Posted on January 23, 2012 in SEO and Internet Marketing, Small Business

It's well-known that social media is now the number one reason people use the internet, and Facebook is by far the largest social media site.

So it's not suprising that there's a lot of buzz around getting your business on Facebook.

But is it right for you?

Facebook is social. Building relationships with your customers is a good thing, but whether Facebook as a medium will work for you depends on your audience and your market.

How to get your business on Facebook

Start with a Facebook 'page', a place designed for businesses to connect with their audience. You can create a page to allow people to 'like' your business, which then shows them your updates on their timeline and lets you send them message.

Some of our clients that have very successful Facebook pages are in:

• Tourism
• Hairdressing
• Personal training
• Boutique giftware

My hairdresser is a good example. Her facebook page is covered with people (mostly women) who have their hair done before a big event, take a photo and put it on Facebook to show their friends. They then tag it and link to the hairdresser's page as a point of pride, in effect promoting the hairdresser's name and skills to their entire friendship network.

In this case the spread of the photos and the innate recommendation of the service is marketing gold, something that would be incredibly hard to buy if it wasn't happening naturally.

But it doesn't work that way for everyone.

If your clients are other businesses, or the people you target primarily aren't on Facebook, or you offer a service that people are embarrassed or private about, chances are a Facebook page isn't for you.

Even in these cases, you could consider Facebook ads, which can be targeted to many specific demographics based on the data Facebook collects on its members.

Either way remember that online Facebook is huge and it's worth seeing how you can benefit from it. If you've got the time and ideas you almost definitely can.