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Facebook took the social media world by storm back in 2004, before many of us had even heard the term “social media.” Today we’ll cover what Facebook is and why it could enhance your marketing strategy.

What is Facebook?

Facebook is a social media platform that allows users to:

• Create in-depth personal profiles,
• Share short status updates (similar to Twitter),
• “Friend” other users to see their content and updates,
• Write on friends’ bulletin-board-like “walls,”
• Chat via built-in mail and instant messaging systems,
• Join user-created common-interest groups, and,
• Become “fans” of a company, product and brand “pages.”

Users can view changes to friend and fan page profiles on their home pages via a “news feed.” User profiles can include each user’s location, employment, education, interests, activities, favorites, relationship status, photos, videos, applications (see below), and much more.

Applications are company- or user-generated programs which allow users to:

• Play games,
• Share additional information with friends,
• Syndicate content from other social media sites to Facebook,
• Schedule events, and
• Perform a myriad of other activities on the Facebook website.

Why should I care?

As of February 2009, Facebook had 175 million registered users. If it was a country, it would have been the sixth largest country in the world – and in the last two months alone Facebook has gained nearly 20 million more users!

As mentioned in my introduction to social media for small businesses, it’s not just teenagers who use Facebook. In addition to older users who have been on the platform for months or years, ­­the over-35 age group has been booming in the last few months. Facebook also attracts a global audience, as shown in these charts from O’Reilly Radar.

Do your customers a favor – don’t ignore them!

How do I start?

Since there are so many great Facebook tutorials already online I won’t go in-depth here, but here are a few starter ideas for you to think about:

• Ask questions in your status updates to engage fans
• Post pictures and video of real customers using your products or services
• Invite fans to post their own video and images on your page
• When you have a special event at your store, make it an event on your page

The most important thing, however, is keep the social media guidelines at the top of your mind.

Need more advice? Check out one of the 100 incredibly useful links in Inside CRM’s free Facebook toolbox.

Points to remember:

• Facebook is a one-stop social media platform where users can share almost anything available online
• Facebook pages are a great way to keep your company top-of-mind with your customers
• Facebook has more than 200 million users from varying age brackets worldwide
• Always stick to the four social media guidelines

Do you have more questions about Facebook, or do you want to know more about a different social media platform? Let us know in the comments!