How to promote your business on Facebook

Facebook, Myspace, Myface, Spacebook – you may well be forgiven for being a little confused! But Facebook can help to promote your business if you let it into your life...

Facebook is not just another web-based site on which children can send meaningless messages to one another and practice the art of bad grammar and spelling without their parents watching. If used cleverly, Facebook can be a useful tool for businesses and can allow business owners the chance to network with others.

You surely do not need to be told what Facebook is but, for those who have been living in a cave for the past ten years, Facebook is a social networking site which allows individuals and businesses to set up their own page and find friends, leave messages, post pictures and communicate with others in real time. It’s free to set up and you can use it from anywhere in the world where you have access to the internet.

So, you can create your own page in minutes and start inviting people who you know to become a fan of your page. You could set up a group in your own company name and allow people to join the group. In turn, they can then invite everyone they know and so it snowballs. What you can then do is add features to your page with regular posts and updates just to keep everyone informed. It’s all possible within a few moments and it really is very simple.

Facebook also allows you the option to pay for advertising on its site. You can do this as a one off advert and payment or you can use pay per click options which means that you pay as and when someone clicks on your advert through to your website.

The beauty of social networking sites is that you can now link them all by pointing from one to another. So, you may want to point your Twitter account to your Facebook account and to your LinkedIn account, and so on. One way or another, you are quite simply encouraging visits to your own website and making it easier to be found. You are constantly promoting your business and hopefully picking up referrals along the way. It only takes one person to see your advert or page, use you and tell their friends about you, and the possibilities are endless. Facebook is used by millions of people all over the world and so imagine the potential reach to your audience!

In essence, you are using Facebook as a search engine optimisation technique which then drives traffic to your website. You are creating a whole network of online places from which your business can be searched for and found. It’s all about having a presence and increasing brand recognition to the point where people say “ah yes Joe Bloggs, I know him”.

If you want to get down with the kids and chat with your friends at the same time as being a successful business, then Facebook has it all and you might just actually start to enjoy it!

Copyright © Peter Moore 2009 - Co-Founder of EzWeb123.com

Google – now too expensive for small businesses?

Google AdWords is a growing service which allows you to advertise to people who are searching on Google for a product or service.

AdWords works on a pay per click basis; in other words, you only pay when someone clicks onto your advert. You don’t even need a website to do it. You can set your own keywords, set your own budget and decide where your advert will be displayed. When someone goes into Google and carries out a search using keywords that you have entered into your ad, your advert may appear next to the search results. Sounds great – you could quite literally be seen by millions.

Google is now the most widely used search engine in the world by a large margin, which means that more and more people are likely to see your ad and click on it. Fantastic news! Or so it should be. However, if you are paying a cost per click (CPC) then this could potentially snowball and run up into amounts which some small businesses are unable to afford. Then you get the bill and you had no idea that it was going to cost you so much, despite having capped your ceiling limit.

For every click on your ad, you are paying for it. However, not every click will translate into business for you and so you may not be getting a profitable return on your investment (ROI) – and ROI is what advertising is all about. If it’s costing you more to advertise than you are making in sales from it, then it’s not working as it should be.

In effect, therefore, Google AdWords could be having the reverse effect of what its intentions were in the first place and could be discouraging small businesses; in turn, leaving room for the larger companies to grow even further because they are better able to absorb the costs of this type of advertising.

Then there is the potential for abuse. With every good idea, there is always someone behind it who has the mastermind to turn good into bad. Click fraud is becoming more and more prevalent and there is the risk of being scammed by the system that is supposed to be helping you.

In addition to all of this, some less tech-savvy people may find AdWords too much of a minefield. Although relatively straightforward to get started, it takes time to make best use of the system and to compete with the bigger fish. Some larger organisations actually pay members of staff to do this sort of advertising on a full-time basis and so they are experts in the subject. The likelihood is that the small businesses which will benefit from AdWords the most are those which are selling a unique service or product and whose keywords are most effective.

Do your homework is the best advice. Use an integrated approach to advertising and don’t just rely on one source. Practice makes perfect but make sure that you are comfortable with using AdWords and understand the pros and cons before getting started.

Copyright © Peter Moore 2009 - Co-Founder of EzWeb123.com