The 3rd Largest Country in the World!

If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world. Over 600 million people are active users. Largely because of Facebook, social networking is now the most popular use of the Internet surpassing porn which ruled for more than a decade and even than email. Over half of the active users log on in any given day. People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on FB.

The average user is connected to 80 community, group or event pages and creates 90 pieces of content each month. Fifty percent of users also access Facebook from their phones. This is pretty amazing for an application that started life as Yearbook.

People install 20 million FB applications every day and every month, more than 250 million people engage with FB from external websites. An average of 10,000 new websites integrate with Facebook every day! More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook.

Your business needs to be on Facebook. Most gurus recommend two pages—one for yourself and one for your business. Just like the great domain name grab of the late '90s, you need to be at least reserving your preferred Facebook business name. That said, I currently do not practice what I preach in that regard. As BrandKiwi, I feel I am my brand and my business and I only am active on @paulkiewiet.

With your personal page, you have friends. With your business page, you'll have likes. It is important that you communicate what your business is about and be conscious of all of your brand building activities. Provide relevant content that is related to peoples' needs and pain points. Position yourself as an expert that people will want to connect with when they have a need for your services. Post pictures and videos.

Facebook also offers advertising. You can create an advertisement and keywords and bid an amount per ad and per campaign budget. The ads are served to users based on your keywords and the users' content, posts and use of those words.

You can also help your clients build their business pages. Suggest promotional products that they can offer to people for "liking" their page.

Remember the new rules of marketing. It's about a conversation, not a campaign. Engage your friends and target audience by offering valuable content. Turn strangers into friends, friends into customers and customers into evangelists.

You need to be on Facebook as well as LinkedIn if you want to reach the new buyers.

(This is the seventh part in a series on the New Rules of Marketing. In my next post, I'll discuss the modern telegraph and its relevance to your business. Read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5 and part 6.)