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Video: Using Facebook for Your Business

By Michael Stelzner

Everyone’s heard of Facebook. Perhaps you use to keep in touch with your college pals or keep your family updated on what’s going on with the kiddies.

But did you know you can actually use Facebook for business?

YES, it’s really true.I recently sat down with one of the world’s leading authorities on Facebook for business, Mari Smith.

In this video Mari shares some of her tips and techniques for using Facebook for business (including how to balance the personal and the business!). Below you will see our interview.

By the way, if you want to follow me on Facebook, go here.Are you using Facebook for business? How has it worked for you?

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 7:56 am and is filed under Marketing, Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • The thing I didn't hear about in this interview is how to have a personal account and how to have a business account simultaneously on FB.

    And since most of the people who read this blog are in business or writing for business owners this seems like a bit of an oversight - one that you could be penalized for by FB.

    Here's what FB says:
    If I already have a user profile, can I create a business account?
    Maintaining multiple accounts, regardless of the purpose, is a violation of Facebook’s Terms of Use. If you already have a personal account, then we cannot allow you to create business accounts for any reason. You can manage all the Pages and Socials Ads that you create on your personal account.

    Please keep in mind that the fans of any of the Pages you administer will not have visibility or access to your personal account or profile. Any actions that you take as a Page administrator on your Page will show the Page’s name as the actor and not your personal name.

    If you wish to manage ads for multiple clients, you will need to do so from one account. We suggest you restrict all ads for each client to separate campaigns. Unfortunately it is not currently possible to designate separate credit cards for each campaign or to have multiple administrators for the same ad account.

  • I was never quite 100% convinced about Facebook but now think it can be very useful in marketing your business. I will be checking it out.

  • The fact that 200 million FB users constitute an amount of human beings that would make up the six largest nation in the world is just huge. I do foresee that another few years of online endeavours could push the amount of FB users beyond the largest single population of any country on this planet. Impressive stats indeed.

  • I think Facebook is a tremendous business tool. It is a great way to network and virally spread the word about a product or service. Use your personal profile, but share updates about the progress of your eBook or post the link to it and ask them to share with friends.

  • Wow a real live facebook expert, and I though I was one! I am not so sure how stable the facebook country would be... lol. It is a surprising figure that the average age is 30 - 35. its amazing that facebook can be a powerful tool for marketing by using the fan pages.

    <abbr>Joey Logano Fan's last blog post..Rookie Profile at Dover</abbr>

  • a true rarity when you find really useful video, but no primitive joke or other sh*t. Thanks, Michael.

  • Good info and thanks for sharing Mike (and Mari)!

  • Hi Mari and Mike:

    Really cool post (Thanks, Mike for the nice interview intro!). I did some tooling around in Mari's videos and WOW--what a plethora of information!

    I'm particularly intrigued with the Fan Page idea, and with your permission, Mari, would like to use your Fan Page YouTube clip as a slide at a local Small Business Development Center seminar I'm doing next week on optimizing social media.

    I've got my graphic-designer husband working on creating a Fan Page in my Facebook profile, as well as updating my LinkedIn, adding apps, and cross-linking all my social media platforms. We're taking new publicity pics today too!

    See, you've inspired me... and if I can ever do anything for you, just give a shout.

    Apryl

  • Thank you so much for this information! I had no idea the of the power behind these fan pages. I'm definitely going to dive in and get my fan page going!

  • Mari -

    After watching your presentation at the Summit the other day my eyes have been opened to the depth of Facebook! I originally thought it was just a registry to connect with your friends, but with the knowledge you've provided, I now consider it akin to WordPress.

    It seems that the developers want to expand its functionality with lots of add in applications and enhancements. Boy am I going to be busy!

    Thanks for your great insight, and thanks Mike for putting the session together.

    Jonathan

  • Mari;

    That is HUGE!!!

    So cool. I'm gonna add that to my Ping.fm account.

    Mike

  • @Jacques - aaah, thank you so much!! I appreciate your kind words!! :)

    @Mike - way cool, since we did this interview just the other day I realized you can update your Facebook Fan Page (and profile, and Twitter, LinkedIn and more) via http://ping.fm or http://hellotxt.com!! :)

    Cheers,
    Mari

  • That lady sure smiles a lot, and she has nice teeth! Making Facebook work for your business has been an enigma to me, but her insight with regards to fan pages that are trawled by Google is quite an eye-opener. At the risk of sounding cliche'd I'd like to say "Great Post, Thanks"

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