When you first started your business, print media was probably your main marketing concern. Not very long ago, it wasn?t entirely unusual for a business not to be online. To interact with your customers, the internet wasn?t your only option. But now, things have changed. Not only is the internet everywhere, we?re expected to always be connected. Social media is getting bigger, and wise businesses are using it to their advantage.

The average Facebook user spends 23 minutes each visit, and 70% of local businesses use Facebook for marketing. How can you communicate with your target market? Facebook is modern-day equivalent of the telephone book. It holds so much personal information that you can quite specifically get in touch with your market, right down to gender, location and age range. Facebook isn?t just a place for adverts, there are many uses for it ? and it?s a brilliant way you can build a relationship with your consumers. You can use a Facebook page to promote and test new products, and you can use it to sell products or content directly using Facebook credits. Marketing is about selling yourself, a personality; not just a product. Facebook is one of the best ways to communicate that, as a business you can find yourself getting the same access to an individual as their friends or family.

There are many examples of people using Facebook third party for their businesses, and utilising the platform partnerships e.g. the business creating the advertisement or application, and Facebook selling the space or the ?platform? necessary to promote and effectively use it. For a lot of service providers, it?s another platform ? just one with potential access to thousands of people. There are 600million users on Facebook as of January 2011. It?s illogical not to be a part of it. Facebook has been around for years, and immortalised in film. It?s not just a passing fad, the words ?Find Us On Facebook!? are everywhere. You see it on a twitter page, on a website, on a blog, on email signatures and even print media and leaflets. It?s quite possibly the most effective and accessible call to action for this generation. Not being on Facebook is like saying your business doesn?t have a phone, but you can still get in touch via your pager.

The internet isn?t everything, and only focussing your marketing online would be a mistake. Good businesses have a presence in more than one forum. What about those people who don?t go online? The people who still don?t understand what the words ?social media? mean? If all of your customers are technophobes, then perhaps heavy investment into your Facebook page may not be the way to go. In that case, understandably, you?d focus your marketing elsewhere. But even in your print media, you?d want to make a reference to your online social media, because you never know who is going to see it.

Facebook isn?t a business necessity, but most definitely is a modern day necessity.