Marketing With Facebook – Is it Possible?

By D. Michael Kirby

Chances are, you’ve been hearing quite a bit about social networking. And if you truly have your ear to the ground, you’ve figured out that things like Facebook and Twitter are more than passing fads. Maybe your kid as a Facebook page. Maybe you do too. And you’re noticing that more and more influential people have Twitter feeds. But can it work for you?

In days past, Facebook was generally thought of as a the less-popular sibling of MySpace, which was among the first social tools to show up on the Web. But soon, MySpace became infested with less-than-pleasant users, and one of its most popular features — the ability for users to design their own pages — became irritating, as more and more users with more enthusiasm than design sense cluttered up the Web with chintzy-looking wallpapers and graphics. In comparison, the clean aesthetic design of Facebook looked positively pristine. Since those days, MySpace has found its niche; it’s mostly used by musicians and filmmakers advertising albums and independent films. But it’s hardly a tool for marketing professionals.

Facebook, on the other hand, is a useful resource. Years ago, most teachers wouldn’t be caught anywhere near Facebook, for fear of exposing potentially embarrassing or personal information to students. But the nature of Facebook has evolved; since everyone can see everything, most users keep their Facebook pages clean and free of compromising photos or comments.

Marketers can use Facebook in one of two ways: They can create a page, or create ads. Or both. Here’s how to best used Facebook as an education marketing tool.

Making a Facebook page is an excellent way to keep in contact with regular clients, as well as get the word out to new ones. This works for you, because teachers and profs become Facebook friends with other teachers and profs — both everyday colleagues and colleagues they meet at professional development events. So if you have five friends who are former clients, and each of those friends has, in turn, 10 teacher friends, that’s 50 new sets of eyes looking at your page.

Thus, you can use the “status update” feature of Facebook to announce new product launches, link to media stories that mention your products, or tell stories of teachers who have used your products.

What you don’t want to do is get too cute with Facebook, and risk looking unprofessional. Don’t comment on friends’ status updates, for instance — this may come off as too aggressive, since your Facebook page is representative of a company and not an individual. Making comments that seem fun or innocent may result in lost friends. Remember that Facebook is a soft-sell medium.

What’s that, you say? You want a more hard-sell technique? Okay. Facebook has that.

Making Facebook ads is an excellent way to contact people all over Facebook, whether they’re your friends or not. Facebook has about 200 million users, many of whom are students, teachers and professors. Of course, it’s useless to try to become friends with that many people. But you can reach them with ads. The best part: There’s no need to do any market research at all.

When you create Facebook ads, it’s possible to use a broad range of criteria — including languages, level of education, location, profession, gender, and any keywords you might want to target. So if someone mentions he’s a teacher on his Facebook page, your ad — targeted to teachers — would show up on his page the next time he shows up. Unlike Google, Facebook can (and does) target its users based on their interests.

So how do you make a Facebook ad? You’ll need three things.

First, you’ll need the URL of your company website, so the ad can link to it. You’ll also need a relevant picture (tasteful, please) and some ad copy that pitches your services and products. And remember this: Facebook users can rate ads based on certain criteria. So if your ad is misleading, offensive, or irrelevant, it’s simple for them to alert Facebook. Facebook can take care of relevance, but the honesty and tastefulness of your ad is up to you.

This isn’t a complete list of how you can use Facebook in an education marketing campaign. So take a look at your options and keep your eyes open for new possibilities.

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