In our previous issue, we looked into the ways on how to get individuals to like your Facebook business page. Today, we will be discussing about utilizing advertising campaigns, contests and give-aways to generate more fans.

Using a social media management site entirely for promotions, contests and giveaways is a wonderful way to measure whether these said promotional tactics is working for your business. The site allows anyone to find out the number of traffic that comes to their page.

This can be a double win situation too because making the promotion exclusive will gather a new set of Facebook fans which is vital to the growth and maintenance of the company’s social network page. Contests give a touch of anticipation to your site.

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

Well, firstly, you have to make certain that all contest mechanics and update are accessible to Facebook users alone. The business must not promote it in emails, newsletters, other social networking sites or even in their official website other than saying that the promotion is exclusive to Facebook users, of course. Additionally, the mechanics have to be clear and simple. Overcomplicating matters would make contestants think you’ve set the bar too high and can discourage them from joining.

As an early warning, contests, incentives and promotions tend to be costly as the apps needed to develop and run it are also expensive. For example, the application Wildfire has a $5 setup fee and charges $0.99 for each day the campaign runs. In addition to that, Facebook has strict rules when it comes to running contests within their system. Generally, a lot of different contests are not even made possible. You are not allowed to have an official contest posted in your wall.

There are some exceptions though. Any business that wants to run contests in Facebook must first purchase at least $10,000 worth of Facebook ads within just three months.

For businesses that are able to use contests, there are a lot of business applications that help create these. Wildfire offers all the necessary tools to create photos, videos, and graphic entries to develop a contest campaign. You can also pimp out your campaign as much as you want with these tools. You can change the look of graphics ,control contest mechanics, deadlines as well as the level of involvement of people in your network. To make navigation easy, consider placing a contest widget in your Fan Page so the competitors will be able to link straight to a mini site. Other platform services include Strutta.com and Vertigo.

To really entice a lot of participants, make sure you present incentives which people can’t resist. A company named Regus, for instance, offered a fully furnished office for the photo entry which showed the messiest office. But you shouldn’t stop there. Think of prizes such as tickets to the most sough-after concert in town.

A contest that’s managed successfully will certainly bring in lots of qualified prospects to the organization. Despite the costs and additional work, ventures 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 exciting topic: Earning profits on Facebook!

Using Facebook for Business and as well as creating advertisement campaigns are two best ways to achieve the best results you want in online marketing. Find out more about Facebook marketing here.

Before, we discussed about how to use promotions, special gifts and contests to boost your fans on Facebook. In this issue of Facebook for Business we are going to go over a few tips for making money on Facebook.

Whether you require a source of income in addition to your day job or want to make a living online, this is feasible with the help of social networking sites particularly Facebook. Today let’s explore on some of the money-generating strategies on Facebook.

- Retailing

Most online businesses from retail, consumer, travel and food these days are embracing Facebook to get more customers. This is not a surprise anymore. Facebook is very easy to use and accessible to almost virtually anyone. Having online presence through Facebook depends entirely on the owner.

While there are a lot of business owners that testify to the helpfulness of Facebook marketing, there are also numerous others who aren’t certain of its potential.For those who do decide to sell their products through Facebook, there are several programs you can tap in order to be more organized.

Ebay already has a unique application meant for their Facebook users. An application called Radical Buy, easily and quickly posts products and makes them easily reachable to the potential customers. walls. There are also particular apps available like Music Blaster, Lemonade and Flame Tunes.

Facebook is not limited to selling products. You can sell your services here as well. With regards to the second money making usage (See Application Development below), anyone can sell various programming and Customization services online as well. Facebook partners with Paypal for these micro payment schemes.

- Application Creation

The social network itself compensate various marketers who will help strengthen their various programs available from monetizatization to promotion. Facebook pays for useful suggestions that will help them develop these. Even other websites continue to post positions online for creating and managing a wide variety of applications for their businesses. So far, there’s still a few people who are concentrated to designing applications. Because of this, looking for prospects won’t be a big situation.

Not only content creation but also programming performs an important role in generating leads.

- Advertising

Among the several ways to monetize from Facebook, affiliate marketing is one of the best. There are a lot of sites looking to infiltrate various aspects on Facebook that are noticeable to customers. Most use their own sites for cross-promotion. Google Adsense is quiet similar (though it is not available in Facebook since the social network site doesn’t run with Java applications) where various merchants as well as affiliate marketers place ads in the Facebook space. Websites like Amazon, Ebay and other big small businesses are constantly looking for people to bring their advertisements.

These people promote their products in exchange for a comission. At times, some companies don?t even require for their products to be bought. Most of the time what?s needed is a form of action such as people trying their product or producing leads for companies.

With these three money making techniques in mind, you can be well on your way into making more than what you expected out of a social media management site that was once just a pastime.

Look out for our next issue. We will discuss about how to use Facebook Groups for your business.

Regardless of the size of your business, Facebook marketing is very advantageous. Utilizing Facebook for Business not only gets the traffic you want but also maintains your business as visible online.