5 Facebook Marketing Strategies You Need To Know

Ever since Facebook's launch in 2004, its membership base has grown exponentially, with Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, announcing in January 2010 that Facebook has signed on its 400 millionth user.

Everyone's in Facebook right now (name me someone you personally know who hasn't got a Facebook account). People are so hooked onto Facebook that, based on a recent study, more than 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day worldwide!

So, what does this mean to you as a marketer or business? This mean that, you can tap onto this latest online phenomenon and have your business reach out to millions of potential customers worldwide!

However, having said that, if you want to be able to effectively tap onto this social networking platform to grow your business, you need to equip yourself with the right marketing strategies.

In this article, I will be sharing with you a total of 5 Facebook marketing strategies you need to know (if you want to use this social networking site to effectively grow your business).

1. Define Your Goal

Be clear about what you want to achieve from your Facebook marketing efforts, is it to:

You need to be clear about your goal - As the work you need to do to attain the different goals (which you have defined) are different.

2. Connect With Like-Minded People

If you have just signed up for Facebook, the first thing you need to do, is to connect with people with similar interests as you (or people who are interested in the niche you are in).

What you can do first is to connect with authority figures in your niche. Also, you will want to add some of the people who are already connected with him/her as well. However, you want to make sure that you do not attempt to add too many people on a single day (if not you may end up being dubbed as a spammer on Facebook!)

Alternatively, you can also join Facebook pages or groups that are related to the niche (that you are in) and connect with fellow members in these pages and groups.

3. Be Active

Facebook is a social networking platform. Therefore, if you want to get maximum results from it, you need to be active.

The easiest way to be active on Facebook is to post comments on your "friends" posts (especially if they are asking questions regarding the niche that you are in, help them out by providing them with answers or advices - they will appreciate you for that), sending them your birthday wishes on their birthday, etc.

You will also want to submit posts on Facebook - Where you can either share some tips or advices in the niche you are in, products/services that you just discovered that you think will help, or something personal (such as what you are up to lately).

4. Share Tips/Advices

If you want people to recognize you as someone whom they can approach if he/she have problems (in the niche you are in), then you need to show them that you know your stuff (who will want to confide in someone who does not know what he/she is doing, right?)

What you can do is to occasionally post some tips, advices, and information - If what you are intending to share consists of several paragraphs, what you can do is, you can place the entire content in your website and, in your Facebook post, you give a summary of what the post is about, along with a link to your website for people to read the entire post - This will also allow you to drive traffic to your website (if your post is interesting, they will likely read the other posts you have on your website).

Besides sharing information that you come up with, you can also share other information which you come across in other websites (that you think will benefit people whom you have added in your Facebook account).

5. Start A Facebook Group

You can create a Facebook group and build a community of people who have the same interest as you (in the niche you are in).

What you can do within the community is to encourage your group members to participate actively in the forum (but before you tell them to, you need to make sure you are actively participating as well) either by sharing information, tips, and advices, or helping fellow members out with their problems.

In case you may be wondering, why should you set up a Facebook group instead of a page - The reason is, with Facebook groups, you have the power to mass send email to all your members - Just like how you send out emails to your subscribers using an autoresponder service.