10 Reasons to Use Facebook For Business
By Mari Smith

Social networking websites, especially Facebook, have significant implications for business owners, marketers, and entrepreneurs. To keep your business current, you should at least be familiar with the latest conversational marketing techniques and viral technologies, including Facebook and its array of powerful features.

Here are ten reasons to be active on Facebook:

1. Meet your peers.Facebook is not just for college kids anymore. Members are typically older and more mature than on other sites, and there are more white collar users.
2. Find business contacts.With more than 100 million active users, and predicted to be 500 million by 2011, not only are your friends on Facebook, so are your prospects, your customers, your JV partners… and, of course, your competitors. You need to be on too.
3. Instant gate opener.Facebook members are open to connecting. You can easily begin a dialog with highly successful–even famous–people who were previously otherwise unreachable.
4. Build relationships.By engaging in conversations with your prospects and customers, you can better adapt your marketing and business services to meet their needs.
5. Raise visibility.By consistently showing up, posting relevant information, and being a thought leader, you can increase visibility and credibility as an expert in your area.
6. Develop your personal brand.The lines between business and personal have become blurred. You can reveal as much or as little about yourself as you wish, allowing you to personalize your brand.
7. Target your niche.Users volunteer vast amounts of information about themselves that you can readily access. These kinds of demographics, psychographics, and technographics would previously have cost fortunes to access. Author, John Battelle, calls Facebook a “database of intentions.”
8. Get rapid top Google placement.Create a Page for your business and “push” information to your “fans.” Pages (for business) and Profiles (for personal) are indexed for optimal search engine positioning. Facebook has a page rank of #5 according to Alexa.
9. Place targeted ads.With Facebook Social Ads, you can test out extremely targeted advertising for minimal cost.
10. Free marketing.Aside from paid ads, Facebook is totally free to use and with regular activity you’ll end up with more traffic, more subscribers, and more paying clients.

Visit Mari’s blogs for two free e-courses: 21 Keys To Profitable Relationships at MariSmith.com and 7-Day Facebook Marketing Tips at WhyFacebook.com

Mari Smith is a Relationship Marketing Specialist and Facebook Business Coach. She helps entrepreneurs to accelerate their business growth using an integrated social marketing strategy, with particular focus on Facebook. Mari is passionate about showing professionals how to develop powerful profitable relationships.

Article Reprinted from Ezine Articles

Let me know which of these 10 reasons is your biggest reason for using Facebook.

Bob Jenkins

p.s. Mari’s best training on Facebook is at FacebookPodclass.com.

And of course, more Facebook for business tips can be found inside the DSN 201 lessons at DiscoverSocialNetworking.com.

p.p.s. Sept. 29 update: Would you like a webinar on using Facebook OR Twitter for business? And if so, what would be a fair price for such a webinar (approx. 90 minutes). Post your answer as a comment below…