First things first: Get Facebook friends
I am sure everyone has noticed all of the Facebook profiles popping up that are solely for the purpose of selling something. As you can probably imagine, people see through those pretty quickly. When a company poses as a person and tries to get Twitter followers and Facebook friends it doesn’t work out very well.
The point is, if you wait until you’ve got something to sell or a business to promote to make friends, it’s not going to work out very well. However, everyone always wants to help out their friends. If you are one of those people who is holding out on getting a Facebook account, you might want to reconsider.
Friends help out friends
I am not saying that you should get on Facebook and make friends with people just so you can sell something someday. What I am saying is that social networks make life — and business — a lot easier. So after you set up your vast Facebook network, make sure you jump on opportunities to help out your friends when they could use a little free marketing. For instance, I have linked to my articles about payday loans on Facebook, and my friends posted the links on their pages, too.
Facebook is a great way to get the word out about things. If you really love a business or service, chances are you’ll tell your friends about it. Furthermore, if you come up with a business or service, people who are friends with you are more likely to use it. At the very least, your friends would be happy to tell their friends about your business.
Take the power back
Another thing Facebook does in the marketing world is give more power to customers. If someone has 300 friends on Facebook and tells all of them that they hate a certain tire place or coffee shop, it could hurt that business. Especially because people tend to live in the same area as their friends, if a local joint gives bad service to someone who has a popular Facebook profile, they could be in trouble.
Now that people have the power to very easily send the same message to hundreds of people at the same time, businesses have more reason to treat each and every customer well. It has always been the case that “important” people and celebrities seem to get special treatment. But now, everyone who walks through the door of a business could potentially have a million friends on Facebook and could easily kill a lot of new business that they might have otherwise gotten.
Getting stuff done
I have heard a lot of stories about people selling things quickly on Craigslist. The only way things sell faster is through Facebook. If you come up with a product that people want and advertise it through your personal Facebook account, it could potentially sell very quickly and easily. And it’s free!
There are tons of ads on Facebook, and Facebook even tailors its ads to target certain people. For instance, I mention the movie “The Big Lebowski” on my Facebook page, and I often see ads on my page for “The Big Lebowski” T-shirts. I am sure those people pay pretty good money for ad space on Facebook, but if you build up a large social network, you’ll already have all the free advertising space you’ll ever need.
I signed up with Facebook last year and I’ve had nothing but a great experience. At first, I wasn’t too excited about the idea of getting a Facebook account. I enjoyed using MySpace when it came to socializing. I knew the site well and I was content with its offerings for the most part. However, just about everyone I knew on MySpace was on Facebook too. So I figured I could try it out for a while and soon signed up for an account. Now I can’t get enough of it! LOL. I’m on Facebook a lot more than I am on MySpace. I absolutely enjoy the features and especially how it has taken socializing to whole ‘nother level for me.
When it comes to conducting business on Facebook, or any other type of social network site, you can’t just jump in and create an account and expect to start making money in the next day or two. Keep in mind that you are on a “social” network site, not some type of Clickbank. People are there to get to know other people and find out what they are all about. You have to be involved. Get to know other people and find out what their likes and interests are. You can add a bunch of friends to your network, but without building strong or at least decent relationships, you really don’t have a network to work with.