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Free Marketing Opportunities
Facebook has ‘pay’ marketing opportunities, but this post focuses on the free bits you can make use of.
The beauty of using Facebook as a marketing tool comes from the endless ways in which you can advertise your business for free. Once you’ve set up a free account, use your creativity to maximize these features.
1. Profile Page: All Facebook members get their own profile page when they sign up. Use this as your canvas to upload pictures, logos and other information about your property.
2. Groups: Use the site’s Groups feature to network with your target audience. You can join existing groups or create one just for your property to ramp up the buzz about it
3. Facebook Badge: Facebook describes its Badge feature as “a customizable way to share your Facebook information on other Web sites.” Creating your own Badge will link Facebook friends to your Web site.
4. Events: Instead of printing out flyers and mailers the next time you want to advertise an offer or something else special, use the free Facebook Events app to get the word out.
5. FunWall: Mass emails are yesteryear. If you want to keep in close contact with your Facebook friends, use the FunWall to create a message or send a greeting to everyone at once.
6. Inbox: Send secure, private messages to your clients on Facebook with the Inbox app. You can still send out mass messages, but only to the contacts you select.
7. Contact Importer: The contact importer helps you “find your friends on Facebook.” If you want to find out if your clients or other work-related contacts use Facebook but think it’s a little lame to come right out and ask, upload your contacts from AIM, Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail and more to find out if they’re online.
Tools and Applications
Facebook add-ons allow you to customize your profile page and build up virtual relationships with clients and customers. Check out these tools and applications that could give your marketing a boost.
1. Facebook Social Ads: Pinpoint your property’s Facebook friends and friend wannabes by creating a social ad that reveals itself to visitors of your profile and friends of friends of friends … you get the idea.
2. Facebook Pages: A more business-savvy name for Profile, the Facebook Page now includes all kinds of add-ons so that you can post videos, logos, pictures and other marketing info about your property.
3. Facebook Beacon: Connect your company’s Web site to your customers’ Facebook profiles with the Beacon action alerts. By integrating just three lines of code, your customers can choose to let their friends see they viewed your website and property.
4. FeedBurner: Advertise your blog with the FeedBurner app for Facebook. A feed will appear on your profile, so visitors to your page are instantly updated with new postings, videos and more.
