When I started producing on my own for health insurance in 2007, I knew I had to start using Social Media for networking and start Branding myself. The growth of professional users on Facebook is staggering. Wrap your mind around this:

FACEBOOK website statistics July 1, 2010

·         More than 400 million active users

·         50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day

·         Average user has 130 friends on the site

·         Average user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events

O’Reilly Media reported that between September 2008 and February 2009 that the number of Facebook users between the ages of 35 and 44 increased by 51%. Not far behind were users in the age range of 45-54 growing by 47%. There was even growth with Facebook users ages 26-34 which increased by 26%. Facebook is no longer the college network. More than half of the 140 million Facebook users are out of college.

So what this means is most likely, your clients or future clients are using Facebook. This is why marketers are targeting this website for Professional reasons. But what are those reasons??

Before anybody professionally jumps into Facebook, they should take time to figure out what their expectations are. Statistically only 5% of all of Facebook users actually go on the website to buy something. So there must be other reasons to join in. Some questions you might ask yourself before creating a Fan or Group page.

1. Is your goal to drive traffic to your website?
2. Do you want to improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
3. Do you want engage with your clients?
4. Do you want to let your clients get to know you & your staff personally?
5. Do you want to strengthen your customer relations?
6. Do you want to strengthen your Brand name?
7. Do you want to obtain market research/obtain feedback?
8. Do you want to obtain demographic information about your clients?
9. Do you want help to gain market share over your competition? These are a few ways that Facebook can help you professionally outside straight advertising and sales.

(this article was published at:  www.ohiowomeninbusiness.com – a great resource for business owners)

Tags: Branding, Facebook, Networking, Sales, Social Media, Work

This entry was posted on August 6, 2010 at 11:36 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Posted in Social Media by Darrah Comments Off