Here are some important points to consider if you’re thinking of using Facebook to draw traffic to your web site.

1. Make sure your business goals match the platform.

Facebook advertising isn’t particularly useful for direct sales, unless you happen to be selling exactly what people want. Social network users tend to be a fickle bunch, and your margin for error is going to be pretty slim if you want them to buy today. Groupon and other “deals” web sites have seen some success with direct sales, since getting a bargain never goes out of style. However, the real opportunity is list-building. If you use Facebook ads to grow your list of fans or your e-mail list, you’re much more likely to be successful. In this type of campaign, the goal is to get someone’s permission to market to them in the future rather than convincing them to buy from you today.

2. Utilize the demographic segmentation features.

The ability to pick and choose where your ads will be displayed, to whom, and at what time of day is the real meat of the Facebook platform. To make full use of this feature, you may consider creating different ads to to display to different groups of people. For example, if you sell football jerseys, you might display an ad to people in Dallas showing a Cowboys shirt during the week before the Cowboys play. Whatever you do, don’t use Facebook to display the same generic ads to everyone. You’ll miss the whole point of advertising on Facebook this way.

3. Log in at least once a day.

As your campaign runs, pay attention to the number of impressions and clicks on each of your ads. If you’ve set up multiple ads, pay attention to which ones are getting the most views and clicks. The results may surprise you. Remember, with Facebook campaigns, you have the ability to adjust quickly if you notice that something isn’t performing as expected.

Facebook advertising takes elbow grease, just like anything else. While it does represent a good opportunity for your business, understand that you will be putting some time into it – or paying someone a premium price to manage it for you.

The Facebook Marketing Book by Dan Zarrella and Alison Zarrella takes a look at how Facebook has changed over the years since its development back in 2004 and follows its evolution into one of the most (if not the most) powerful marketing tool available to businesses and individuals alike.

Chapter by Chapter Breakdown

The book is broken down into 12 different chapters:

1. Introduction to Social Networking
2. Facebook Profile Basics
3. Facebook Page Basics
4. Facebook Group Basics
5. Facebook Events
6. Facebook Application Basics
7. Customizing Your Facebook Page
8. Developing a Facebook Content Strategy
9. Cross-Promoting Content on Facebook
10. Facebook Page Management
11. Advertising on Facebook
12. Analytics and ROI

Zarrella and Zarrella are certainly more than capable of being trusted as credible resources for writing a book that deals with Facebook as they both have extensive experience in the social media and writing market. Of special interest to online marketing experts will be Chapters 7 and 8, which detail how to customize a Facebook fan page in order to appeal to a target audience.

Long has it been assumed that Facebook is “something for the kids” to engage in. In fact, Facebook now spans a much wider audience than most traditional media can even hope to reach. Similar to Twitter, Zarrella and Zarrella point out that Facebook goes well beyond simply knowing how to set up an attractive profile page. Rather, the key to finding success with this particular social network is INTERACTION.

Whether you are creating “groups” for your fan page, users can take advantage of all of the free features that Facebook provides. For instance, longer Facebook icons provide more room for branding right on your Facebook fan page! And because the page icon is the first thing that people will see, you will want to make sure that you represent your brand as well as you can. Zarrella and Zarrella recommend a “perfect” icon size as being around 200 pixels square or a longer icon that is 600 pixels high by 200 pixels wide (pp. 135).

A Word About Facebook Tabs

Zarrella and Zarrella also strongly recommend taking advantage of Facebok Tabs. In order to do this, you may need to spend a little time familiarizing yourself with FBML (Facebook Markup Language) OR, you may want to invest some money into hiring a professional designer to develop some custom Facebook tabs and/or Facebook applications. The bottom line here is all about improving the functionality, look and feel for your potential Fans.

In addition to all of the aforementioned, making sure that you have FRESH CONTENT every day is important. It lets fans know that you’re alive and that you are an active Facebook user who is open to comments, suggestions and the like. Offering EXCLUSIVE stuff to those who are your Facebook fans is a great way to make fans feel special while improving upon your branding.

In future posts, we’ll come back to Zarrella and Zarrella regarding Facebook; but for now, definitely make sure you grab a copy of their new book, The Facebook Marketing Book. It offers some really valuable insight into what’s currently going on in the world of social media and social networking, and for just under $14, you can’t find a better deal.