Social networking websites, especially Facebook, have significant implications for business owners, marketers, and entrepreneurs. To keep your business current, you should at least be familiar with the latest conversational marketing techniques and viral technologies, including Facebook and its array of powerful features.

Here are ten business-building reasons to be active on Facebook:

1. Meet your peers. Facebook is not just for college kids anymore. Members are typically older and more mature than on other sites, and there are more white collar users.

2. Find business contacts. With more than 70 million active users, and predicted to be 200 million by the end of 2008, not only are your friends on Facebook, so are your prospects, your customers, your JV partners… and, of course, your competitors. You need to be on too.

3. Instant gate opener. Facebook members are open to connecting. You can easily begin a dialog with highly successful—even famous—people who were previously otherwise unreachable.

4. Build relationships. By engaging in conversations with your prospects and customers, you can better adapt your marketing and business services to meet their needs.

5. Raise visibility. By consistently showing up, posting relevant information, and being a thought leader, you can increase visibility and credibility as an expert in your area.

6. Develop your personal brand. The lines between business and personal have become blurred. You can reveal as much or as little about yourself as you wish, allowing you to personalize your brand.

7. Target your niche. Users volunteer vast amounts of information about themselves that you can readily access. These kinds of demographics, psychographics, and technographics would previously have cost fortunes to access. Author, John Battelle, calls Facebook a “database of intentions.”

8. Get rapid top Google placement. Create a Page for your business and ‘‘push” information to your “fans.” Pages (for business) and Profiles (for personal) are indexed for optimal search engine positioning. Facebook has a page rank of #7 according to Alexa.

9. Place targeted ads. With Facebook Social Ads, you can test out extremely targeted advertising for minimal cost.

10. No cost marketing. Aside from paid ads, Facebook is totally free to use and with regular activity you’ll end up with more traffic, more subscribers, and more paying clients.

Mari Smith is a Relationship Specialist, Internet Marketing Consultant and Facebook Business Coach. She offers a free introductory class for professionals on how to use Facebook for strategic business growth at: http://facebookfortunes.com as well as a more advanced multi-media course at http://facebook4pros.com. Class materials include PDF guides, how-to videos, discussion forum, Webinar recording, and dozens of interviews with successful active Facebook members.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Tips & Tactics
Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• Always upload a good headshot - informal is fine. Make sure your face shows well as you'll be in a thumbnail version all over the place!
• Whenever sending a friend request, *always* include a brief personal message indicating how/where you met the person and why you'd like to connect. "Be my friend" doesn't cut it... nor does no message! This is your first opportunity to begin to build rapport.
• If you write a blog, be sure to pull in the feed to the default Facebook app, "Notes" as well as at least one other 3rd party app, like Friend Feeds. (Blog Friends was awesome but ending up shutting down!)
• If you're active on Twitter, pull in your updates with the TwitterSynch app (synchs with your Facebook status updates) or display your tweets on your Profile with the Twitter app.
• When seeking quality friends to add, look at whose books and blogs you read, whose seminars you attend, who's podcasts you listen to, who you admire and aspire to. Likely they're already on Facebook! And if not, send them an invitation to join. :)