I have been using Facebook for the past two years, and it is an attractive tool for marketing to add to your marketing strategy. Following are ten ways you can use Facebook to introduce new people to your for FREE!

1. Make a Top-Notch Profile: This is absolutely the FIRST thing that you must do to make an impact on Facebook . Think of your Facebook profile as part of your branding. A effective profile will include a photo of you. Don’t use the one of you at a Christmas party, unless that’s what your selling. Make sure your new Facebook profile is complete. You should include your contact information, your web address (this is so important), education, work experience and your personal interests. A complete profile is the only way to go.

2. Add Friends: This is what makes Facebook a great platform - the ability to make friends, build relationships and foster them. The more relationships you build, the more worthwhile your marketing efforts will be. You can use Facebook’s own tools to find friends that are already on Facebook. Once you add your friends, you can search for kindred spirits. Make their acquaintance, become their friend, build a relationship. One cool feature on Facebook is that you can see friends of your friends. This will help you build a extensive network in no time.

3. Join Facebook Groups: You can join groups within Facebook that are associated with what you do. There are groups for wealth building, coaches, and experts of all kinds. Almost every supposable type of professional service provider has some type of an online group. I belong to several groups on Facebook and have made hundreds of new contacts this way.

4. Create your Own Facebook Group: Can’t find a group that really makes sense? Create your own! You can add members, publish articles, carry on discussions, and probably build some long lasting relationships. And even if you find great group to belong to, start your own. This gives you the opportunity to be the trendsetter!

5. Syndicate your Blog Using RSS: You can syndicate your own blog on your Facebook profile page. This inherently means that every time you make a post, it will automatically show up on your profile page. More Exposure = More Readers = More Leads = More Business. And the bonus is the back links to your site. I syndicate headlines from three blogs on Facebook.

6. Comment on Other Peoples Profiles: Are you a fan or devotee of someone’s work? Reach out to them on Facebook! Many of my business acquaintances check their Facebook messages more regularly than their email. They are also more likely to respond to Facebook messages. Don’t feel comfortable sending a message to someone you don’t know? Don’t worry! Leave them a “just saying hi!” or “I enjoy your work!” blurb on their wall. All profiles come with “virtual walls” where friends and acquaintances can leave messages. The more messages you leave on your friend’s Facebook profiles the more exposure you get!

7. List your Events: Launching a New Service? Create an events page and invite all your friends and acquaintances. You can even see who RSVPed and get feedback from your guests. Marketing doesn’t get much simpler (or cheaper!) than this.

8. Send Virtual Gifts: Want to show your appreciation for someone? Send them a virtual gift. You can choose from a bouquet of flowers to a potted plant that actually sits on the your friends profile and grows over time (plus hundreds of others). With all the 3rd party applications for gift giving available, what are you waiting for. This is a proven way to build long lasting relationships!

9. Use Some Cool Apps: Facebook has literally tons of applications that were built just for the site. Gaming, music, movie trivia and more. When you use an application, you get to invite your friends to use these interesting little applications (Apps). So just like number 8 above, this allows you another way to stay in touch with your Facebook friends. Again, this helps you build long lasting relationships.

10. Create a Community: Perhaps Facebook’s greatest benefit is that it lets you to build a community. It provides you a group of people who are perpetually connected to you, and they are open to hearing what you have to say. Write on people’s walls, give them feedback, and introduce them to each other. Start building your brand and leveraging Facebook for business building!

Facebook is a great place to introduce yourself to a ton of new people who may also become customers and/or clients. Just keep one thing in mind: don’t get too carried away and spend all your time there. Facebook is a tool, part of your marketing strategy. Use the tips above, use them wisely and have a little fun at the same time.

Lennie Appelquist is the Owner of FreeMarket Media Group. FreeMarket Media Group is dedicated to helping individuals and small businesses generate leads, convert those leads in customers/clients and build a web presence that works for them. We can show you how to make your online business profitable.

