For the amount of negative insights I have into Facebook there is a reason we all use it so often. It is a great tool for connecting with friends, staying in touch with people, and networking. It's also a great marketing and public relations tool for any type of business, from the new to the old. Facebook is a free way for you to get the word of your start-up business out into the public, and to keep people updated on various things you're doing with that business.
As of 2010, Facebook had over 400 million active users, with the average user spending 55 minutes per day on Facebook. Clearly it's a tool that's being used, and in high volumes on a regular basis. To be able to tap into this network and effectively use it to your advantage is a great use of resources.
On Facebook, you can create a "page" specifically for your business or project. More than 20 million people become fans of pages a day. It's an effective way to reach a lot of people with minimal effort. When you update the page, each fan gets a notification automatically letting them know of the change. Letting possibly hundreds, to thousands of people know what your company is up to with a click of a button for FREE is amazing.
You can also create event pages. With an event page you can send invitations to hundreds of people in a matter of minutes. They RSVP, which gives you a general idea of the numbers of people who would be attending, as well as can write on the wall about the event. This is a great way to field any questions regarding the event, and let them know any changes in venue or time. Facebook automatically has a reminder in the top corner of the event for anyone who RSVP'd that they would attend as well.
Facebook chat is another element of the website I love. It allows you to see who of your friends is online and lets you chat in real time with them while still navigating the site freely. I use the chat to stay in touch with my friends from out of town mostly. If you were not interested in letting people see that you are online, the chat allows you to appear as offline, so as to not get any chat requests.
I've mentioned the newsfeed several times in this blog, but it really is the pièce de résistance of Facebook. It is on the homepage, and is updated constantly with anything your friends are doing. Status changes, photo uploads, wall posts... everything. You can customize the newsfeed, letting Facebook know what type of things you want to see (more photos over status changes for example), and who's information you don't want to see updated. It's a great and quick way to get snippets of information on a lot of different people in a very short amount of time.
So as you can see, Facebook is not all that bad. It is a great tool when used to it's full potential. Take out the psychological warfare and use it for what it was initially meant for: networking.
No comments:
Post a Comment