5 Key Tools for Effective Facebook Marketing

While the average number of Facebook friends per user is 130, people who click the Like button have an average of 310 friends. Justin Kistner of Webtrends revealed this piece of data during yesterday's Facebook marketing webinar. What does it mean for you?

Facebook fans are more active and engaged that just regular Facebook users: they are consuming more content and clicking on links. As Justin said, they are looking for deals, news and community. Here are five ways in which you can capitalize on that engagement:

1. Website Integration

2. Facebook Pages

Fan pages are the strongest Facebook real estate businesses own. They empower you to reach your fans by merely posting on your wall. But here is a caveat. “Just because you hit ‘publish’ doesn’t mean your news post went to all your fans,” Justin noted. Facebook’s algorithm EdgeRank determines that distribution. That decision is made based on the type of content you share, the number of comments it generated and who posted it in the first place. That is why you want to have at least 1% of your fan base start interacting with your content so that it surfaces in more people's news feeds.

3. Facebook Ads

While Google ads are focused on sales—20% off a product, free shipping, etc—Facebook ads should revolve around content offers. On Facebook, Justin said, you have to think of other lifestyle examples that might help you reach your target market. The goal would be to capture this person within Facebook (as opposed to on an outside page) and continue nurturing her through engagement. The most important element here is image selection—make sure you test how your images perform before making any assumptions.

4. Facebook Apps

How to use tabs and social widgets to drive fans on and off the Facebook page? One of the most important uses of apps is for the creation of landing pages. We recently covered how businesses can use iFrames to do that now that the Facebook Markup Language (FBML) is going away. Keep in mind that busy tabs make bad landing pages, so your design should be simple and to the point.

5. Facebook Analytics

What is the value of your Facebook fan page? There are many ways in which you can slice and dice the data: you can do demographic analysis, track app measurement and perform geographic split testing. Don't forger you have access to Facebook Insights which will help you better undertand “trends within user growth and demographics, consumption of content, and creation of content. Use that information to revisit your marketing strategies and improve upon them.

Which key tool is your favorite and how do you use it?