Facebook has become one of the most prominent social networking sites on the Internet. Some surveys and rankings place it second only to MySpace in terms of number of users and popularity. The flexibility offered by Facebook has opened up many opportunities for Internet businesses to capitalize on targeted markets and maximize their business exposure online.

Your Profile Page that you create for your business is a powerful tool that can get you noticed on Facebook. On your Profile Page, you are basically trying to convince other users to explore more about your company or business. You want them to explore your Page and become Fans of your product or company. Fans receive regular updates, including anything that you post on your site, and you will remain prominent in their News Feeds. When creating your Profile Page, remember to make it as personal and inviting as you can. Facebook is still a social networking site, so remember to capitalize on the “social” part of that and connect to the users. Tell stories about your product or business, share bits about yourself that are relevant, include anecdotes from other customers, and so on, to make it have the best personalization. Users of a social network are looking for that human connection.

One great reason to use Facebook for social marketing is that you can generate amazing numbers of page views as users browse through. Just think, many users will click through onto profiles of users they see on their friends’ pages. If you can get a bunch of contacts built up, then all of the contacts of those users will be exposed to your Profile Page. This will be likely to lead a huge amount of traffic to your page.

Facebook’s contacts and groups options make it easy to spread the word about your product or service. You can initiate and maintain conversations easily with users, and any “Fan” of your site will be receiving the continuous updates, making you more noticeable to not only the Fans you already have, but to any of their contacts as well. This is one of the strongest ways to use viral marketing. You can start your own groups or search the networks to find relevant ones that might be interested in your business. Fans can “share” their discovery of your page with all of their contacts, too.

When you send information to an entire group, you can post messages on your Profile that get posted on all of your contacts’ Pages, or you can send messages to everyone that would appear in their Facebox Inbox.

One of the benefits of Facebook Pages is the flexible customization that is available. Adding HTML or Flash applications is easy, and you can increase the depth of experience that users have with your brand by making it more memorable.

Facebook is perfect for marketing of any small business or Internet business that is looking to get some more visibility on the Internet and have a bigger presence on the Web. Get your Profile Page created and start to get some Fans!

Author's Bio: 

Jack Humphrey is the author of The Authority Black Book and the editor of the Friday Traffic Report at http://www.jackhumphrey.com. Join Jack's social marketing community.