The vast majority of Facebook fan pages carry the same, standard “vanilla” look. You’ve got a wall, info tab, pictures, video and events. Every once in a while you will come across a page that stands out from the others. Perhaps they have a custom landing page, or some type of graphical box which has an offer. Facebook doesn’t make it very easy to learn how to add that functionality, and it took me quite some time to learn the technique.

What is FBML?

FBML is Facebook’s version of HTML, the language that web pages are written in. For the most part, a knowledge of HTML is all that is needed to utilize the functionality of the Static FBML application. This particular application, which was created by Facebook and can be added to your pages, allows you to create a “web page” within a tab or box that you can attach to your page. Sound complicated? It really isn’t, once you dig in and get started.

How do find the Static FBML application and install it

Like any other application, Static FBML can be found by using the search box anywhere on Facebook. Simply type in: Static FBML and you should see results similar to these (see image below)

Facebook search results for Static FBML

In the results list you will find listings for both Applications and Pages. You are looking for the Application so click on that.

Once your on the page for the Static FBML application, you will look for the link to “add application to my page” which should be at the top left of the screen, under the logo for the application. Clicking the link brings up a popup window which allows you to select the page you’d like to add it to. Keep in mind, you can only add application to pages which you are an administrator for.

After you have added the app, pull up your Facebook fan page and click on the + sign in the nav bar above where you can enter wall messages. There should now be an option to add a new FBML tab.

Here is where things get a little tricky. Now you have a new tab called “FBML” on your page but it is blank, and there doesn’t appear to be a way to add content to it. Generally clicking on the pencil icon on any tab allows you to edit options for it, however with this particular app that only gives you the ability to delete the tab, which isn’t what we are looking for.

Editing your new FBML tab

Instead, head to your page’s administrator section (e.g. return to the wall page, click “Edit this page” from the list of options under your logo).

Click the edit button and you will be brought into “edit mode” for the Static FBML application itself. Here you can adjust the title that will show up on the tab, as well as drop in the text and/or HTML/FBML code you’d like displayed when someone clicks on the tab.

From here you can be creative. I like to generate some HTML code using an editor and copy/paste the code into this box. Some elements like video embeds you may have issues with. There are workarounds using Facebook’s own FBML specific embed tabs which will be covered in another article on the site. But basic formatting, tables, images and links will all work in the Static FBML tab you have just added to your page.

Click save changes and go back to your Facebook page wall. You should have a new tab called “Sample FBML Tab” that when you click on it displays “Hello, World” in a H1 heading.

In addition to the tab, you now have a copy of this FBML output inside your “Boxes” tab. This is another one of those hidden “features” that Facebook has added, and it is important to note because the only way to move this FBML content to your page’s wall is by first going to the Boxes tab, and clicking the pencil next to the box and selecting “Move to Wall.” No, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but thats how it works for now.

This is obviously a simple customization, but you can create complex tables and add imagery that will stand out for your visitors. Here are just a few examples of the customizations I’ve seen done with the Static FBML application.

Click to visit

Click to visit

Click to visit

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As  Thanksgiving and the biggest shopping day of the year approaches, businesses are turning to social media to help promote the deep discounts they will be offering on Black Friday. Here are a few examples I’ve seen, as well as some ideas for how these campaigns could be improved.

Toys “R” Us on Facebook

Right now Toys “R” Us is getting a lot of attention for their Facebook campaign, but really its very simple, if not a little lazy. Becoming a fan of theirs enables you to view a circular with their Black Friday deals before they are released to the general public. And, they even embed the circular on their Facebook Page, which is nice. Really, though, was this all they could have done?

The circular is something which can easily be lifted from the Facebook Page and reposted elsewhere on the net. Why not instead give fans an additional 5% off their purchases through a unique code that could be generated? That way, you could also track through to see who used their code later.

Staples

Generally speaking, I think Staples has done some nice things with their Facebook Page. They have a fun little application called “I Shred U” which lets you put embarrassing Facebook photos into a virtual shredder. What Staples didn’t do was put much though into their Black Friday promotion.

Staples is “leaking” Black Friday specials through wall posts. This approach doesn’t really help them garner new fans, as anyone can see these updates. In a way I think thats nice because if you aren’t going to provide an incentive to become a fan, at least you should make the updates public so everyone can see. However, like Toys “R” Us this just feels a little lazy.

