12 Facebook Marketing Strategies That Work

Facebook dropped its registration requirements on September 26th and opened to anyone with a valid email address. For the first time, a business without a college or company affiliation can build a presence here. There’s no dedicated business Page product yet, that’s still a year away, so everything below works within the tools Facebook offers today: profiles, Groups, Events, network-based ad targeting and the brand-new News Feed.

1. Build a Group around a real interest, not a pitch

Groups predate the September opening and remain the closest thing to a business hub on Facebook. A Group that exists to serve a genuine shared interest tied to your brand draws members who join voluntarily, which behaves differently from an audience you paid to reach.

2. Use Events for anything happening in the real world

Facebook Events lets you post a real date, time and location and see who’s planning to show up. For a launch, an in-store night or a signing, that RSVP visibility is more honest signal than anything email replies gave you.

3. Target ads by the network people chose

Facebook’s ad system, still called Flyers, lets you target by school, employer or region, the same networks users select when they join. That’s sharper targeting than most broad-reach advertising has offered a small business before.

4. Find the people already active in relevant Group discussions

Every niche Group has a handful of members posting constantly and getting replies. Those people have real influence within that specific community, and a genuine relationship with them travels further than an ad ever will.

5. Post with the News Feed in mind

The News Feed, launched in September and still controversial among users who feel surveilled by it, surfaces friends’ activity automatically. A Wall post or photo update now has a chance of reaching people who never visit your profile directly, which changes what “posting” is worth.

6. Use photo albums as your product catalog

Facebook’s tagging feature means a photo can pull in the people tagged in it, along with their friends. An album of products, staff or events spreads through tagging in a way a static product page never could.

7. Find your campus or company super-user

Certain users, especially on the college networks Facebook grew up on, are unusually well connected within their network. A genuine relationship with one of them does more for word of mouth than a broad campaign.

8. Cross-post from your existing blog

If you already run a blog with an RSS feed, treat your Facebook Wall as another place that content shows up. Frequent, small updates keep you visible in a feed-driven world far better than occasional large posts.

9. Respond to Wall comments quickly and publicly

A comment on your Wall is visible to the commenter’s whole network, not just to you. Answering it fast, in public, works as a small advertisement for how your business treats people.

10. Keep any business presence honest about identity

Facebook’s terms still expect real identity behind a profile, and Pages for businesses don’t exist yet. Whatever workaround you use, be upfront about who’s behind it rather than pretending to be an individual user.

11. Track Group growth as your real metric

There’s no dashboard here the way there is for email or a website. Watching how many people join your Group each week, and how many of them post, is the closest thing to a health check you’ve got.

12. Start Flyers spend small

Click costs and audience response on this ad system are still unpredictable this early. Run a small test budget before committing anything meaningful, and let the results, not assumptions, tell you whether it’s worth scaling.

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More strategy coverage is here, along with everything published in 2006 and the Digital Business Marketing Awards.