Facebook flags business

By Linda Gross

I’m enrolled in a Social Media conference for the month of May. Yes, I said month. It has over 20 high-profile speakers who will be speaking to 2200 people scattered all over the United States on topics such as facebook, building community, twitter-ology and more. The speakers are scheduled during the day – something many attendees won’t beable to be attend at the time, but all the speeches and discussions will be recorded and available to any registrant, at any time.

Welcome to Social Media and the power of new tools which allow you to GET clients and INTERACT with them on their time schedule – not yours. It’s just one of the ways Social Media is improving the way business is conducted. And one of the topics we will be discussing throughout the summer as we take a look at how social media is being used by those in rural communities to help their business, and their community.

I will launch a new category for News N Views called Social Media & You.  Here I will post what I learn through the month long conference and any other insights and tips I find along the way which can help you and your business use Social Media. Here’s a pre-conference discussion which popped up on Linked In about the use of facebook for Business.

The question asked was, “Why are so many company TV ads sending folks to their FB page instead of their website?

According to Michael Stelzner, Executive Editor at Social Media Examiner

“Those commercials are not designed to drive people to the company website (where the perception is the consumer will experience a pitch), but rather to the company’s community.

Because the advertisers know that more than 425 million people are on Facebook, it is a frictionless way for them to begin a relationship with consumers.

Once they are on the fan page they can discover more about the products. ”

Facebook is a wonderful platform for businesses to connect with their audience. Why? Mari Smith who is a leading expert on Facebook and Social Media offers these statistics to consider:

1) There are over 200 million registered users on facebook and they are projecting 500 milion users by 2011 (or sooner.)

2) Alexa rates FB #4, meaning it is the 4th most trafic’d website in the world.

3) It has the largest photo sharing platform with more than 40 million photos a day being uploaded. It’s bigger than Flickr

4) The fastest growing demographic on FB are the 30-year olds. If you are one who thinks this is just for 18-and-under….think again. It is 30 plus, professionals. A good demographic when it comes to business development.

5) It has rigourous terms of use- (which means it does not have quite the clutter of other formats, and makes it viable as a business tool)

Are YOU using facebook for your business?