What is Facebook and how do you use it for business?

What is Facebook?

From Wikipedia: Facebook is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Since September 2006, anyone over the age of 13 with a valid e-mail address can become a Facebook user. Facebook's target audience is more for adults than youths. Users can add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by workplace, school, or college. The website's name stems from the colloquial name of books given to students at the start of the academic year by university administrations in the US with the intention of helping students to get to know each other better.

Facebook has a number of features with which users may interact. They include the Wall, a space on every user's profile page that allows friends to post messages for the user to see; Pokes, which allows users to send a virtual "poke" to each other (a notification then tells a user that they have been poked); Photos, where users can upload albums and photos and Status, which allows users to inform their friends of their whereabouts and actions.

Many smartphones support Facebook and some, such as Android, iPhone and Blackberry have a dedicated app.

Facebook consistently ranks as the 2^nd most visited site on the internet (Google is #1). According to Facebook, there are more than 400 million users. 50% of active users are on Facebook daily.

So…how do you use Facebook for business?

Many businesses have a fan page with a separate Facebook account. Many businesses connect their blog to Facebook and also to Twitter. Business updates, news, etc. can be posted for everyone in your group to see. You can market your products or services. You can purchase Facebook ads and even target a specific area. Add interesting and engaging content to your Business Page to maximize your exposure to your fans and their networks. Every time a user interacts with you, their activity will get published to their news feed, which is seen by all of their friends.

I hope you find this info useful.

What is Twitter?

From Wikipedia: Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Since late 2009, users can follow lists of authors instead of following individual authors. All users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS), or external applications (notably including those developed for smartphones). While the service itself costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.

Twitter has been around since 2006. From an article published on April 14th, Twitter has 105 million registered users. Twitter gets 300,000 new users a day. It receives 180 million unique visitors a month.

Do you use Twitter? How do you use it? In a recent survey, 41% of Twitter users used Twitter to babble. 4% use it for promotion. Recently, Twitter added the ability to place ads.

To learn how to use Twitter for business, study Twitter 101 for business here:

http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/

Do you have an interesting Twitter story? Tell me about it!