No matter what type of application you are talking about in the online world, there will always be those who are all for it, and those who are against it. The same is true with FaceBook. There are those who claim that it is a waste of time, and others who are quickly building up their businesses – and their bottom lines – through this social networking site.

The fact is that if you become an active user of FaceBook, and you use the site in an acceptable, appropriate manner, it is far from a waste of time. It is a great way to connect with your customers on a more personal level, which helps to build greater trust and credibility with them. It is a fantastic way to generate new customers through building relationships with current customers and attracting the business of their friends.
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While you are building your credibility on FaceBook, there are certain things that you could do – easily – that will completely undo everything you’ve accomplished to date and prevent you from ever building credibility through this social networking site in the future – plus it can happen in a matter of minutes.

Here are some things that you definitely want to avoid doing on FaceBook:

1. Do not spam people’s inboxes or walls. This will not only cause you to lose credibility, it can also cause you to get banned from FaceBook. FaceBook is one of the best social networking sites in existence and it is important to keep it in it’s currently clean, spam free state, so that it remains a useful and valuable tool for everyone who uses it.
2. Never post messages on other people’s walls with the sole intention of linking to your own website. It’s obvious and just makes you look desperate and greedy. Don’t link anywhere at all. Instead, post interesting comments and people will click your name to learn more about you from your profile, where you should obviously link to your websites.
3. While you want to give yourself and your business a human face, you really don’t want to get overly personal – especially with photos and videos. You aren’t searching for a hot date – you are trying to build business credibility. Don’t forget that – ever.
4. Don’t add an abundance of silly applications to your profile. It just clutters your profile, makes it load slow and really just takes the viewers attention away from that which you want their attention firmly glued to – information about you and your business.
5. Never have ‘cyber wars’ with anyone on FaceBook. If someone is bothering you, simply block them. It isn’t hard to do – and it’s much more reasonable than throwing flames for the whole world to see.

Above all, use good common sense. Always think before you act – or before you hit a submit button. Consider your customers, your potential customers, business contacts, and potential business contacts – how will they view what you are about to do?

If you follow these no-no rules, you will almost always be just fine.

One of the most important Internet Marketing related features on FaceBook is groups. This goes far beyond joining groups to find new contacts. It also includes creating groups of your own for the purpose of joint venturing – even if that joint venturing won’t take place until a future date.

First, let’s examine how to set up a group. The process is extremely easy. Simply log in to your account then click on ‘groups’ in the navigation panel on the left. At the top of the next page, you will see a button that says ‘Create a New Group’. Click that button, and fill out the form. It’s just that simple and can be done in a matter of minutes.

The hard part is determining what type of group that you want to start. What is the groups focus? All groups must have a focus otherwise, they are essentially worthless. Read the rest of this entry

It takes more than setting up a nice profile page and adding friends to truly build your credibility with FaceBook. There are other things that you need to do on the site that will let your profile visitors know that you do indeed have credibility and you are in fact trustworthy.

Start by adding the testimonial application to your profile page. This application can be found at http://www.facebook.com/applications/Testimonials/2588290420. Your friends will use it to create testimonials about you, which will appear on your profile. You can also import testimonials that are sent to you via email, or used on your website. Just make sure that your testimonials are from real people – and put the testimonials from other FaceBook users first.

Next, encourage your friends to write on your wall. Here, you must use caution. There will always be those friends who want to advertise on your wall, and you must discourage this – preferably without offending your friends who are doing that advertising.
When they attempt this, send them a nice note and tell them that you don’t want any advertising on your wall, but that they are free to write on your wall otherwise. The best way to get people to write on your wall is to write on theirs – and do not advertise when you do so!
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FaceBook allows you to not only connect and find new friends and associates, it also allows you to promote your business through various types of FaceBook advertisements. These are not free advertisements, however it is very affordable.

First, there are two options when it comes to how you pay for the advertising. You can purchase clicks, which is known as CPC advertising, or buy impressions, which is known as CPM advertising. Most advertisers will likely choose CPC, since this means that the advertisement attracted the prospect enough that they actually clicked on the advertisement. With CPM, you can’t even really be sure that your advertisement are noticed. Read the rest of this entry

If you don’t have friends added to your friends list, being a part of a social networking site is rather pointless. On FaceBook, you can be average or you can be a super star. Obviously, since you are using FaceBook for marketing or business purposes, you want to be a superstar. You can achieve that status in as little as 30 days, but it does take a time commitment on your part.

First you should note that if you have fewer than 200 friends on FaceBook, this isn’t a bad thing. Ifact, it’s an average thing. However, again, you want superstar status, so this won’t do for you.

Once you have 500 friends, you are considered to be popular, and people will gravitate to you, and when you have between 800 and 1000 friends, you’re essentially a FaceBook celebrity. Eventually, that’s what you should be working towards, but for now let’s concentrate on becoming popular, with 500 friends.

Do not use automated software that adds friends to your FaceBook friends list. This defeats the purpose of social networking. Instead, do it the ‘hard way’. You will come realize that the hard way really isn’t hard at all.

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There is nothing worse than logging into your FaceBook account, clicking on your friends list, and seeing the words ‘you have no friends.’ That’s an assault to ones sense of self confidence and self worth! You’ve got to start adding friends as quickly as possible.

Start with the people that you already know. You want to get that friends list populated fast. You can use the FaceBook feature that will search your email accounts at Gmail (http://www.gmail.com), Hotmail (http://www.msn.com), and AOL (http://www.aol.com).

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Now that you are all signed up and confirmed as a FaceBook user, you need to set up your profile. This is quite easy to do but it does require some thoughts. Because you are using FaceBook to increase business and to connect with customers and business associates, it is essential that you use good business sense when setting up your FaceBook profile.

Obviously, when filling in the blanks, you fill with care. For your screenname, as a business person, the best thing you can do is use your own name. Many people use their business name and if you want to do this, you might want to consider setting up a second account with your business name, then connect it to your personal FaceBook account where you are using your real name. Read the rest of this entry