When most people think of Facebook, their minds are immediately inundated with images of friends they haven’t seen since high school and the constant stream of pictures from smartphones hosted by the website. However, that doesn’t rule out the awesome marketing potential the platform offers to social-savvy businesses.
In many ways, Facebook is already a crucial commercial tool and an indispensable unit in any online marketer’s kit. That’s because it offers so many different ways to keep in touch with customers, get their feedback about general or specific problems and exists at an important internet crossroad. Consider the following elements of this increasingly powerful internet presence and the ways that businesses can use them to solidify the ties that bind consumers to companies.
Status updates
Considering that it wasn’t a part of Facebook until over a year after the site was first created, the status update has become the essential language in which the platform is written. The main page of anyone’s profile is sure to be her news feed, which shows all the thoughts, photos, videos and jokes that people want to share. Consequently, status updates become the social meeting place through which people get their news about friends and family.
When companies add themselves to this matrix, it means that consumers will be seeing news and thoughts generated by an organization on the same level that they learn about their favorite bands, grandparents, coworkers and old friends. Businesses should remember to update frequently but not too frequently. After all – they don’t want to exist in the same realm as annoying acquaintances who post up-to-the-minute updates regarding the traffic jam they encountered on the way to work.
Logging in
One of the recent additions to Facebook’s list of abilities is the power to log in with one’s Facebook account. Many websites require user names and passwords. This lets organizations track and follow people who come to their pages, which is crucial for businesses to do. However, many don’t have the technical know-how or memory to give every single willing visitor an internet identity.
Fortunately, many organizations are opting to allow users to log in through their Facebook profiles. This confers a number of advantages. First, it automatically means that a company will be able to stay in touch on Facebook itself. Second, it makes it possible for just about every person to instantly log onto a company web page. Only those people who don’t have Facebook profiles (few and far between though they may be) won’t have the option to stand up and be counted.
Check in
Online marketers should already be familiar with the ins and outs of Google and how that organization places businesses in the physical realm. Once a company has registered with Google Places and been added to online maps, it can become part of the check-in phenomenon. When a business has a physical location, it can allow Facebook followers to check in and indicate to friends and family that they were at that place. This both helps consumers to celebrate their approval of an organization and makes that name ring out among additional customers.
Apps
More and more developers are creating applications for Facebook, making all manner of things possible from playing games to tracking the number of times someone has been to a store or office. Organizations with some technical facility can write their own applications, but even those that cannot are able to take heart in the fact that other programs exist that private businesses can use. Even something as simple as the ability to upload photos to the profile of a company can be a powerful tool when one considers how this both keeps companies and consumers in touch as well as provides free advertising for businesses.
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