Tom Fleichmann

Facebook launched their community pages in April 2010. The community pages is a feature that you can create in Facebook, much like a forum or a blog. It is easy to set up and you can have your own community. While this may not be absolutely necessary considering that Facebook in itself a networking place, a separate community page gives many advantages.

The first thing that you should realize is that Facebook is a social network site. This means that you cannot actively canvass for sales the way you would elsewhere. Yet, simply because there is such a large network out there, there are things that you can do to increase your sales using your social network.

This may not be a top reason, but it still has its uses. For example, if any user wishes to be friends with you and clicks on the friends tab in your company profile page, you can configure your account to accept friends by default. That way every person who becomes your friend is accepted as one by you. You are not only connected to them, but to their friends as well through their Facebook account.

If you have ever tried to get informations about your site visitors you know that people don't like when a website ask them to type a name, email, home address, phone number etc. Buti f you use facebook in your business, you don't need to get these informations, because facebook store these data from everybody. This is one use of Facebook that many people do not make use of. Facebook has a lot of information about its users.

Facebook, as an existing networking tool gives you the option of using it to interact with your customers, at no cost to you. Simply having a corporate page on Facebook means that you will get people who are interested in you come and visit you. In addition, anyone who clicks on your fan button will have your logo on his or her profile. While this may not be a big plus with many SMB's initially, over time a fan base can be created.

The aim behind increasing web presence is to not only increase the brand awareness, but also increase brand image. You easily achive brand awareness or brand recall with advertising, but increasing brand image is more difficult. Any decision with regards to a new product is taken considering if it will fit the brand image or not. The online brand developing is not as difficult as offline. The basics remain the same, but is much cheaper to build a brand online than offline.

The term "Social Media Marketing" is becoming common. A year ago the SEO or Search Engine Optimized content was the king, which is basically content with a few specific keywords, put in here and there. Tthe trend has changed and nowadays the various social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter used to increase the profile of a website. The Internet is evolving quickly and something new concerning how you can improve your site's profile is coming up almost on a monthly basis.