Social media is a powerful tool you can leverage for raising awareness of your brand, generating and maintaining buzz, interacting with your customers (and potential customers) and generating new connections which leads to more business.

The largest social media network is Facebook. With over 800 million users, it turns out that Facebook isn’t just a place to post pictures of your latest vacation, share links to websites you find interesting, or opine about the events of the day; Facebook Ads allows you to easily target your brand and your message directly at a very specifically defined demographic.  You can create a marketing campaign which can be as specific (e.g., targeted to 35-40 year old college-educated married women in the 80202 zip code who are interested in cats) or as general as you like. You decide what you are willing to pay per click (Facebook will recommend a Cost Per Click; the higher your bid, the more prominently and more frequently your ad will be placed).  And once your ad campaign is launched, Facebook provides you with a convenient dashboard giving you up-to-the-minute metrics, enabling you to gauge the effectiveness of your ad and make adjustments if you so choose.  All of this will serve to drive more traffic to your business website, which in turn serves to increase your rankings in search engines (SEO) as well as more business. Social media users in the U.S. find advertising is a fair price to pay for using social media sites and features. 15% are more inclined to buy brands that advertise in social media, representing slightly more than 30 million people 13-80 years old.  Social media site ads also drive brand exploration, with 25% more inclined to find out more about brands that advertise on social media sites.  When coupled with the fact that social media use has reached almost universality, marketers may consider the medium as more than a listening tool.
– PR Newswire

Beyond simple, static banner ads, however, Facebook allows you to create a Page for your business, in which you can very effectively market your brand, creating a network of users who “Like” your Page and with whom you can then interact.  This is a very powerful tool! This enables you to interact directly with customers or potential customers, set the tone of discussion regarding your business, and generally affect your brand in a very positive way.

Oh, and Facebook Pages – they’re free. And amazingly easy to set up.

And perhaps the most powerful aspect of Facebook is that it offers a truly “ubiquitous access” experience.  Facebook users (and thus potential customers) aren’t tied to fixed computers; users can and very regularly do access Facebook via their mobile phones, smartphones, tablet computers, and just about any other device connected to the internet.  All driving traffic to your business website.

Which means that your brand is able to be put before your intended audience 24/7, from just about anywhere.  Which means you can guide the conversation regarding your buisness through Facebook and other social media sites.  Which means you can positively impact your real-world bottom line, all by positively engaging your customers in the online world.

It has been noted by others:  To be successful in business, you have to be where the people are. And in today’s online-connected world, people are more inclined to favorably view and spend their money at your business when you engage them in social media.

Facebook is a powerful tool which makes online engagement easy.

And when you tie your Facebook and social media marketing efforts into your overall web presence and marketing strategy, it has even more impact.