'Facebook For Business' launched

The timing is perfect; it comes just a week after Google began shutting off all company profiles on its Google+ social network. The battle heated up when LinkedIn announced their new enhanced Company Pages. Besides, LinkedIn and Facebook would seem to have very little in common. One platform was created as a closed and trusted networking site for professionals while the roots of the other come from being an open “face book” of college students. While LinkedIn has built up a dominant presence in the hearts and minds of the professional demographic, Facebook is in the center of consumer culture and many a business who want to capture the hearts and money of us all. A quote from the same Linkedn blog post from HP’s CMO, “LinkedIn is a pioneer in harnessing the power of social media and brands can benefit tremendously from participating in this networking of leading professionals.” Linked-HR has only 345,000+ members while the largest Page, Facebook’s own page, has more than 30,000,000 fans. Facebook is not just for college students or for personal use. Facebook is increasingly being used by companies in many creative ways such as to build their brand image, to drive traffic to their website and blogs, to announce or get feedback on new products. According to the Facebook Press Room page, there are more than 200 million active users on Facebook. According to comscore.com, more than 50 percent of Facebook’s users are over 35; the single biggest age demographic on Facebook is now between 35 and 44. Setting up a business page on Facebook is easy. Just log in to your profile page and scroll down to the bottom of the screen. Then click on “Advertising” or by following this link: http://www.facebook.com/business. That will bring up a page with the blue links one of which is called “Pages.” Click on Pages, and then click on the green “Create a Page” box on the right of the screen. Now start filling this information in to create and customize your business page. After you create your business page, Facebook will automatically add an application called the “Page Manager” which should be located on the top and left side of your log. Again choose Facebook Pages, and then choose the best category for your business. Click this link to load your business page where you can then edit and add to the existing content.