CONNECT to the world with Facebook

Here’s ‘The Opportunity’

If you are an organisation looking for new business, Facebook can help you connect with existing clients and generate new sales prospects with unparalleled results.

Consider the following stats:

• Over 400 million global users are active on Facebook every month
• People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook
• More than 20 million people become fans of Pages each day
• More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) are shared each week.

Here is a 2 minute guide to getting started on Facebook (i.e. if you still have to do so!)

Build a Presence – They will come

Connect with your audience, share your story and participate in real-time conversations quickly and easily. Facebook provides many interesting tools for you to reach and engage your audience.

Check these out:

• Use Publisher to keep your users updated on new content.
• Write or import Notes (even on-the-go) and share them with your audience.
• Post Photos and Videos of your events.
• Add Applications that enhance your Page experience.
• Create Discussion Boards to solicit user feedback and generate brainstorms.
• Create Groups to help people with similar interests connect with one another
• Set up Events and have your fans RSVP
• Check out Facebook Platform to see how you can customize your presence on Facebook. More than one million websites have integrated with Facebook Platform!

The following applications and ‘Plug-Ins’ help you reach out to a wider audience.

1. Get instant access to your audience and their friends when you update your Page through News Feed and send targeted updates.

2. Implement Facebook Connect on your site so users can log-in with their Facebook ID and can easily share and distribute their activities on your site with their Facebook friends.

3. Add Facebook Share to your site and make it easy for your audience to spread content to their friends on Facebook.

4. With Comment Box, Facebook users on your site can comment on your content, post those comments to their profiles, and share them with their friends on Facebook.

5. The Like Box enables users to like your Facebook Page and view its stream directly from your website.

6. Promote your Facebook page on your site or through customer emails with our "Find us on Facebook" Badge.

7. Build a mobile interface. There are more than 200 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products.

Send your comments/questions to sharad@cyber-gear.com

For more articles, visit www.sharadagarwal.com