Why not make things a little more fun and tie in the Shred app? Install the shred app on your page, use it, and upon doing so you receive a deal on a shredder, or a camera, or a printer or any other number of things associated with Staples. That way you get people to interact with an already otherwise cool application on your page, and bring that tie in back to Black Friday.

I think that whenever a retailer does anything with their Facebook Page the tendency is to see stories about it. The truth is that advertising online, especially on a social network like Facebook, should elevate the quality of the ads. When a retailer gets lazy and doesn’t fully utilize the potential of the medium, it really stands out.

Do you disagree? Which retailers are doing the best job with their Black Friday promotions?

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Summary: Facebook Page logos are an often overlooked, but important element to your Page’s design and success. Read tips and tricks for designing an attractive and effective Facebook Page logo.

While Facebook is an amazing place to market your business online (and reach millions of potential customers) there isn’t a whole lot of variety when it comes to the layout and design of your presence there. I’m speaking mostly about the options available for customizing your Facebook Page, the primary means for businesses to set up shop on Facebook.

There are however some little things you can do as a Facebook page administrator to spruce up the page and make it look unique. Here are a few of the elements of what I’d call a “good” Facebook Page.

Think outside of the “box” with your logo

After “fanning” your page the first time, most people never return. Instead, updates you post to your Facebook Page “Wall” show up on a users news feed, the page that individual Facebook users see when they first sign in each day. Those wall updates are represented by a miniature version of the picture you select when creating your page the first time (this icon by the way is 50×50).

Can you make out whats in this 50×50 square? Does it adequately communicate to your fans that the message they are reading comes from you? Are you using typography in your logo which is hard to read at a small size?

Here are a few examples of good Facebook Page logos, both at their natural and reduced (icon) size.

Attractive photo, smart use of logo

Victoria’s Secret “Pink” does a great job with their logo image. First, the girl in the picture is not only a model for Victoria’s Secret, who is wearing VS Pink clothes, but also one of the voices on their page. You can find video interviews and messages from her talking to fans as you browse Victoria’s Secrets Facebook Page.

You will also notice the orientation of the image itself – a rectangular, skyscraper with a squared off “PINK” at the bottom. Through clever use of cropping, this makes for a perfectly readable 50×50 square icon at small sizes.

Dunkin Donuts incorporates their fans

Dunkin’ Donuts is doing the same type of thing with their logo, using the large D’s in a square as part of their rectangular image, but goes further by utilizing photos of their fans in their image.

Laying out the image

Taking these two successful Facebook Page logos as examples, here are some recommendations for creating your own.

First, the practical limits for your image are 200px wide by 600px high. Anything greater than that and you run the risk of your logo image being too large (both for Facebook and for downloading).

Next, make sure to leave room in your image for a squared off section that can be resized down evenly to 50×50. Since the practical width of a Facebook Page logo is 200px wide, consider a 200×200 square box for your image. See this marked up version of the Victoria’s Secret as an example.

Keep your image no wider than 200px and 600px high

As you can see, the “Pink” logo fits perfectly into the 50×50 size of a news feed icon, is readable, and contains none of the image of the model.

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Like most people, you don’t think about death everyday. If you don’t think about death then it would be a wrong to say that you know what will happen to your social networking profile when you die. I personally don’t care about any other website besides Facebook where my deeds are depicted in most personal fashion imaginable.

The question I sometimes ask myself is what will happen to my Facebook profile when I die? I decided to search for the answer in Facebook’s Terms and Conditions but couldn’t find anything. I then searched for the term “Death” on the Facebook Help page and this is what I found:

Please report this information here so that we can memorialize this person’s account. Memorializing the account removes certain more sensitive information like status updates and restricts profile access to confirmed friends only. Please note that in order to protect the privacy of the deceased user, we cannot provide login information for the account to anyone. We do honor requests from close family members to close the account completely.

To report a death of a family or a friend, fill out a simple form and Facebook will memorialize the account. You might want to put this in your will or something, if you have one.

In my view memorializing an account might not get the job done for the family of deceased, specially if the profile picture depicts a person with a middle finger or with a vodka bottle. A friend of mine lost his nephew, 18 years old, in a car accident couple years ago. The nephew, being a teenager, had a very indecent picture on his profile and people were leaving comments saying how bad they felt on his death. It all seemed like a joke because on one hand there was a picture of someone not in their best behavior and on the other hand people who were deeply hurt were sharing their emotions.

