Should You Build Your Public Relations Efforts on Facebook?

By EPR Editorial TeamOctober 16, 20092 min read

Should You Build Your Public Relations Efforts on Facebook?

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Do you know how to develop an effective public relations campaign that takes full advantage of today's most popular social media?

Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon - the vast array of social media tools available can be confusing and even overwhelming. Marketers can't afford to ignore social media when planning their strategies. According to a post by Leena Rao of TechCrunch, Facebook, in particular, had over 95 million unique U.S. visitors last month (September 2009). Facebook's impressive growth last month is not an isolated trend. According to posts on Inside Facebook (a site dedicated to tracking Facebook trends for developers which also offers the Facebook Marketing Bible), Facebook is adding new users in nearly every country in the world at a pretty steady pace. An article by Brian Solis at Marcom Professional confirms that Facebook is growing. Brian also points out another very significant trend -- the users of Facebook have higher household incomes than the users of MySpace. Taken together, all of this information means that marketers should not be ignoring Facebook. The influence of the social site is growing and it is attractive those who have more discretionary income. Simply put, today Facebook is where the audience is for many consumer products and services. Indeed, many marketers seem to already be catching on to the value of Facebook as a marketing tool. Recent Facebook fan page marketing campaigns include:

TGI Friday's "Woody" (and the offer of a free burger)
Coca Cola
Ford Mustang

Of course, there are many other company fan pages on Facebook. You can probably even name a few company fan pages or company profiles that I haven't thought of. While smaller companies may not have a big budget to launch huge Facebook campaigns on the massive scale of some of those campaigns listed above, that doesn't mean that a smaller company can't or shouldn't use Facebook. A well thought out and professional-looking company fan page or Facebook profile can still be a very effective marketing tool. In fact, users are now starting to expect that their favorite brands will be on Facebook. You could be losing future business when a potential customer searches for you on Facebook (and can't find you) without even realizing it. Does your company already have a Facebook marketing presence? How effective has it been for you? Do you think that your company will be developing a Facebook presence soon? What has lead you to this decision. Share your thoughts in the comments.

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EPR Editorial Team

EPR Editorial Team - Author at Everything Public Relations