sure to read our next issue of Facebook for Business.We will talk about a very interesting topic: Making money on Facebook!

Utilizing Facebook for Business and taking advantage of ads from the site are two best ways to benefit in Internet marketing. Learn more about Facebook marketing here.

In the last issue of Facebook for Business we talked about how to create a page for your business on Facebook. For this issue, we will talk more about attracting new customers for your business through Facebook.

As we have discussed before, it’s important to establish online presence through social media management sites particularly Facebook even if your company already has an official website.

Why is that, you mat ask? The answer is simple! That is because Facebook is more reachable and user friendly to other people compared to any business website. Companies that seem too corporate for anyone to look into will be able to give a sense of approachability while start up businesses that have no websites can also gain some credibility.

Aside from this, a Facebook page allows companies to be more interactive with present and potential customers, getting their feedback for everything from service to contest mechanics. While it may seem dangerous because you can be given both positive and negative feedbacks, companies should not be afraid because Facebook is a tool that can be easily moderated.

For instance, if you have a mind to; you can retain the best feedback and just hide the rest. By doing this, potential customers will perceive the benefits of making use of your service or products. Such feedback adds a touch of authenticity to the company, and will most likely entice the potential customer reading it.

In addition to that, customers who are fed up of the usual online marketing tactics such as newsletters and ads will most likely go to Facebook to have their concerns answered. Having a Facebook page will give your business access to over 500 Million users without even having to buy e-mail addresses like what traditional e-mail marketing resort to.

Interaction isn’t limited to Facebook updates and wall posts though. You can also make use of the photos and notes feature. If you are using a Fan page which is recommended for businesses (rather than a personal profile page), you can modify the posting ability of your Facebook fans which allow them to post links, videos, and photos.

This way, potential customers will be able to see how other customers use the product or service. As mentioned, you can make your community more interactive perhaps even as successfully executed by Pampers. Facebook Fanpage. There are also some companies like the well-known Ben and Jerry’s that go as far as using customer polling. This gives customers a sense of power with regards to their products, which in turn will give them a sense of ownership and acceptance.

You can also let your customers know about your company’s promos, special prices and discounts using Facebook. This is exactly what the company rushIMPRINT did. The page easily leads back to the company’s official website as well as their contact details. Other businesses even offer exclusive deals to their customers through Facebook.

If you’re implementing Facebook marketing, this is a very good way to determine whether your page is effective or not in attracting customers. Several gifts or rewards can be given exclusively to Facebook members who are not reachable through email, Twitter or your business site.

Other companies such as Baskin Robbins develop and use a Facebook application to make their Facebook page more interactive and enticing to customers. They offer deals such as ‘Buy One, Take One’.

The key to an effective Facebook page is to use it with a sense of fun and a good level of interaction. You should also differentiate your company from the rest of the market. If used this way, you’ll quickly get a nice return for your simple work.

Check out for the next issue soon. We will discuss more details about creating a Fan Page for your business using Facebook.

Part of Facebook marketing is to be able to communicate with fans without any hype. Get more info about using Facebook for Business here.