Is Facebook really great for business? With over 300 million members and growing (50 percent of which log on to Facebook daily), it has to be… especially if you’re a B2C company.

From the perspective of a company using Facebook, the only legitimate options are Pages and Ads (aside from creating Facebook apps of course, and using Facebook Share or Connect, which we’ll discuss later). If those are the options, then it’s a matter of making the most of what’s available to you.

I believe you have to view the creation of a Facebook Page the same as you view creating a community, for that’s what it is. Facebook may call them “Fans,” but I think of them as community members.

Therefore, the same principles that make for vital online communities apply here: Regular updates with fresh content, incentivizing fans to spread the word about the page, and encouraging them to comment on posts made by the administrator as well as upload content themselves.

What are the top 3 things that a company might do to get started on Facebook?

First: Create an interactive, frequently-updated Fan Page (I prefer the term Business Page).

Second: Use Facebook Ads to market the Page or other offers. It’s cheap to do, but don’t expect a huge return.

Three: Market research. Facebook offers, especially through Ads, Insights (tied to your Facebook Page) and Search a lot of marketing data.

And four… you said four, right? (laughs) Create a killer app, especially one that puts your brand as the centerpiece

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