facebook advertising

Social Media is more than just "LIKES" - for companies in particular it should be an online encounter where they can have valuable conversations with their customers.  Social media can be such a valuable tool for business both big and small, for customer interaction and acquiring new customers as well.

I believe that companies can enjoy real benefits of social media without splashing their increasingly limited cash on relatively expensive ads such as those sold by Facebook as part of its much-touted advertising service.  And whilst you might not get 3000 new "followers" in a month, you can still strengthen your brand’s profile among the people who actually matter: new and existing customers.

The hullaballoo surrounding Facebook's IPO, the eye-watering $100bn headlines and the subsequent bickering, has largely passed by the social giants' 901m users.

Last week's launch of the App Center could make a much bigger impression and may prove a canny move in answering criticism of Facebook's slow progress in monetising it's half-a-billion (yup, you read it right) active mobile users.

If the IPO critics are to be believed, the company's valuation and its future is all about advertising revenue, but the App Center launch launch hints at a longer-term strategy. If successful, it could establish Facebook at the heart of the app ecosystem, as well as seeing the coffers swell with mobile ad and targeting revenue.

As Facebook heads towards a record stock flotation that could value the company at £63 billion (and Mark Zuckerberg at £17.8 billion), we have to ask what role we, the users, play in its success.

The website relies on adverts to generate profit. Those can be directed either to an external website or to a branded Fan Page. Marketers realised early on that directing their ads to a Fan Page rather than a standard ‘Dot Com’, not only meant a better response (the site shared information about other friends who endorse the action), but also introduced the potential to grow massive marketing databases to which they could direct promotional messages at no further cost.

We’ve all swallowed the pill and a quick glance at your new timeline profile will show how many Fan Pages you have now ‘liked’- far more than you’d imagine, it’s not uncommon for single profiles to join hundreds a year.