It was founded in 2004 as a college student network and has grown into an international network for all people. Although it began as a college network, Facebook’s fastest growth demographic is in the 35+ age range. The network has near 49 million users 59% outside the U.S. and has 250,000 new ones registering on a daily basis, making it one of the fastest growing social networks on the web and is surpassing Myspace at lightening speed.

Facebook has proven in recent times to be a viable marketing tool, providing a free and easy way to promote products and services. Facebook users can add tools such as Stumble Upon and Digg to vote and bookmark favorite sites. Posted Items allows users to post company or client blogs and links to drive traffic to your homepage. On the Events page, businesses can promote teleseminars, webinars, workshops and a variety of other events to friends and networkers.

By joining this and other social networking websites, a business can increase their viewers and potential customers all over the world. Because Facebook is an Identity Platform and a closed network, it limits many of the search engines (Yahoo, MSN, Google). Therefore, joining this social network permits a business to access new information on potential clients. This should be used to benefit online marketing since the company has stats on what the users are doing. You can also post a poll to find more about your target demographic on the adverting page on the site. Facebook also has classified ad space on the left hand side and other areas of the site for online business to promote products and services.

In this modern age, people tend to stray away from business home pages. So businesses need to find new and innovative ways to drive traffic to their sites. Social networks are one of many direct response marketing techniques that can help your business flourish.

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It has 50 million active members and is adding two hundred thousand new ones a day. Over five thousand applications have been created for it just since May of 2007. After an epic battle with Google and Yahoo!, Microsoft won the right to pour two hundred and forty million into it, bringing its total value up to fifteen billion.

What is it? It’s Facebook, the hugest potential opportunity for internet marketers who need to keep up to speed with Web 3.0 and the semantic web explosion.

Facebook’s one-of-a-kind social network is seen as the vanguard of entirely new operating systems that, unlike Windows, exist only on the internet rather than on your computer. It’s an online community that a fresh, new mass of internet users, just discovering this innovative virtual environment, is flocking to in droves just to find new friends to Poke - and, in the process, creating a whole new dynamic marketing base.

A big draw to the site is all the free Facebook tools and applications that users can use to either interact with their Facebook network or just use to display their own personal preferences. You can have a zombie fight, share your favorite music, challenge a friend to a virtual race with a virtual car, exchange quizzes, or just throw a sheep to get someone’s attention.

Facebook’s fun online community is rapidly becoming like a snowball rolling downhill, gathering more and more users, who in turn attract their friends, none of whom want to miss out on what everyone’s talking to. And it’s ending up, after three and a half years of a relatively quiet existence, as the New Big Thing in cool internet content, thanks to Facebook opening the site up to the creation of lots of fun new applications by outside developers.

So forget Friendster and keep watching MySpace deteriorate into MySpam, the millions of Facebook friends is a whole new attractive group of millions and millions ready to be marketing to in a whole new way.

But how do you take advantage quickly - and tap your marketing operation seamlessly into that massive Facebook database? And do it in a painless automated way, leaving you free to continue to manage and expand your business?

The best method is take advantage of the newest Facebook marketing software, which includes Facebook bots and Facebook Friend Adders that will seamlessly take your marketing message into a whole new arena, after you’ve already perhaps milked other heavy traffic sites dry.

One of the most effective software packages is the Stealth Friend Bomber, Facebook Edition. Stealth Friend Bomber will automatically generate Mass Facebook Friend Requests, Messages and Pokes to users all across the Facebook site. This stand-out among Facebook tools does everything you need and more to stay on top of the site that’s experiencing a rate of explosive growth that’s quickly leaving other friendship sites in the dust.

The future of the internet lies in Web 3.0 sites like Facebook - and the future of internet marketing lies in Facebook marketing software like Stealth Friend Bomber, Facebook Edition.

- Matthew J. Loop, DC

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