Facebook Marketing in Only An Hour a Day?

When fifth-grader Kane Swift had to do a science project, he decided to help raise funds for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure campaign.

So he set up a Facebook fan page with the help of his parents. In just one week, he got more than 1,200 fans and raised $400!

“I can understand using Facebook for a fifth-grade science project,” I hear you saying. “But how do I use Facebook to market my business? I keep hearing that I should include social media in my marketing campaigns, but I don’t have a clue how to do that.”

You’ll be happy to hear that your clueless days are over.

A recent Nielsen report showed people spend 7 hours a month on Facebook, but only 2 hours a month on Google, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN.  That’s a huge opportunity.

One of the biggest names in Facebook marketing has written a Facebook marketing textbook just for you. Mari Smith partnered with Chris Treadaway to write Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day.

Yes! It’s another “Hour a Day” book. So you know you’ll be getting the equivalent of a college semester’s training in the privacy of your own home, at your own pace.

Facebook is every marketer’s dream, because in no other medium can you:

• Show your ad to 1,000 people for only 20 cents. Not 20 cents apiece, 20 cents total.
• Create lifelong fans of your business for only 27 cents per fan.
• Target divorced male executives between the ages of 40 and 55 who have an MBA from Harvard Business School and work at specific companies in Chicago.

Targeting Customers With Surgical Precision

You can target Facebook members by location, age, sex, education, language and even by their workplace. So you could target your ad to married men over 40 with a college degree who work for a particular company. You can throw in a couple of keywords that members list in their profiles to get even more specific.

And Facebook asks its members for a LOT of information! Not only gender, birth date and location, but also favorite TV shows, college major and even religious and political views!

“Facebook advertising is perhaps one of the most effective and inexpensive ways available to target specific people based on profile data that they have entered voluntarily,” write Smith and Treadaway.

But Facebook isn’t just about ads. And that’s just as well, because Facebook ads are the same, interruptive, “in-your-face” form of traditional advertising in a new medium. Many Facebook members may just ignore them.

“Although Facebook’s pay-per-click model of advertising offers competitive rates… Facebook users have been consistently obstinate when it comes to responding to advertising on its profile pages,” write Smith and Treadaway. “As an advertiser/marketer, Facebook has an extremely large, desirable audience that [has] refused to click ads.”

“Facebook members are typically not in the habit of clicking on ads,” say Paul Dunay and Richard Krueger in Facebook Marketing for Dummies. “They are on Facebook for social purposes, as opposed to browsing and discovery.”

Facebook Is More Than Just Ads

Fortunately, there’s a lot more you can do on Facebook than just running ad campaigns. But only if you follow the primary rule of social media marketing: Find your evangelists and then give them everything they need to help you market your business for free.

Before you even begin a social media marketing campaign, you need to answer the following questions:

• What is the goal of your social media campaign? Increased sales? Better customer service?
• How will you measure success? What metrics will you use?
• Do company executives view social media as a risk or an opportunity?
• Do you have employees who are interested in helping with the campaign?
• Can you provide enough interesting content on a regular basis to attract potential customers and keep them engaged?

And your company executives will have to answer the following questions:

• Should you promote your brand, your company or your products/services?
• Will you need a policy governing what information can be shared on social media?
• Will every update have to be approved in advance? By whom?
• Will you communicate directly with customers via social media?
• Will you manage the project internally or outsource it?

And this will be a team effort. No single person has all the skills necessary to run a large corporate social media marketing campaign. And the leader of the team has to be “one part visionary, one part marketer, and one part politician,” according to Smith and Treadaway.

Here are some Facebook metrics you can track:

• Number of new Facebook fans
• Number of wall updates/posts
• Number of likes and comments
• Number of customer interactions
• Amount of money spent on advertising
• Advertising cost per fan

This is just a taste of what you will find in Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day. The authors cover the gamut of Facebook marketing, beginning with Facebook basics and working through to Facebook analytics, Facebook Connect, and Facebook apps. They end the book with interviews from six industry experts who predict how Facebook may evolve.

If your prospective customers are spending more time on Facebook than any other site, shouldn’t you be there too?

Social Media Examiner gives this book a 5-star rating. Be sure to grab a copy if you want to master Facebook with only an hour a day.

Have you read the book?  Do you think Facebook will change the way businesses connect with customers? Please leave your comment in the box below.