In our previous issue, we explored the ways on how to get individuals to like your Facebook business page. In this issue, we will talk about how you can reap the benefits of promotions, contests, and giveaways to attract more people.

Utilizing a social media management site purely for promotions, contests and giveaways is a great way to gauge whether these said publicity tactics is working for your business. Based on the given analytics provided by the website, you can determine how much traffic the tactics were able to bring in during its run.

This can be a double win situation too because making the promotion exclusive will garner a new set of Facebook fans which is significant to the progress and maintenance of the company’s social network page. Contests are quite successful in catching the curiosity of Facebook users.

Now that you know this, let’s proceed to how you can implement Facebook marketing and begin making traffic-pulling contests and promos.

Well, for starters, you have to make sure that all contest mechanics and update are accessible to Facebook users alone. Be certain that you don’t promote it in your newsletters, social networks or even in the official website. You can however say that the contest is exclusive for Facebook users only. As an additional prerequisite, the mechanics have to be simple and clear. Overcomplicating matters would make contestants think you’ve set the bar too high and can discourage them from joining.

Take note that offering contests, incentives and promos can be a bit costly as these require some Facebook applications and other programs for them to run smoothly. For example, the application Wildfire has a $5 setup fee and charges $0.99 for each day the campaign runs. Furthermore, Facebook is quite strict as to which contests are allowed to run in their network. In general terms, most competitions are not even allowed. You are not allowed to have an official contest posted in your wall.

However, you may qualify for an exception. Any business that wants to run contests in Facebook must first purchase at least $10,000 worth of Facebook ads in just three months.

In order to cut costs, there are plenty of business applications which can assist you in producing a contest for your Fan page. Contests for Fan page is an application that was created by Wildfire and can help beginners in developing contests with photo, video, writing and graphical entries. Not only that, these tools also allow you to customize. You can change the look of graphics ,control contest mechanics, deadlines as well as the level of contribution of people in your network. For better navigation, you can place in a contest widget in your Fan page in order for participants to link straight to a micro site. Other platform providers include Strutta.com and Vertigo.

An important part of bringing in many participants is providing a really irresistible reward. A company named Regus, for instance, offered a fully supplied workspace for the photo entry which showed the messiest work space. But you shouldn’t stop there. Think of prizes such as tickets to the most sough-after concert in town.

A profitable contest will yield a lot of leads for the company and will help them interact with their consumers at a very personal level despite the online medium. Despite the costs and additional hard work, projects such as these are really worth it if only for the brownie points you win with present and potential customers.

Be sure to read our next issue of Facebook for Business.We will talk about a very interesting topic: Earning cash on Facebook!

There are certainly a lot of ways to make use of Facebook for Business. Do you want to learn more, see here for additional Facebook marketing tips and tricks.

Our last issue dealt with the topic money making on Facebook. In this issue we are going to talk about using Facebook marketing and Facebook Groups for your small business.

This Facebook Group Application has recently been revamped by the social networking site, making it more useful and friendly for its users. As a strong point, the Facebook Group Application can not be used for professional purposes in order to build a target market. A group can be kept secret or open should the moderator chooses to do it. The Groups feature of Facebook lets the participants of that group to socialize with each other through different discussion posts as well as post links, photos and even documents.

Unfortunately, at the present the Facebook Group Application has a minimal potential if you are using a Fan or Business page although one is still allowed to have an open group using the said pages. To get the most out of this application, some businesses either assign a team to handle it using a personal account or be careful when including contacts to their Facebook business page. Even the business page owner can do this task directly.

Let’s quickly look at a few ways to apply social media management and using the Facebook Group Application to your advantage:

- As Connection to other Industry Figures

No matter what industry you are part of, a strong discussion on the key points and issues of the network is one way to establish your reputation whether through formal discussion boards or through informal discussions in a medium like Facebook. Though one might argue that you are indeed talking to competition, it is unwise to go cheap on ideas as this is one way to make a buzz in the network. So don’t hesitate to share and moderate a closed or open discussion (whichever you prefer) with other internet marketers. You might just reap some positive aspects you wouldn’t have had otherwise.

- As An Assistance Group

Do you need some help in internet marketing? What if you need to talk to the admin regarding a few issues about business? With Facebook for Business, you can easily do this with as much openness or privacy as you want.Your team will see the discussion and feel pleased that they’re not the only ones who are struggling to fix the issue. You and your team will also be able to publish some positive results at the wall and who knows? This might even turn out to be a motivation for everybody.

- As a Call for Corporate Social Responsibility

Are you intending to manage a fundraising activity? Or what if you want to link with the charity or advocacy group that you’re company is involved in? Facebook will give your hard work a sense of transparency and will also help you be more organized with the call for volunteers. If you tend to make it an open discussion, then even customers and other companies can get involved.

- As a Way to Update Field Workers Frequent communication among the staff members is an important element of any business. Besides holding meetings, businesses also need methods to quickly and easily keep in touch with each member of the team. Anything that needs to be talked about internally can be carried out so at the comforts of your very own laptop wherever and whenever you are through Facebook Groups. The staff can discuss over a particular issue via chat or posting to walls. They can also post links, photos, and documents.

Keep watch for the next issue of Facebook for Business. We will focus on the right ways to connect with your fans and friends on Facebook.

There are certainly a lot of ways to make use of Facebook for Business. Do you want to learn more, see here for additional Facebook marketing tips and tricks.