Small Biz Web Exposure Blog

Facebook has become probably the most respected of the social networks.   It has a wider age range, in both males and females, than the other big social network, Myspace.  And, in the space of a year, Facebook has caught the total user count of Myspace as well.  While no one would say it’s bad to advertise in Myspace, you could certainly argue that you’re more likely to find your target market on Facebook.  If you need to advertise to a bunch of 18 to 24 year olds, mostly female, mostly fans of vampires or werewolves,  then Myspace may be your deal.  But, if you want to advertise to a larger group of 25 to 35 year olds, with a greater chance that said user would have more spending dollars, then Facebook is probably the way to go.

You can go a few different ways with Facebook.  You can try and go “viral” and put up a fan page and see if you can generate a bunch of traffic for free.  You have to have some compelling content to put on the page.  You want people to tell two friends in this case.  This is not always the easiest thing to do.  If your business sells a product of service to your customers, you may want to offer discounts from time to time.  It gets people talking about your site, and if you throw discounts out there once in a while, people have a good reason to come back.  You could also try doing give-aways.  It’s the same thing; people will see that there is a reason to come back.

The other way to go, is to advertise in much the same way you do in Google.  Facebook has paid ads just like Google, but gives you a little bit more control of who you want to show your ad to.  You can choose gender, age, location, and other factors that you cannot choose with Google.  You are offered the choice of basing your spend on clicks or impressions.  You can choose based on the interests of the users you want to advertise to.  And, you can put up a logo.  These factors really allow you to zero in on the people you want to advertise to.

And, if you do it right, you can use both on tandem to really get your name running through the Facebook ranks.  With upwards of 300,000,000 users running through the system, it’s a powerful tool to use to bring users to your site.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 11:39 pm and is filed under Pay-Per-Click, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.