Technology Corner Post: Facebook

Written by Steffi Beigh

Facebook is a social networking website used by 955.5 million people worldwide as of
June 2012. By using this social media website correctly, this could be a businesses cheapest
alternative advertising and public relations tactic. Facebook has multiple uses. Firstly, it is used
to connect people and business. It can be used as a B2B, C2c or a B2C business. Facebook is
not just used to connect people, but also businesses, organizations, causes, events, game
applications and photo sharing. Facebook allows members to upload videos, photos, posts,
web links, coupons, create events and more.
 
By having your business/organization on Facebook and being able to post statuses,
posts to your wall, or posts to your friends, this enables the business/organization to receive
feedback from their friends. Also, people can choose whether they would like to share your
post or status to their homepage, doubling the amount of viewers.
Looking at a local newspaper, the Baldwin Bulletin, Facebook post, they are able to post short
clips of their daily articles, and they often will ask questions and contests to get the Facebook
viewer to interact with the Baldwin Bulletin.

Also, businesses are promoting themselves by posting special offers only via Facebook.
This gets new customers and while giving them a great discount. Also, when people claim their
offer, it posts to their own Facebook page, therefore showing up on all of their friends news
feeds. An example of this is attached below. You can see how this public relations and
advertising can take off, this offer has almost 9,000 shares. And all of the times I have claimed
these, when I go to buy it, they are all sold out, but they are still passed along the internet.

A growing necessity a business or any organization needs is to have a share button on
their websites. This is especially helps to get their business or organizationʼs name out.
Whether it is a video, picture or article, viewers can choose to share the organizations
information on their social media page. The first social media share button businesses have is
most likely Facebook. Clearly, Facebook serves as a massive marketing a public relations tool.