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Handyherman.com a site for small business to post a profile including a description, picture, map, reviews. This is like what you can do on facebook but Handyherman.com is soley for business to customer use. A business profile can be found by other business owers as well as customers by an easy to use search function. Check out an example profile at handyherman.com/whiteoakteas

I made a business account for Handyherman on facebook but in line with other comments on this post, Facebook is a social networking site. A coffee shop or a night life website would prosper using facebook but not an advertising agency or a landscaping business because it does not appeal to college students. Please check out Handyherman.com and let me know what you think.

I would be interested in reading the article you spoke of. I actually just set up a business account on Facebook myself, and they have recently added a decent amount of tools for the business user. That being said I do not expect to get a lot of hits from the site but one never knows what we work well and you can't beat the free publicity no matter how small.

Myspace just launched their MyAds product. While not as sexy as Facebooks (which allows a finer level of targeting, such as by age--- so you can screen out kids), the pricing is cheap (bid a few cents per click) and the quality is almost as good as regular PPC. Anyone here have experience? We know folks who are spending over $10k a day. Only problem is that their interface is hard to use.

Dennis

Facebook is a wonderful way for small businesses to network and get their name out in their local town. The problem faced with many people is simply lack of action, and being out of the public eye. For small business owners, i would recommend connecting with your consumer base, and informing them of your services. Don't push it on them, simply level it out and give them some incentive. If they know you on a social standard, they're more comfortable with chosing you over a chain through attachment.

I've been using Facebook as a Social Network for family and friends. It's great for that. I'm in the marketing business and to be honest I haven't seen that much value for businesses yet. I think the fan thing could work out well. But it takes a while to build up a large base. I get a great deal of business value from forums like this one, very effective. Also LinkedIn has been great for business. Twitter, not so much yet. It's easy to get a lot of followers on Twitter, but the text limit is limiting as a marketing medium. The value of the web is you can give a lot of very useful, valuable, targeted information to your prospects. You can show them that you are the one to go to to solve their problems. That's very effective. If you can reach thousands of highly targeted people with that information, that's good. If the information is so compelling that a very high percentage of those people go to your website, even better. If your website is a converting monster, you've got a winning combination.

I used to be on the agency side as a copywriter and creative director. A lot of my work was creating television commercials. That was the high profile stuff. Everyone wanted to be there. Later I left and started my own production house and directed the commercials. It was a huge amount of fun. But I have to admit, for all the cost of those television spots and their high entertainment value, they weren't nearly as effective as a half-way decent website when it comes to moving product. This is a marketing gold mine. And now we marketers can be held accountable for the results of what do. If sales don't increase dramatically, they know exactly who to blame and exactly why it's not working. Ad agency presentations used to be nothing more than a glamorous dog and pony show. It was all entertaining fluff dressed up with focus groups and demographic studies.

Now you can look at a Google analytics report and tell exactly what's happening. Plus we're finally talking with our customers instead of AT them. It's a better world. Maybe not as much fun as it used to be. But a whole lot more effective. I'm ok with the trade off. I can't lie, I miss the million dollar budgets. But I love it when things really work.

And this does.

If anyone has any stories of Facebook working as well as some of the other Social Marketing strategies, I'm all ears.

Peter

Peter Cutler
Principal/Creative Director
studio 525
http://www.studio525.com

We don't just create websites.
We create results.

I agree that social networking isn't really for business.

Does anyone have some data that shows conversions and traffic increases from your Facebook Company Page? If so name out what industry you're in, etc...

Thanks

Marketing through social media has come along way since this original post. It's definitely the way to go for small business. Now Facebook and MySpace offer inexpensive advertising for small businesses so you can get your message in front of a targeted demographic. MySpace seems to be doing a better job at it than Facebook right now, but I believe they'll catch up.

Now leveraging Twitter is what's hot! I believe all the social networks should be utilized if you have the time. If anything, having connections from these websites to yours at a minimum will improve your search engine ranking.

J.P. Marketing, LLC
http://www.drivetrafficforless.com