It is a good thing that Facebook honors requests from close family members to close the account completely, that’s the option I would personally opt for. Maybe I should just use this post to make it clear that “I would appreciate if my profile from Facebook is deleted as soon as I pass away.”

Facebook should create an application or some kind of an option that authorizes friends or family members to manage a profile after someone is deceased. I know it is not something Facebook will consider anytime soon because the majority of the people who use it are young but if you read Fastest Growing Demographic on Facebook: Women Over 55, you will find out that Facebook will not be able to avoid this question for a long time.

For the time being, try using a service like LegacyLocker. It is fairly new and it is little pricey but the FREE account can get the job done for anyone having 3 or less social networking profiles.

All this makes me wonder, what about my blog? Hmmm….

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You may have heard of Facebook Fan Pages–they are also referred to as “business pages” or “public pages.”

To give you some explanation of what these are, a Fan Page is just a public profile that allows you to share information about your services or products with other Facebook users.  Facebook has two different kinds of profiles—personal profiles and public, aka Fan Page profiles.

So, why are there two different kinds of profiles?  Well, Facebook states pretty clearly in their terms of service that a person is only allowed to have one personal profile and that it must be in a person’s first and last name only.  For example, “Christine Gallagher.” Facebook has actually been known to disable people’s accounts if they’re named anything other than your full name or if you are using it to represent your business.  So instead of using your personal profile for business, you can just use a Fan Page.

Let’s talk a bit about the benefits of using a Fan Page for your business over a personal profile.

First and foremost, Fan Pages are public. What this means is that in order for people to see your Page, they don’t have to login to Facebook or be your “friend” to have access to it—there’s no barrier there to keep from drawing people in. Pages are actually the only part of Facebook that are totally public. This is also great because the search engines are able to see and index Fan Pages.

This is important because Facebook is currently the #2 site on the entire Internet, so you can benefit from that high search engine ranking by having a Page. In other words, because Facebook ranks so highly, your business has a good chance of ranking highly.

Second, personal profiles have a limit of 5000 friends—although Facebook has said several times they are going to raise that limit, they haven’t yet. Now, that might seem like a really high number to you right now, but if you think about continuing to build your business on Facebook, reaching that number is actually not all that unrealistic. In comparison, Fan Pages allow you to have an unlimited number of Fans.

Third, you’re able to send a message—or as they’re called, “Updates”–to all of your Fans at one time, no matter how many you have. With personal profiles, Facebook only lets you message a small number of friends at a time–last I checked it was somewhere around 30 or 40 at once.

Lastly, there are a lot of people who use Facebook personal profiles for just that—personal. They might be using it for staying in touch with friends and family and may have NO interest in ever buying from you—plus, not everyone friends people they don’t know on Facebook. With Fan Pages, people who become a “fan” of your Page are expressly saying they want to find out more about your business, not just you the individual. They have shown their interest by “opting in” as it were.

Do you have a Fan Page for your business yet?  I would love to see yours if you do, so let me know in the comments.  Feel free to visit my Page and “fan” it as well too! 

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Image via Wikipedia

Facebook offers an affordable and easy way to advertise on its site. While Facebook users are looking to engage with their friends rather than shop online, the opportunity to create brand recognition through a “circle of friends” is endless.

1. Decide what you want to advertise. Are you looking to add members to a “fan” page? Do you have a great new construction site that not many people have heard about yet? Are you offering a limited time special you want to “get out there”?

For the purposes of this example, we are going to advertise our new construction site, “The Lofts at Happyville” in Williamsburg, Virginia, which are for lease.

2. Next, we need to design our ad.

Not much to it – choose a title, a picture and some brief verbage.

3. Now, we need to select our target audience.

Facebook defaults to the entire community over the age of 18. That gives us just about 61,000,000 people.

We need to go ahead and narrow that down. Lets start with the age – our targeted demographic includes college students so we are going to select 18-25 for our age group. We are also going to only target those users in the United States who are in a 50-mile radius of Williamsburg. Lastly, we will select those who indicate they are “in college”. That drops our targeted group down to 3,320 people.

4.  Now, we need to name our campaign and insert our budget.  How long do we want this campaign to run?  What is our total budget and what is our daily budget?  Do we want to pay for impressions or clicks?

In our scenario, we are a new community so we are looking for brand recognition.  Normally, this would warrant a CPM (pay per impression) campaign; however, since we have a special offer, we want to actually do a CPC (pay per click) campaign.  The current suggested “bid” price is $.46 – $.59.  The narrower your targeted audience, the higher the price.  We are going to bid a price in the middle $.52.  It is estimated that at this expenditure, we will receive 20 clicks per day.  The actual cost of our per click will most likely be less than our bid price.

