Using Facebook to market your business? Some basics to help you see if it's right for you.

Set up a business page

In addition to your personal profile, you may want to set up a Facebook page for your business.

Funny thing is… we don’t have one.  And that’s because we haven’t devised a Facebook strategy that we feel is worth the time to execute. We focus most of our time on our blog and LinkedIn since most of our prospects are business executives.  Plus we get a lot of business from face-to-face networking and referrals.

You don’t necessarily have to employ every single marketing channel available to you.  There’s only so much time in the day.  Social media marketing isn’t expensive the way TV advertising is… but time is money.  And a Facebook business page should be active.  Otherwise people won’t want to visit more than once.

So, if Facebook is right for you, create a business page.  You can use that page as an information portal where people can find out more about your business and what you are up to.

You can publish articles, videos and virtually anything that people might want to know about your business.

You want to invite people to “Like” your page and you should find reasons to attract them back regularly – such as gifts and contests.

Add applications (apps)

Facebook has a huge range of applications that can be added to profiles and pages to increase the opportunities for people to connect. New applications are being created almost daily. They range from games and utilities to productivity widgets and tools.

Developing your own application is a great way to promote your business page and to attract people back to it.

Generate leads

While many people will choose to communicate with you directly on Facebook, you want to get as many as possible of your Facebook visitors to sign up to your email list so that you can contact them directly.

You can do this by offering incentives such as free reports, coupons, special offers and deals when they visit your page.