With 500 million (and growing) unique users worldwide, Facebook is the No. 1 social networking site in terms of activity and subscriptions. What started as a garage initiative by Mark Zuckerberg has now become the largest phenomenon on the web.

An user interface which allows for quick communication and the ability to create fan pages and groups at the click of a mouse button are what make Facebook extremely popular. Another important reason for its huge popularity is the wide variety of social applications which were developed and made available inside the Facebook environment.

Those applications can allow users and friends to do joint activities like playing games that run endlessly, sharing photos, videos, and web links, and so on.

How does this help a marketer?

Generally, media plans were drawn to include TV channels, magazines, or any other media that can grab maximum eyeballs and effectively reach a selected target audience. The science of segmentation and targeting has become only more precise in the case of social media.

Facebook offers a large variety of avenues to communicate with the audience, which unveils an entirely different world of possibilities to have an effective dialogue with customers. Some of these methods used popularly by marketers are:

Advertising: The very first opportunity, which is the most obvious one, is advertising on Facebook. The difference, however, is the fact that you could create your own ad in a few minutes and also specify the details of your target group in terms of demographics and types of discussions where you want your advertisement to appear.

Fan Pages: Facebook allows every brand, as well as individual users, to make fan pages for their favorite stars and their own homegrown businesses. Major brands have also made their official pages on Facebook which have a huge, immediate fan following around the world. The fan page has immense utility to convey first hand information about the brand and also to collect instant and honest feedback from your consumers.

Branded applications: Among the best ways to engage an user toward your brand is by creating a Facebook application; this could be a game or a contest, with your branding coming across subtly through it.

What makes Facebook even more exciting is the way it allows you to target your communication sharply only to the customer segment you want to attract. It also offers analytics and page insights that give good feedback and measurement on the process done.

The options offered by Facebook can be creatively explored and used judiciously for bringing about maximum benefits to any brand.

However, while doing all this, you need to be aware of the fact that customers have an equal say and have the ability to respond instantly to any of your actions with a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Availing the service of a social networking consultant to work out a social media strategy might be required so that your efforts will not be in vain.

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