Facebook – Social Network or Business Opportunity?

Are you on Facebook? Like a lot of new technology, I started using it because I need to research Internet Technologies as part of my job, but found it quite useful and kept using it. I created my own profile, then started keeping in touch with friends who I weren't keeping contact with regularly enought and then started to find friends that I'd lost contact with altogether, and some of them found me. Then I created a dogbook page from my dog Cosmo, and poked a few people and took a likeness quiz. The novelty soon started to wear off, but then I started to embrace the business potential of facebook and now it accounts for about 5% of the traffic that goes to Sticky Tickets. Facebook is a network of people and groups and should be treated the same as any other network. To get the most out of it, you need to invest time in it. You need to get to know the people in the network and build relationships with them. You need to participate in the groups, but most importantly, like any other network, you need to look at each individual and try and work out how you can truly help them achieve what they want, and when you do, the business will come flowing back to you.

Here are a few Facebook resources that I found extremely useful.

• The Facebook Marketing Bible: 24 Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook (Inside Facebook): Justin Smith shows how Facebook includes a variety of channels that spread the word in a very in-depth blog post.
• 9 Reasons You Should be Using and Watching Facebook (Sugarrae): There’s a lot of marketing potential in Facebook, and Rae shows you why.
• 12 Ways to Use Facebook Professionally (Web Worker Daily): Networking on Facebook is precisely what you make of it. If you have the mindset to make Facebook a professional tool, you certainly can turn it into one.
• The Updated Unofficial Smartass Facebook Guide (Sugarrae): People still don’t know how to use Facebook. Rae explains all.
• 10 Ways to Use Facebook to Promote Your Business for Free (After the Launch): How do you promote your business on Facebook? Easy.
• Facebook Ads: Will They Work for You? (SEO Space): Jody Nimetz highlights the pros of opting for Facebook ads.
• Facebook Flyers Pro Taking Off (Optimize and Prophesize): Jonathan Mendez illustrates the ease of targeted Facebook ads.