Facebook: Overview of Facebook

Karl Kasca

Facebook is a huge source of potential visibility and engagement for your business on the Internet. Current statistics show that Facebook has over 200 million active users. Over two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college and the fastest growing demographic is 35 years old and older. Clearly Facebook is a great place to have a business presence if you do it the right way.

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- Note: Since there may be more info of interest/use on the page below, you should at least skim it quickly in addition to viewing the Video below.

Overview

Conclusion: Your company should have an active presence on Facebook. But the key word/concept is that it's absolutely necessary that your company business maintain an "active:" presence. Inactivity is the death-knell of Facebook groups/pages.

The tough question: Given that there are individual profiles, Groups, and Fan Pages, where should your presence be on Facebook?

Answer: You should certainly have an individual profile for yourself so you can connect with Friends and Family, but you should definitely start a Facebook Fan Page (also called a Facebook page) for your business.

Differences between Individual Profiles, Fan Pages, and Groups

Individual profiles: are for persons and are great for setting up profiles similar to those on your LinkedIn profile.

Fan Pages: are for businesses or organizations which wish to promote their business/organization on Facebook.

Fan Pages are very similar to individual profiles but are for businesses/orgs.Fan Pages are indexed by Google.

You don't have to be registered with Facebook to start a Fan Page.

Anyone can look at your businesses

Fan Page without having a Facebook account.

Downside: Updates to Fan Pages go to the Status Updates page and not to the Inbox, so it's possible that people may not see (or could miss seeing) your messages to them.

Groups: are for groups of people with common interests/causes.

Groups may be better for smaller, shorter-term issues which you're trying to promote.

It has been rumored that Groups may be phased out at some point if favor of the newly revitalized Fan Pages.

Although Groups allow the admin person to send a message to the inboxes of group members, this is limited to groups of 1,000 members.

Downside: If a group has over 1,000 members then a message can't be sent to the members.

IOP Recommendations:

Create an individual profile so you can connect with your Friends and Family, but...

Create a Facebook Fan Page so your buiness/company can engage others in Facebook.

Grab your business/company name for your Facebook page before others do (a "fan" of Coca Cola started a fan page with their name, so it's better for you to get your name first).

Video of Overview of Facebook

Resources

Facebook Statistics

Top Facebook Pages

Social Media Explorer: Facebook Group And Brand Page Best Practices

Search Engine Journal: Facebook Group vs Facebook Fan Page: What's Better?

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media
- Tips for Setting Up Your Fan Page.
- Scroll down for great list of resources/links.

ARTICLE DATE: 05/25/2009
REVISED DATE:

· LinkedIn - Overview of LinkedIn and the Power of LinkedIn
· Twitter: Overview and What it is
· Quickest Ways to Attract Visitors to your Website

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