by Claudia Bruemmer

This year was a watershed year for social media in terms of growth and adoption. It was also the year that Facebook overtook Google. Hitwise reported Facebook got more traffic than Google for the first time in March, and comScore reported more time spent on Facebook than Google in August. The marketing dollars going into social media are increasing exponentially, making Facebook a key platform for engaging customers.

Ecommerce sites can gain traction by creating a presence on Facebook for interacting with fans and their friends. It’s a great way to spread the news about your brand or counteract anything negative posted about your brand online. You can create a public profile that allows you to share your business and product information with Facebook users. Theoretically, it can be done in a matter of minutes when you download their Product Guide (pdf).

Marketing Benefits of a Facebook Page

Facebook pages are a good way for companies and brands to communicate with customers and market products and services. This popular social media site has over 350,000,000 users. If you have an ecommerce site, you can add the Facebook Reviews application. Look for a complete list of Facebook apps that can be added to your pages in the Facebook Application Directory.

Why Are Facebook Pages So Valuable?

To begin with, your Facebook page gives you a number of ways to communicate with your customers, like sending updates to customers, which also display as notifications on your homepage. You can target your updates by age, gender, and location. You can also send status updates that will appear in your fans’ homepage. Friends can then comment or “Like” a status update they can relate to – which means increased engagement for your page. Following are 10 reasons why you need a Facebook page.

1. Analytics: Your pages are tied into Facebook Insights, an in-house analytics program. You can get key metrics like the number of fans added/lost per day, unique views, page views, total number of fans, number of wall posts, photo views, video plays audio plays, number of reviews and total interactions metrics.

2. Cost: Facebook pages are free to set up and there are no monthly fees. Your pages can also become fans of other pages, helping you affiliate with other brands.

3. Advertising: Your Facebook business account can be used to create a presence with your Facebook pages and to monitor your ad campaigns. Facebook business accounts are created automatically when you sign up for Facebook Ads. Note that business account users cannot view Facebook profiles or interact with individual Facebook users.

4. Vanity URL: Large company pages can apply for a Vanity URL and get fans through SMS messages. A vanity URL is a like a domain name on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/yourcompanyname).

5. Viral Marketing: Facebook can help your company messages go viral. Networking creates a web of relationships between members that know each other and share ideas and other content. If you befriend one Facebook user, your business can be recommended to hundreds of others. Facebook is a powerful tool for word-of-mouth marketing and is capable of spreading your good (or bad) reputation far and wide.

6. Traffic: Facebook is great for driving traffic to your website. As your business builds a presence in the community, you will undoubtedly get new connections to Facebook users. Currently, Facebook comes in third as a major source of site traffic, after organic search and direct visits. If your page is properly maintained and appeals to users, it can gain clicks, possibly generating more business.

7. Branding: Facebook is a great resource for generating brand awareness. It is popular among many different age groups and can be the beginning of building a relationship with your customers and prospects.

8.  Customer Engagement: You can use Facebook applications to communicate promotions, news and events. It’s another connection that can be leveraged to create consumer engagement with your brand, products or services.

9. Reputation Management: Your Facebook page can be useful for knowing what people are saying about your company, products or brand. You can also respond to complaints, resolve misunderstandings, fix what’s wrong and placate customers.

10. Customer Acquisition/Retention: With over 350 million users, Facebook gives you an opportunity to find customers you may not otherwise have acquired. You can also nurture and build the relationship with existing customers through your Facebook page.

Conclusion

There are many valuable benefits of creating a Facebook business page. Facebook has over 350 million active users and 50% of them log on to Facebook on any given day. The average user spends over 55 minutes per day on Facebook. Just think – your customers may not log onto your website every day, but with over half of Facebook users logging on to Facebook on any given day. That’s over 175 million people you could potentially reach with a daily status message. Not creating a Facebook page is definitely a lost opportunity.