I find myself spending a considerable amount of time browsing various social networks, and for good reason, that is what I do for a living. I am a member of various groups on Linkedin, Twitter as well as Facebook on the topic of Social Media Marketing, and one thing I often see pop up in questions, is about Facebook and the importance of it vs the other social networking sites. In my opinion, for B2C businesses, Facebook is probably the most important social network that one can be a part of. You can do the marketing yourself, or there also many Facebook Marketing Services that can do this for you with great results.

One of the main reasons is simply the behavior of the users of Facebook as well as its size. Right now Facebook is ranked as the number 2 largest website in the world behind Google with 500 million users. That in itself is large, but what is even bigger is the amount of time that people spend on the site. Recent research shows that users spend more time on Facebook than Google, Yahoo, Youtube, Ebay and Amazon COMBINED. What you have is a behavior where unlike any other site, people spend time going through their feed, reading everything posted since their last visit to the site. This gives you premium exposure that your information will get seen, no other site has this sort of loyalty and dedication to it as Facebook does, not even Twitter. This
sort of behavior leads to customer loyalty when marketing is done correctly, and the results can be absolutely phenomenal.

Facebook also serves as the future, there has been nothing in the past that can be compared to the current state of Facebook, nor is there anything currently that has the outlook for the future that Facebook does. People often compare Facebook to Myspace, however, that is a mistake. Myspace was never a way of life, it was never a part of people as Facebook is today, it would to cumbersome, too spammy, and not nearly as personal as what we have today with FB. In honesty, Facebook improves the quality of life of people. In a fast paced world where people are constantly on the go, Facebook serves as a quick and easy update on friends as well as family.

One example that comes to mind for me is a cousin that I haven’t seen in years. We became Facebook friends, and I noticed her check-in on Facebook places was literally just 3 blocks from my house. Come to find out, though our whole life we had lived 30 or so miles apart, we now reside in the same exact neighborhood. That was all discovered thanks to Facebook, and we now meet up regularly for dinner and drinks.

While Facebook may be the most important, it is possibly one of the least understood mediums as far as marketing is concerned. There are various reasons for this, the main one being that unlike Twitter, it is very closed off. You cannot see anyone but your friends wall, and you have no idea what is getting shared and why it is being shared. Another factor is price, while some sites simply go viral, or some sites already have a following and attracting fans is easier, those are not the normal circumstances, and Facebook requires a budget, creativity and knowledge of their advertising system to get the best value out of the ads that you do run.