Facebook - Some Business Applications

I was at the Technology for Marketing show earlier this week and whilst a number of the presentations were quite forgettable, I must say I enjoyed the presentations by Matthew Banks of Oracle, Dan Cobley of Google and Blake Chandlee of Facebook.

Let me just focus on one of them - Facebook. Blake Chandlee offered people a glimpse of some of the tools that Facebook can offer clients. These included Facebook Polls which gives businesses the ability to set up a poll in next to no time and to aim these polls at their target markets. Blake created an ad for a targeted group in London and had the results delivered in around 10 minutes. He managed to blow $500 and get 500 people surveyed in that time - admittedly, he had Facebook credits!

The other Facebook business application that he demonstrated was Facebook Social Ads, which allow businesses to target ads according to country, city, sex, age, education status and even company. The interesting thing is that as you refine the criteria (age, city, etc) Facebook updates to let you know how many people would potentially be able to view the ad. Obviously, the more refining you do, the fewer the Facebook prospects become but it is still a very neat application for trying to hit the right markets.

Though many businesses are using social ads as a way of getting Facebook traffic to their site, some companies are even setting up their own Facebook Pages. According to Facebook Developer:

Facebook Pages are intended to be profiles that represent individual businesses, a concept familiar to MySpace users. Creating a Facebook Page is a simple process, much like editing one’s personal profile.

Back in November it was reckoned that 100,000 businesses had already signed up for Facebook pages and many of them were household names. When Blake Chandlee says that some 250,000 people mention Coca Cola on their Facebook profiles, it does seem to make sense for the big names to start creating pages and adding "fans" to their profiles.

So, if you're tired of Google AdWords or are just looking at more ways to get to your target market, head off over to Facebook and check out their business offerings.