image courtesy of mashable.com

Over the past week, Facebook exceeded 500 million members. 

If Facebook were a country, it would easily be the 3^rd most populous, behind only China and India.

In the United States, almost one out of every two people have a Facebook profile (125,881,220 in the States out of a total estimated population in 2010 of 309,884,000, or 41%).

Sure, there have been legitimate squabbles and concerns about privacy, use of content, etc., but how would you not consider having a presence where at perhaps 40% of your target market is active and engaged?  Besides, social media marketing is about connection, transparency, and building relationships with your clients, not selling product.  Eventually, if a relationship is built, trust follows.  Call me old school, but I’ve seen again and again that people buy from people they like and trust.  Remember:  we may be dealing in a whole different realm of marketing, but some of the rules stay the same.

How can Facebook be an effective tool for your company?  Creating a page for your business (see the Mingledorff’s page HERE), allows a landing spot for friends, clients, and prospects to gather and absorb information from you.  The content you post can come in myriad forms:  simple text updates, pictures, videos, event invitations, links to other sites (including your own), links to other Facebook pages, Twitter updates, music, etc., etc., etc.

Furthermore, the people who join (or “like”) your page can recommend it to their network of friends.  So, let’s say you have a company that offers a valuable service to potential buyers (hmm…maybe HVAC maintenance contracts?).  If you have some existing clients or friends who are part of your Facebook company page, then all their friends will see that.  Rather than you placing an expensive ad in the Yellow Pages, you have a company profile attached to people who trust you, and who can give a credible, virtual “word-of-mouth” endorsement to new leads.  All for the cost of…nothing (well, except a good bit of time; I’ll get into that down the road).

This is a very simplistic way of looking at Facebook.  Much like Twitter, I’ll dig into the meat n’ potatoes in later posts.  In the meantime, I’d like you to at least consider having a presence online, especially on Facebook.  If you have any questions or thoughts, please drop them in the comment field.  Thanks!