Why Should Your Company Have A Facebook Page?

Just today, I heard a story: A couple of my friends, both lawyers, were at a bar. (I know—sounds like the beginning of a joke, right?) They met a woman there, named Elizabeth, whom the bartender recognized immediately. Turns out, she’d left her debit card there the previous weekend. When she didn’t turn up to claim it, the owner of the bar had turned to the source most likely to discover her identity: Facebook. The bar owner searched for Elizabeth on Facebook, found her, and sent her a message relaying the location of her debit card. Elizabeth promptly—and gratefully—returned to the bar and reclaimed her card. My friends heard this story because Elizabeth had returned to patronize the same bar several weeks later, now a happy and loyal customer.

Today, any company can follow the actions of this bar: search for customers (and potential customers) on Facebook and make a connection. In the bar’s case, the connection was pre-made; Elizabeth was already a customer who had left a valuable belonging behind. But the moral of the story is simple: Your customers are on Facebook. What started as a way for U.S. college students to connect with one another through mutual friends or acquaintances has become a worldwide social networking phenomenon, one in which everyone you need to know is only a few clicks away.

Here’s another example of a real company utilizing Facebook: In Athens, Georgia, a small, vibrant town with a thriving locally-owned business scene, a young woman is striving to open a community-centered bookstore. This woman created a Facebook page for her business—which complements her blog, online store, Twitter, etc.—to keep her future customers updated on the process of her store opening. Currently, she’s using her Facebook page as a means to promote her online grant application; the more people who vote for the application, the better her chances of earning $50,000 toward opening her store. Now, almost a month after her application went live, she is a finalist for the grant—thanks, in no small part, to her Facebook Fans who have been voting daily.

The two scenarios I’ve given are very different ways of showing how a business—a bar, a bookstore, everything in between—can utilize Facebook to market a company, grow brand identity, earn a community following and loyal customers, and more. The uses for Facebook are almost unlimited for proactive and creative companies; indeed, I would argue that any company not on Facebook has already been left behind in today’s interactive global marketplace.

Convinced, but don’t know where to start when it comes to creating a Facebook Page? Stay tuned for our next post in the Facebook marketing series.

In what ways do you use social networking sites to market your business? Have you seen or experienced similar examples as the ones given above?

Photo credit: pshab