Facebook. The name has come to be synonymous with fun... a way to reconnect with the past and renew old relationships.

Did you know that, in addition to its ability to find your best friend from high school, Facebook also offers some strong, effective marketing options? Just imagine: with access to entire networks of people at once, your message can spread virally to all the corners of the planet in record time.

This business {{and it is a business}} works like the old Breck Shampoo commercials...remember those? A pretty young woman on the screen says that she loves Breck so much that she told two friends {{split screen shows duplicate heads}} "and then they told two friends" {{now we see four talking heads}} "and so on" {{16 heads}}... and so it goes.

Powerful, right? So, how can you get Facebook to become your Breck girl?

Advertising with Facebook offers much more control than many other advertising outlets:

• It offers a wide variety of demographic variables so you can target the specific customers and prospects you want.
• Facebook's historical data provides accurate and realistic estimates for ad traffic.
• With powerful analytics tools, Facebook delivers detailed, real-time statistics on how your ad performs.
• And if your ad isn't performing quite as well as you'd like, you can make improvements to fix what isn't working.

What kind of demographic/profile information is available with Facebook? Some of the most popular characteristics are:

• Age
• Gender
• Geographic location {{country, state/province and city levels}}
• Particular interests and activities
• Marital status
• Network affiliations {{e.g., schools, companies}}

If, for example, you're a wedding planner in southeastern Massachusetts and you want to place an ad targeting 28-year-old engaged women in your area, Facebook makes that possible.

Like with Google AdWords, you will need to establish a maximum daily budget for your Facebook pay-per-click ad. Each time your ad is clicked, that click will be charged against your daily budget, so you will never spend more than expected, and you have complete control over how much you spend on ads each month. The price for each ad is based on a number of factors, yet even a small budget can lead to an increase in traffic to your website.  

Like any other marketing tool, it may take a bit of time to figure out how to make the most of your Facebook presence. After you've nosed around, you may decide to set up a Page, or a Group, or become a Fan or Friend of other people's Pages and Groups. {{Be warned: Facebooking can be addictive. So far, there isn't a 12-step group for it.}}

And just like with exercising, the more time you spend working on it, the better your results. But keep in mind that -- also like exercising -- doing anything at all is better than doing nothing.

So get Facebooking...and we'll see you out there!