5.  From here, we click on “create” and pay for our ad.  That’s all there is to it.  It takes approximately 15 minutes for the ad to be approved and start running.  At any time, we can view the analytics for our ad and/or edit the ad.

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Our first post in a series to help beginners (and maybe some more experienced hands as well) understand social media begins with strategy.

Often skipped entirely or dismissed as unnecessary, drafting a social media strategy should be the cornerstone of every social media campaign – regardless of the company size. Whether you’re an individual looking to rebrand yourself before a job search or an international company trying to target a new market, you need to have a plan. Let’s take a look at what goes into a social media strategy in three steps.

One caveat: This three-step guide assumes that you’ve already spent some time online listening to your market and you’re able to make an educated guess at how to target them. Before you can build a strategy, you’ll need to have set reasonable goals for your social media campaign.

Step One: Resources: Social media isn’t free. Before jumping on the Facebook bandwagon, take a hard look at what resources you can allocate.

Will a new social media campaign replace existing aspects of your current marketing? If so, will it free up budget? What content are you going to contribute? Do you have a regularly updated blog that provides more than simple self promotion? Is your company in support of promoting themselves as thought leaders in their industry? How often can you add new content?

Who will search for relevant articles to post? Who will answer comments on your blog and moderate posts to your Facebook fan page? How many staffers can be dedicated to the initial setup and learning curve of various tools? Will each staffer specialize in a specific area or will you need to cross train your staff to function with multiple tools? What skills do your staff already have and what will need to be taught/learned? Will your outreach be limited to business hours only or is it possible to allocate manpower over a larger part of the 24-hour cycle?

How much budget can you allocate to purchasing support tools for your strategy? Can you foot the bill for Involver’s toolset to make your Facebook presence more powerful and easier to manage? Will you and your staff have smartphones capable of sharing content from anywhere with a 3G connection?

To build a successful strategy using social media, you’ll need to take a hard look at three resources:

• Time: How much time can you or your company dedicate to these efforts on an ongoing basis?
• Talent: What skills can you leverage that allow you to reach out online in a new format?
• Technology: Both hardware and know-how – can your current hardware get the job done and are your tech skills up to the task (or do you have a geek in waiting that could help you out)?

Step Two: Content: Before you create that corporate account at Digg.com, take a step back and consider what content you’ve got to share with the world.

The first part of content brainstorming should be a raid of your archives. Have you got good informational articles that can be repurposed as blog posts with a facelift? Do you have some PowerPoint presentations explaining your product or service that can be shared at SlideShare.net? Videos teaching someone some tips and tricks that you can add to YouTube? Audio files that teach – can they be made into a regular podcast? Content is king in any social media campaign, so consider first what you’ve got to use. In many cases, generating new content is also the most time consuming (and therefore resource consuming) aspect of your strategy, so make sure you use what you’ve already got.

But your own content is less than half of the equation. In order for your outreach effort to be a success, you need to become a valuable resource to your target market. And that means sharing a wealth of top-notch content that extends well beyond your own self-promotion efforts. If you’ve done a good job of building a successful listening system and know what content is relevant to your target market and where they can find those resources, you’re well on your way to sharing great links.

Instead of trying to steer your market to your content only, serve as an aggregator of relevant information on the Web in a variety of platforms. Become the go-to site for news and information, tips and tricks.

Instead of the staid model of solely diseminating information to your target market, become part of the discussion and encourage a focus group atmosphere.

Step Three: Tools: Finally, we reach the aspect of social media with which folks are most familiar. Once you’ve got the content, how are you going to reach your target market?

If you’re lucky, the most powerful tool in your social media toolbox might be your own Web site. If you’re unlucky, and your Web site doesn’t meet the needs of your target market, you’re going to have a hard time with any Web-based marketing campaign – despite your best efforts. Your own site is home base for your presence on the Web. If your ultimate goal is to sell a product, be contacted by a prospective client or be hired to perform a service, your own site is the most likely gateway for new business. Make sure you have your ducks in a row at home before spending resources trying to promote a weak site.

