Facebook - Transforming Advertising Forever

Facebook. You've probably heard about it by now, whether from your teen or a friend, or lately you've read about it in the business section. If you think that Facebook is just a website for high school and college kids to portion out funny images and write ups, you are dead wrong.

Facebook has already become one of the most popular social networking websites worldwide, with some 50 million members today - and that number doubles every six months. A broad and rising share of Facebook users are over the age of 23. Even as it has grown to more than 200 million users and become the global leader in social-networking Web sites, some view it as merely a nifty means for people to share info and images among scattered friends and acquaintances. But admirers say Mark Zuckerberg's five-year-old startup is poised to fulfill hype as the next big thing — that it will power online social interaction the way Google drives online search. Facebook is aggressively going beyond the home page to pursue its charge to become a "social utility" that helps people "connect and share." Facebook is forever evolving and improving its users' experience with new features and applications. Whether or not you entirely understand social media or social networking sites, the one aspect you must understand is that they are going to change the way businesses advertise.

Advertising: From Mass Media to Personal Connections
Facebook is trying to alter the way businesses market and advertise their products and services to potential consumers. Google Adwords revolutionized the way businesses market on the Internet by selling advertisements in a live auction manner and by publishing the ads to people who are looking for relevant data, answers and products. Facebook intends to improve on this and deliver even more targeted ads to members of their social network. At last year's launch of Facebook's new advertising platform, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, laid out his vision for the future of advertising. According to Zuckerberg:

Once every hundred years media changes. The last hundred years have been defined by the mass media. The way to advertise was to get into the mass media and push out your content. That was the last hundred years. In the next hundred years information won't be just pushed out to people, it will be shared among the millions of connections people have. Advertising will change. You will need to get into these connections.

Major Corporations are Facebook converts
Many leading corporations have already committed to using Facebook as a legitimate advertising platform, including Blockbuster, CBS, Chase, The Coca-Cola Co., Saturn, Sony Pictures, The New York Times Co. and Verizon. Why are these corporations so fevered to jump on board with Facebook?

Because Facebook is providing the most targeted - and thus one of the most mighty - advertising platforms that has ever been made. Imagine being able to show your company's ads to only the consumers within your target market. Due to the quantity of information Facebook collects from users, ads can be presented to a specific type of member based on sex, age, education, relationship status, keywords that appear in their profile, or even political views. It's the call of pure one-to-one marketing.

Facebook Beacon: Advertising at the Influential Referral Level
Another new Facebook tool called Beacon alerts others as to what their friends have been buying online. When two Facebook members "friend" each other, each user can view the other's profile with their photos, videos or anything else that is included. users are alerted to all of their friends' activities on Facebook through what are known as news feeds.

These news feeds are based on the actions that the member and their friends make on Facebook. Many Facebook users have hundreds of designated friends, meaning these news reports can be picked up by a large number of people in some instances.

Facebook Beacon takes these news alerts to a whole new stage, because now members can be mindful of their friends' activities not just on Facebook, but across the entire World Wide Web.

By putting a few lines of code on a site, a business can release Facebook members' interactions with their site onto Facebook news feeds. Beacon enables businesses to publish actions including if a Facebook user buys a product, signs up for a service, adds an item to a wish list and much more. Once the user executes the action, they are alerted that your business's site is sending a report to their Facebook profile and that they have a chance to not allow the story to be sent. If they don'topt out, then no additional user action is required to publish the story on their profile. For example, if someone buys a movie from Blockbuster online, then it is placed in their news feed and in their friends' news feeds; along with the story is a picture of the friend who purchased the movie and an ad for Blockbuster. This is advertising at the powerful referral level.

As Zuckerberg said later in his address, "People influence people. Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising."

Facebook Pages: Interact with your Customers in an Environment they Trust
Facebook even has built a way for businesses to create a presence on their website for free. Facebook Pages can help businesses form your brand online.

Companies merely go on to Facebook and create a profile. Facebook Pages allows businesses to interact with their clients in a familiar, trusted environment. When the page is created, one of the ends of a company on Facebook is to acquire "fans" of their service or products. This is very similar to two individual users becoming "friends" on Facebook, except that a business cannot view a members' profile. Businesses can increase their chances of gaining fans by making sure that their Facebook page is perpetually updated with fresh content and new applications to engage and entertain the members of Facebook.

Once a user becomes a fan of a business's Facebook Page, the fan can be kept in constant contact with the business through Facebook. If a business launches a new product or service, they can direct a message through their Facebook Page to all the fans of the site. Companies can exhibit special offers or promotions as often as they like. Whenever a fan interacts with the page, their actions are automatically rendered into social narratives that are again published to the news feeds. Next to the narrative in the news feed is a link to the company's Facebook Page. Again, your business has been campaigned virally with a personal referral from a friend.

To typical users, Facebook may seem a stand-alone Site — a vehicle for individuals to renew and revitalize personal relationships, to post comments and photos and perhaps play games. But more than 10,000 Sites now recognize a new service called Facebook Connect, which allows members to use their Facebook ID and password to travel fluidly among websites where registration is necessary.

The service also adds new social functions to those other sites. For instance, a person who places a video on YouTube can also share it via Facebook with a single click. And Facebook has global reach, having been translated into 50 languages, with 40 more in development, the company says. Each new Facebook user, every "friend" added, every business that starts a page, every Web entity that acknowledges Facebook Connect — all add to the critical mass behind Facebook's momentum. From a business perspective, the associations raise the value of what Facebook terms the "social graph" — its ever-expanding map of human relationships — even while doubters question about its ability to transform its popularity into profit.

How important is Facebook? If Google ignited the dubious Web 2.0 business era, Facebook may be ushering in Web 3.0.

Facebook has moved from a means for college kids to share photos and stories into what will likely become one of the most mighty advertising platforms on tap. Be among the first companies in your field to leverage this powerful new advertising platform. Get started in Facebook by contacting Rapid Response Marketing or visiting our Facebook page.

If you are ready to take the leap into marketing your business on the web, creating some quality content or optimizing your website for the search engines, give us a call or send us an email! We offer many services, from website evaluation to full SEO and online marketing campaigns, that will help you put your business on the right track with respect to all things cyberspace! Hit our Contact form or Call Today!

1-866-983-3025!