Facebook on the other hand is different. The site will simply close your account if they find such strong promotional activity being used. If that’s the case, what can you do? The first thing you should do is set up what’s called a fan page. A fan page is basically a page created for businesses, groups, musicians, artists, and other establishments where people can follow your status. It’s different from a regular profile because it’s not an individual.

Facebook allows you to update all the people who are your fans or friends with the latest status update. The greatest thing that has happened to Facebook is their acquirement of FriendFeed. This is basically a feature that instantly notifies everyone about your status. If you have a Facebook account, you’re probably familiar with getting a feed of all the updates from your friends.

Because people on social networking sites like Facebook want to share what’s going on, it creates a great opportunity for a viral marketing campaign. Users can share your content, like your fan page, and even tell others about some kind of news you provided your friends with. This is exactly what businesses need to use in order to take advantage of Facebook. They need to use the viral nature of the site to spread the word about their business.

The most important thing that Internet marketers need to understand about Facebook is that while there is promotional content, it’s not a medium where you can be salesman and get away with it. You need to provide your fans and friends great content. But you shouldn’t just provide them with any kind of content.

Because Facebook is viral by nature, the best kind of content to push out is educational content. You want to provide value to your Facebook list and make them want to share your content with their friends. This is the best way to get your message out without inundating people with promotional material.

How do you find what to write about? This is a very important question because most marketers will think about reproducing their articles as content. However, you should come up with something fresh and find hot topics in your industry. You can find these topics by using Google Trends, Digg, and searching popular blogs related to your niche market.

The next thing you need to know is to connect yourself with influencers. Influencers are basically people in your industry that have a large following or users that have many friends on their profile. In many cases, it can be another business or group that has many fans following their updates. By connecting with the influencers in your market and industry, you open yourself to getting your messages shared to thousands of Facebook users.

One thing that is overlooked is the Note function of Facebook. Most Internet marketers will think about leading users to their websites or a sales page from the content itself. Instead, you should focus on using the Note function to continue the content or add value and link from that page.

Tests have shown that doing this yields better results when you are trying to build your email list or get better results from your marketing. The reason why this works is that people get more involved with your content, get more value from it, and will actually be interested in checking out your site.

Another feature that is underused is Facebook Groups. This is different from Facebook fan pages. Groups allow you to send bulk invites to all your friends to join the group (fan pages require manual invites). Any group member will also be able to send out bulk invites. You can imagine the viral marketing capabilities of utilizing groups properly.

You can also use Groups to send Private Messages to your members rather than just update them regularly. This is a more personal way to build relationships and help build your business. Both Groups and Fan Pages should be used as they both have their benefits.

Facebook also lets you build a relationship with prospects and customers. As mentioned earlier, the chances are that many of your customers already have a Facebook account so you will be able to integrate your existing customers into your fan page and groups.

In conclusion, those are just some of the ways that Internet marketers can use Facebook to grow their business. Facebook provides a huge opportunity for businesses and being one of the most visited sites on the Internet, you should use it to your advantage. Make sure you follow the Facebook advertising guidelines and use the right strategies to win prospects and customers on this huge social networking site.