7 ways to Facebook marketing yourself, product, service, blog, website

With a growing number of Filipinos joining social networks like Facebook, I'd like to take this opportunity to cite some examples on how it can be used as marketing tool. I also encourage those who have done campaigns or about to do one to submit an entry to the DigitalFilipino Social Networking Awards (submission deadline is on March 31).

The nice thing about Facebook is that the whole site presents an opportunity for you to market a product, service, blog, or even yourself in Facebook.

Here are some examples:

1. Profile page

There are 4 ways that you can promote in the Profile page:

1. Status
   Similar to Twitter, this is where you can share what you are up to. It can also be used as a medium to plug it.
   
   
2. Information 1
   On the left sidebar, you can put more information about yourself and the things you are up to. This can be seen by those who visit your page.
   
   
3. Information 2
   You can share websites and blogs you are maintaining. This can be seen by those who visit your page.
   
   
4. Posted Items
   Share links. This is visible at your page and common news feed with friends.
   

2. Posted Items
If you have a blog post or update in your website, you can share a url link and even attract readers from your friends. If what you shared is great, it can also be a conversation-sparker.


3. Groups
Create a Facebook Group where you can invite friends (and their friends) to join. This allows you to do the following:

• Have a discussion with group members.
• Send a direct message to group members.
• Post shared link
• Share photos and videos (from your personal gallery)
• Organize an event.

4. Pages
Facebook allows you to create a page for a person, establishment, product, service, among others. It has the features of typical group. However, adding of photos and videos is independent therefore requiring you to upload photos and videos twice if you want it to appear both at your personal profile and pages.

You can also add extra features like Notes (where you can import RSS feeds from your blog) and other applications that allows to be added to a Page.

The challenge for both Groups and Pages is that it doesn't show members any news feed on what is happening in these pages. As a result, a lot join without having to visit them at all unless they get invited to an event or there was an explicit announcement from the Group or Page creator to mention updates.

5. Events
If you organize events, Facebook has a very friendly event invitation and updates service where you can invite contacts (and they can ask their friends) to join. This is effective when disseminating information about events. It also has typical group features like uploading of photos, videos, sharing of links or posted items. You can also broadcast special announcements to everyone you've invited or to only those who confirmed.

You can also organize an event under one of your Facebook Groups or straight from a Facebook Page.


6. Marketplace
Allows you to plug products and services requirements and what you are selling. Marketplace, a 3rd party application, allows you to post products inside Facebook.

7. Paid advertising
The above ones I listed are those that you can do within Facebook for free. If you have a small or non-targeted contact list and have budget to spare, another alternative is to fully advertise within the social network. You will find this at the bottom part of Facebook where there is a link to "Advertising".

Here's a deck I found online that may be of help too.

52 Facebook Advertising Tips & Best Practices

View more presentations from Brian Carter.