Whenever possible, your use of social networks like Facebook and Twitter should be a means of getting people back to your own Web site. Don’t let your networks serve as an end point. While it’s useful when someone shares your Facebook fan page, you’ll have a lot more leverage if the link they share is to your blog or Web site. Train your target market to come back to you as a destination for useful content. Any links to your site that are shared will improve your search engine optimization – this technique is known as inbound marketing.

Which networks are the best fit for your target market? Will you reach the same market on two different networks, such as Twitter and Facebook? What sites for rich media fit your content the best? Does your Web site have tracking software in place to determine from which sites people click through to you? Which networks are best suited to your specific goals?

In summary: Evaluate your resources, raid your archives for content and target your market on the networks that are most conducive to achieving your goals.

We’d love your feedback on our new series – Social Media 1-2-3 – here on the blog at Pixel/Point Press. To read more articles in this series, please bookmark this category.

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Longtime Facebook users will remember a time when Groups were the only way to organize people with similar interests on Facebook. As time has passed, the Groups system has become more or less obsolete with the creation of the Facebook Pages system.

Groups now look more like pages

However, with recent updates made to Groups, it is worth revisiting the differences between Pages and Groups, and which you should use when promoting your business on Facebook.

Facebook Pages vs Facebook Groups

Facebook has suggested that both Pages and Groups are a viable way to organize people with similar interests, with the following differences:

• Pages are the best way to broadcast messages to your fans if you are a business, organization, public figure or other entity.

• Groups are best for fostering member-to-member collaboration for short term projects or engagements, such as study groups, clubs, etc.

There are other differences between the two, however.

• Facebook Pages allow you to target advertising to your page using the Facebook Advertising platform. Groups do not.

• Facebook Pages allow for a greater level of customization, including the addition of applications and HTML/FBML content.

• Facebook Pages also provide options for connecting content on Facebook back to your own web site through the use of Facebook Connect (Fan Box, Live Stream Box).

• Facebook Groups show the names of the administrators of a Group Page publicly, Pages do not. If privacy is a consideration, Pages might be a better choice.
• Facebook Groups do not offer the useful Page Insights feature which lets you display usage analytics and demographic information on your fans.

Given the limitations of Groups it is hard to imagine a scenario where a business would opt for creating a Facebook Group instead of a Facebook Page. Business owners or marketers should choose a Facebook Page if they are creating a presence for themselves on Facebook.

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Compete.com – Facebook and Google

Beyond traffic, Facebook is a great choice for businesses looking to promote themselves online:

• Advertising platform puts your ad in front of the most qualified traffic through advanced demographic and behavioral targeting

• Easy to set up and maintain, low cost solution for a web presence

• Facebook “Insights” provide in-depth look at the age, sex and location of your fans, as well as help you identify the type of content they enjoy interacting with

Getting started

Creating a Facebook page is a relatively painless process. To get started, visit the Facebook Advertising page and click the “Create a Page” link near the top of the page.

The next thing to consider is what type of page you would like to create. Using the pull downs select the business type which best reflects your own. Facebook will provide you with a set of default page options that match which type of business you select in this step (e.g. non-profit, celebrity/personality, national for-profit business) so choose wisely. Facebook also uses this information to determine how your page is listed in the site’s online directory of Pages.

Facebook Page Creation

After digitally signing for your page you are now presented with a rather boring “default” page for your business. It is important to note that this page exists now in an unpublished state meaning that it can’t be found (yet) by your customers using the search function on Facebook. This is a good thing though as the page lacks the polish necessary to entice people to become your fans. Never fear, soon this page will be customized and ready for publishing.

An un-customized Facebook Page

Lets go ahead and put in some information that describes your business. First, click on the “edit information” link (generally next to an icon of a pencil) on the “Info Tab” and fill out the form fields. Based on what type of business you selected, you may see different fields. For this example I selected a “Cafe” business. When you are done filling out information, click the “Done Editing” button.

Customizing your Facebook Page

This process works through most of the tabs on your page. If you ever want to edit the information contained on a tab, look for the pencil icon.

Now it is time to give your page a “face” by uploading a picture. Click on the image of the question mark at the top left of your page to select a new one.

Add your company logo

There are few things to keep in mind when uploading a photo for your page. The first being that, eventually, whatever image you use is going to be condensed down into a small thumbnail image measuring 50×50 pixels. It is important to anticipate this when choosing an image because most people will see the thumbnail when interacting with your page.

It is generally a best practice then to:

• Use images that are square
• Use images that contain your logo
• Use images that look good at small sizes

You still may use large images with more “scenic” pictures so long as some part of your image can be “squared off” down to small size and still maintain your branding.

