Should Your Business be on Facebook?
Facebook has about 70 million users worldwide and this is expected to reach upwards of 200 million by January 2009. But Facebook is for personal social networking, not for businesses… right? It seems that Facebook is evolving to capture the business social networking market that LinkedIn has previously locked up.
A basic premise of marketing using social networking is that business is both social and personal. Business involves people, communications and relationships. In business, we prize networking skills. We forge relationships by talking about sports, weather, hobbies and family. Marketers need to figure out how to best use online social networking.
Not only are your friends on Facebook, so are your prospects, your customers and of course your competition. Facebook has been changing itself to be the place for both personal and business social networking.
Unlike Plaxo, Xing or LinkedIn… Facebook is both a personal and business networking site. Recently, Facebook launched a “People You May Know” feature that is almost identical to a popular LinkedIn feature of the same name.
Back to the question we started with. Should Your Business be on Facebook? This should be a strong YES! Facebook is not just for college students anymore. It has attracted the white collar business market. Facebook is in transition and growing strongly. Facebook is poised to become a major B2B marketing site that attracts corporate executives and decision makers.
Facebook is slowly positioning itself to be a place where both personal and business networking can take place at the same time. It is in direct competition with LinkedIn but largely depends on word of mouth to influence business buying decisions.