10 Reasons why your business should be using Facebook

It has been reported that Facebook sometimes receives the same amount of traffic that Google gets in a day. It has over 400 million active users, that’s more than the population of the United States! The point is, Facebook is crawling with potential customers and you need to be there. Many people choose to join Facebook as they find it a great way to socialise with old and new friends or colleagues. This again makes Facebook a phenomenal tool to market your own business interests.

Here are 10 reasons why your business should be using Facebook

Find business contacts on Facebook. With more than 400 million active users, not only are your friends on Facebook, so are your prospects, your customers, your business partners, and of course, your competitors. You need to be on there too.

Engage your fans with promotions, events, competitions and interactive features. Engaging fans is one of the best ways to spark brand loyalty. Having a variety of activities for your fans to participate in, can make their engagement with you soar.

Creating a Facebook Fan Page provides your business with another branding opportunity on the web, where prospects, customers, future employees, vendors, and even the media, can find information about your company, products and services.

In a social setting like Facebook, people are likely to let their guard down and share information with you about products and services they like, and good or bad experiences they may of had, with your business or your competitors. Each time a fan interacts with your Fan Page you are presented with a wealth of information.

Understand your fans more effectively, based on their comments, response to your updates and use of your applications. Since Facebook is based in real-time, you can get a first hand look at how your fans react to your marketing initiatives and more.

Facebook is a great tool for asking for feedback and listening to what your customers have to say. People are usually reluctant to fill in surveys or complete lengthy forms, but ask them informal questions on Facebook about how you could improve your business, and they will be happy to help you out.

A Facebook Fan Page gives you direct access to your fans. You can send messages to fans all at once, individually, by groups, by country, county, city, gender, and even age. You can also schedule special events or promotions and send invitations only to fans that live in or near the town where the event is scheduled to take place.

Drive web traffic to your other websites through your Fan Page and generate more leads. Somebody who stumbles across your Fan Page may not have been aware of your main website. Redirecting even a small portion of Facebook's huge amount of traffic, could significantly improve the numbers of visitors to your website.

Facebook is a valuable source of customer data. As an administrator of a Fan Page, you have access to Facebook Insights; data that gives you information such as, gender, age, how often fans visit, how long they stay and much more. This data can help you provide more relevant content to encourage your followers to do business with you.

A Facebook Fan Page provides an inexpensive alternative to implementing customer engagement on your own website. In little time at all, you can have a branded Fan Page, where fans can post comments, share photos, ask and answer questions, and interact with you. Creating and managing a Fan Page is easier and cheaper than developing a similar bespoke application on your own website.