Facebook Marketing: Articles and Resources

Initially built for college and university students in 2004, Facebook has since grown into a popular social networking website that is open to all.

With over 30 million members worldwide, Facebook is 7th most visited site in the United States and sees over 15 billion pageviews every month.

In May 2007, Facebook took a big step forward by launching the Facebook Platform, which allows developers to build third-party applications for use within Facebook’s user interface. This gave marketers and companies a viral and effective means of promoting their website to the Facebook audience.

The platform, along with a rapidly growing member base has made Facebook into viable means to get exposure for your brand, product or website.

Using FaceBook for Brand Exposure, Traffic and Sales

I’ve been meaning to write a detailed article on using Facebook for some time and have been doing research gradually over the past few weeks. Some bloggers have written useful articles on Facebook marketing, although most of them are brief and do not go into great detail.

Having experimented with both Facebook and Myspace, I do think Facebook has a lot of potential for businesses and entrepreneurs looking for some targeted traffic. For instance, Facebook has a far greater amount of user features, communication channels and ad targeting possibilities.

I’ve previously examined some ways to make money with myspace and hopefully I’ll be able to come up with a future piece on how you can use Facebook as a method to generate long term income for your website or business.

For now, here are some articles you can read during the weekend, if you’re interested in getting started on Facebook.

Introduction and Tutorials on how to use Facebook

These are some general articles which examine Facebook from a user perspective. All of them are introductory and will help you to start using Facebook.

Social Networking: A Beginner’s Guide to Facebook

As a consequence Facebook has managed to go from being a well-put-together online social networking tool to becoming a socially powered content aggregation hub.

By allowing you to bring together the vast majority of your favorite tools and services from around the web, and aggregate them in a single easy-to-navigate destination, Facebook has achieved something totally new.

A Beginner’s Guide to Facebook for non-profits

This powerful networking service is not just for individuals like me to keep in touch with friends. It’s a very effective networking tool for nonprofits to create awareness and connect with their community.

In this post, I’ll take you through a beginner’s guide to get your non-profit on Facebook and ways to effectively use this tool.

The Unofficial and Smartass Guide to Using Facebook

You have exactly ten minutes to change your picture from the question mark to a real picture once you sign up. Seriously, it’s Facebook, not question mark book.

Having a question mark there annoys the shit out of other Facebook users. How are we supposed to know if you’re the person we know with that name if you don’t have a damn picture?

Facebook Market Analysis

These articles examine Facebook as a business and its role in the online industry. I recommend reading these with an entrepreneurial perspective, because they are particularly useful if you are developing online businesses in the future.

Five Things that Could Kill Facebook

For all the excitement about Facebook’s explosive growth, it somehow feels like a huge fad that could disappear or, at least, dissipate, if something cooler comes rumbling over the horizon…Here’s my list of why Facebook could go from fast-growing to so yesterday sooner than we think.

Is Facebook Worth the Hype?

So is the Facebook hype justified? My answer would be a very tempered yes. The platform was a truly brilliant move for Facebook, and they have an opportunity for phenomenal growth.

But Facebook hasn’t won anything yet. They operate in an industry that has already seen the meteoric rise and fall of a number of sites, and Facebook has yet to prove that they can even reach #1 let alone stay there.

Could Facebook Become The Next Microsoft?

It’s difficult to be against Facebook at this time. The platform strategy and now the move into Web Operating Systems are fairly lauded as being smart business moves, and of course the Facebook product itself is constantly improving. From a users perspective, a centralized one-stop shop of applications has great appeal, particularly in a marketplace where choice can actually be overwhelming.

Viral Marketing on FaceBook

These articles examine how you can market your website or business on Facebook. None of them offered detailed and specific advice on how this can done but they offer some quick tips on methods you can experiment with.

The Top 5 Viral Facebook Techniques

The dynamic of Facebook application marketing is rapidly changing. What once was an environment in which your application was practically guaranteed to go viral has shifted to one in which you need to come up with creative ways of marketing your application..While this is not an exhaustive list, it covers the majority of tricks of the trade that are currently being used.

Mashup Marketing on FaceBook

Facebook is an innately viral platform…For me this is part of a bigger picture — I believe marketers need to need to abandon their highly controlled microsite environments and embrace what I call “Mashup Marketing” - fusing together content and services and piggybacking on platforms created by others.

6 Ways to Market on Facebook

From a promotion point of view, the Facebook news feed is a great channel for others to advertise a person’s or organization’s cause. As Facebook denizens interact with such entities, the news feed can broadcast such action to their friends. Further, they are also indirectly vouching for a cause making it more appealing, important, or hip for their buddies.

Inside//Out: Facebook

Creativity is paramount in approaching this community and opportunities can be created if, and only if, you play by the rules and remember: You have to add value to each interaction. Use the naturally viral nature of the community instead of forcing it.

5 Money Making Opportunities on Facebook

With the release of its new platform, Facebook’s recent endeavor in social media presents a unique opportunity for marketers, developers and businesses to tap into the social network’s young, active, and viral crowd.

However, over the past few weeks there has been a rising concern among developers to uncover ways to monetize their Facebook applications

Facebook Advertising

These two articles examine the purchase of advertising on Facebook. I personally think that Facebook is a great marketing platform. One just needs to move beyond traditional advertising into more covert or natural form of advertising.

Direct infiltration into user groups and networks through the use of relevant applications/widgets is a powerful method to consider. I’m in the camp which believes that if you’re not getting results from Facebook advertising/marketing, you’re not doing it the smart way.

How to Advertise Effectively on Facebook

We mainly use Facebook flyers, and have a group on there to give us some added visibility. We try to tap in to what’s hot at the moment, and consequently, get loads of click-throughs, and manage to generate a bit of buzz.

Including images help, short snappy messages are important and tapping into something that is hot at the moment will also provide extra attention.

Why Facebook is not a viable marketing platform

Furthermore, while some users praise Facebook flyers because they blend in with the rest of the Facebook interface and are not intrusive, others argue that this is precisely the reason why the click-through rates are so low.

At the same time, these people welcome using pay-per-click marketing because that way, you only pay when someone notices and clicks on your advertisement

Enjoy reading these articles and do leave a comment if you’ve used Facebook to market or promote your website. I’m always interested to hear your personal experiences.