Facebook page with large and small icons

Now that you have some basic information and a photo uploaded which represent your business you can move on to some additional customizations that will make your page more interesting to your fans.

Photos – Upload photos of your business. Ideas include: photos from events, visual tour of your office or store front, notable people or products.

Videos – Upload videos of your business. Ideas include: video recap of events, interviews or promotional advertisement.

Discussions – Topical message boards. Ideas include: ask customers for ideas, get to know you topics, frequently asked questions and answer sessions.

Ready-Set-Publish

Once you are comfortable that your new page has enough interesting content to satisfy your new fans you are ready to unleash your page on the greater Facebook world.

To do this, click on the “Edit this Page” link directly under the large picture on your “Wall Tab.” Look at the top right on your page’s admin screen and click “Publish this page”

Publish your Page

You now have a publicly accessible business page on Facebook! Tell your friends about it by giving them the name of the page (or address) or create an ad using Facebook’s advertising system to build your fan base. Make sure to update your fans on a routine basis with special promotions or news related to your business by adding messages to your wall.

Don’t forget! Become a fan of your own page to let your friends see what you’ve created!

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Facebook is a great choice for marketing your business

In the world of social media marketing, Facebook is king. You hear a lot about Twitter, but comparitively speaking, Facebook represents a much larger and more mature platform for marketing your business. Of course, smart companies will utilize any number of social networking sites to promote their products. But, if you are a small or medium sized business and only have resources to focus on one, you should strongly consider Facebook.

Here are five reasons why Facebook is better than Twitter for promoting your business:

Community / Size

As popular as Twitter has become, Facebook has a vastly larger audience. According to Compete.com, Twitter has a monthly visitor total of about 22 million users. Facebook weighs in at about 122 million users. What’s more, Twitter users are more likely to sign up once and never login again. A recent Harvard Business Review study finds that 90% of Twitter’s messages are sent by 10% of its users.

Facebook doesn’t make as much noise in mainstream news, but it has a much larger and active userbase. The average Facebook user has 200 friends (very important when we talk about the viral nature of how your business can be promoted on Facebook) and actively “fans” product pages.

Analytics

If you decide to sink your time and resources into establishing a presence on a social network (either Facebook or Twitter) you are going to want to make sure you’re measuring your return on investment.

For that, you will need some kind of analytics. While products like Salesforce.com offer tie-in’s to Twitter, the service itself (Twitter) doesn’t offer any real analytical data on your followers. Facebook pages come with built in analytics that will let you measure how well your page is doing, whether your “fans” like the links, video or imagery you share, how often they take part in conversations you start, as well as a breakdown of the age, sex and regions they live in. Twitter simply doesn’t provide this kind of detail.

Viral Promotion

In a sense, social media marketing is about giving your fans a platform to talk about you in a positive way – something Facebook makes seemless. If a fan of your Facebook business page decides to comment on something you’ve posted, their friends will see that action in their news feed. If your fans mark a photo as something that they “like” then their friends will see that, likewise, if they sign up to attend an event by sending in their RSVP, it shows up for all of their friends to see. In this way, Facebook can make any content viral.

Advertising Platform

Facebook wins here too. Any business owner can create pay per click advertisements on Facebook to promote their business page or events. All you need is a credit card, and you can spend as much (or little) as you want. Facebook will walk you through the process of creating your ad, and through the use of “social actions” you can make your advertisements even more effective by displaying how many friends the person viewing the ad has acted upon each offer. For example, if I RSVP for an event that is being promoted through an ad, then next time my friends see the ad they will see that one of their friends is attending.

There is also a robust targeting feature that comes with advertising on Facebook. Lets say I just want to show an advertisement to people who are of a certain age, live around a certain city and enjoy very specific activities. Because Facebook targeting can key into a person’s profile data, advertising there can be hyper targeted.

Facebook Connect API

Finally, Facebook offers web developers the ability to extend their own web sites into the Facebook platform. This is done through the use of Facebook Connect, a series of programming tools that effectively makes a person’s Facebook account a “single sign-on” to your web site. It is a very cool technology that is easy to deploy that some top brands have found clever ways of leveraging.

Again, the most savvy internet marketers will find ways to use a mix of social networking sites to get their message out, but Facebook is by far the most mature and largest social network for marketing and advertising. If you are a business owner you should definitely sign up to Facebook and create your own Facebook business page today.

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