Saratoga, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/25/2011 -- The Social Media surge is felt by all in the internet advertising world, marketers and web users alike. With Facebook now competing with Google in terms of traffic, it is but obvious that the rat race has turned towards FB in chasing the serious promotional and marketing potential Marc Zuckerbug’s networking site offers.

Softwaredevelopersindia’s Social Media head Meghana V says, “Before you jump onto the Facebook bandwagon, it is important that you are in the know with what goes and what doesn’t on Facebook, especially from a marketing standpoint.” She also laid down a few tips to businesses looking up to cash in on Facebook. “These parameters are just too crucial to be ignored when you look to grow exponentially on Facebook”, says Meghana.

Group Building
Meghana states, “The heart and soul of Facebook marketing is just one word—‘connect’. How quickly you connect and with whom you connect; if you can take care of these, rest assured you will crack the Facebook code well”. Groups are brilliant connect-routes and it is here the entire networking prowess. Build a group that represents the essence of your business (may be a service or product) and make way for communities to come up within the group. Move users to discussion boards and motivate them to paste on walls within the group. That said, it is absolutely critical to embellish your group with impactful videos and links.

Fan Pages
A must-have on any Facebook marketing plan. Fan Pages is where all the consumer action takes place. User interactions, promotions, feedbacks, almost every input you need to edge your business with, you will get it through your Facebook Fan Page. Besides, there is every chance that you may direct some amount of traffic from your Fan page to your site and that’s the underlying goal of any form of marketing. With search engines now indexing Facebook and other social media sites, Fan Pages are good add-ons from a SEO perspective as well.

Refresh your content; keep it fresh
Facebook is a place where 50% of users log-in every day. That’s a high user-volume and you simply cannot dish out the same content day in and day out; it will be a drab sooner than later. Keep your Fan page, walls, profile page etc. kicking; post relevant blog posts to your wall, come up with few good videos every now and then, if possible get some trivia quizzes or contests going to enthrall your visitors; as I said, ‘connect’ is the success mantra on Facebook and everything else needs to revolve around it.

Facebook Landing pages: always an asset
While a Fan Page wall’s where the actual action is, it is always advantageous to have a landing page. In fact it is a must for a new visitor who visits you on Facebook for the first time. Your wall may be the most happening place of all, but at the same time it may be baffling to someone who is not aware of your business and the activities on your Wall. It’s better to direct new visitors first to a landing Page, educate them on the activities of your business and then bring your Facebook wall page into picture.

Using the Discussion Forum
Discussion Forums serve excellent ground for fuelling interactive sessions with users. You can talk about your services or products and ask users for their feedback and comments. Don’t lag behind on updates; keep the product information updated, try sharing information on your products from other websites and spur on users to share their response.

Facebook’s News Feed
News feeds are impressive tidbits to keep users aligned with your activities. Most users will not visit your actual Wall page every time. It makes great sense if your Wall flashes news feeds to keep users in on your activity-front.

How to make that happen? Keep your Wall posts engaging in a sense that users are egged on to Like, Share, Comment and indulge with the content. The Facebook has its own algorithm that ranks Wall posts for popularity and content; you make the cut and your post flashes across news feeds.

To make your wall posts engaging enough, subscribe to short and meaningful status messages. Post engrossing trivia questions and most importantly, put up videos and multimedia content. News feeds are text-heavy; a small video here and there is refreshing and catches attention at once.

Paid Adverts
Facebook is open to paid advertizing. It serves good purpose for entrepreneurs to advertize on Facebook pages and widen their audience scope. Of course, a lot of other elements like keywords and targeted users come into play, but all in all paid adverts do wonders if promoted well, keeping the target-audience on mind. As Meghana puts it,” Place your ads in on the pages accessed most by your target groups; the good news is that advertizing on social media sites won’t drill holes in your pockets, it’s a nominal affair. This includes Facebook as well.