Facebook Places Pages - What they are and How to use them for Marketing Consider having more than 750 million active users, 50% of it are active users who log on to Facebook in any given day. Among these people, about 70% of them are outside the United States. In Australia, Facebook penetration is 49.70% compared to the country's population and 62.04% in relation to number of Internet users. The total number of FB users is reaching 10, 568, 580 and grew by more than 793, 480 in the last 6 months. The statistics cannot be denied. Currently there are more than 250 million active users accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users. There are more than 200 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products. Business in Facebook Places It is an edge to be aware of the power of social media and utilise it in every possible way to wise up to the success of your business online. So if you want your own business to show up within Facebook make available among your customers, get to know more about Facebook Places and how to use it. For companies that have a physical location it makes sense to have a Facebook Place in order to track the people who are stopping by your store, office, or venue. In Facebook, we call it "check in's". Facebook Places has several features that make the system a viable hyper-local marketing platform. Among of these to mention are Deals, Check In, friend Tagging, and Facebook Place ownership. Deals The “Deals” feature of Facebook Places is similar to the daily deals offered by Groupon, but only surf to or activate once users check in to the restaurant, bar, coffee chop or other Facebook Places sponsor. The nature of the Deals is comparative to a digital loyalty card. Currently there are 4 different types of deals: individual, friend-based, loyalty and charity. Check In By checking in with your smart phone you can share your location with your friends, via the Facebook platform; the update will show up on your Facebook Wall, your Places page, and on friends' news feed. Once checked in your can tag your friends and appear in “Here Now”, a service that allows you to connect with other Places users who are checked-in in your area. Tagging In typical Facebook fashion, you can tag your friends while using Places, allowing you to integrate your social network into your deals and check ins. The Tag Friends With You feature lets you operate in real-time—but this must be done as you check-in as friends cannot be tagged once you are already checked-in. Owning a Facebook Place Local businesses can create a Facebook Place—free of charge. Place owners can later turn the Place into a proper Facebook Page where users can post comments, use Likes, and make Wall posts. Facebook created a nice little caveat feature within Place ownership that verifies that you are the true owner of the location, a move that helps prevent cyber squatters. Available Countries Facebook Places is currently available in Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Canada, Japan, United Kingdom, United States, France, Italy, Spain, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, South Africa, Finland, Ireland, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Philippines. There are more countries on the way though—the first to come to market should be the countries where Facebook users are most prevalent. Supported Systems Facebook Places currently works with the iOS, Blackberry, Android and Windows Mobile operating systems—provided you use an HTML5-enabled browser. Anyone without a smartphone can sign up and check in via touch.facebook.com on their laptop or netbook—even if it does not have a GPS.
Digital Organics: www.digitalorganics.com.au - 1/102 Howard Street, Nambour, QLD 4560 T 617 5476 3800
Practicality and Innovation in Marketing Facebook Places has already established a market for itself and provided an amazing advertising position for small local businesses who can't afford expensive FB advertising campaigns--giving them access to all the Facebook Places users in their area. How to use Facebook Places for Marketing Businesses should learn how to merge Facebook Pages and Facebook Places into a single Page. The final result is a newly designed Facebook Page which includes location-relevant information. Here are the 3 easy steps required to claim your Facebook Place and merge it with your Facebook Page: Step 1: Create Or Claim Your Place If nobody has checked in to your company’s venue, you’ll need to load up the Facebook iPhone application or Facebook for touch devices on a compatible phone and check if your place exists already. You can do this by searching for the place. If it doesn’t exist, you can quickly create it by clicking on “Add” or the “+” sign depending on whether or not you are using Facebook for touch devices or Facebook for iPhone. Step 2: Claim The Place As Yours Facebook will discover the phone number. If the phone number is incorrect you can quickly change it. However before getting to the phone number confirmation, you’ll need to log in to Facebook and search for the Place that you’ve created or check in to. Once you find the venue you can click on the “Is this your business?” link at the bottom of the place as pictured below. If there is no associated phone number, Facebook requires a more manual verification process. You can find the full explanation in the document which is embedded below. Step 3: Merge Your Place and Page The final step is to merge the Place and the Page once you’ve completed the verification proces. The result is a combined Page which effectively serves as a local business page. The design is substantially different from existing Facebook Pages, however it’s possible that Facebook will move in this direction for all Pages. In three steps you’ve easily claimed your business and merged it with your Facebook Page. Start now on how you are going to use Facebook Places for your own business! Facebook Places has eclipsed other successful location-based apps like the LivingSocial and Foursquare. With features like check ins and daily deals Facebook has managed to bring a low-cost effective form of advertising to local businesses. It's now a force to be reckoned with as it allows small businesses with little to no marketing budget to leverage and penetrate its over half a billion users.
Digital Organics: www.digitalorganics.com.au - 1/102 Howard Street, Nambour, QLD 4560 T 617 5476 3800