Facebook in Business

Facebook, with 470 million users far outranks Twitter, with only 73 million users.

According to eMarketer, Facebook also leads the social networking pack in content-sharing widgets, used to post content such as article links, videos, photos, etc.:

• Facebook accounts for 44% of content shared by the Gigya widget (Twitter is in 2nd place with 29% of content)
• Facebook accounts for 33% of content shared by the AddThis widget
• Facebook accounts for 24% of content shared by the AddToAny widget (2009)

And Facebook is capitalizing on its lead by embracing business marketing. Its new alliance with Adobe’s Omniture will enable marketers to purchase Facebook ads from the Omniture ad network.

How to Get Started
On Facebook, company descriptions are posted on “Pages” – not personal profiles. Facebook business Pages differ from personal profiles in a number of ways:

• Pages are public by default and are visible to search engines
• Pages are categorized into a directory structure (e.g. Local/Automative, bar, etc.; Brand, Product or Organization/airline, film, game, etc.; Artist, Band, or Public Figure/actor,  athlete, band, etc.)
• Pages have fans, not friends. Anyone can become a fan without mutual acceptance
• Pages can be maintained by multiple administrators.

The form to build a Facebook business Page can be found at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php. An easy to follow tutorial on posting Facebook pages is also available from HubSpot.