Social networking has become one of the biggest trends for helping consumers and businesses connect. It’s become so important that Facebook recently launched a “Facebook for Business” manual that helps businesses to fully utilize the site’s social networking features. Here are five ways to make the most out of your business’s Facebook page.

Network with Your Customers

TWhile the average person uses Facebook to catch up with friends, businesses network with customers in a different way. A Facebook page allows a business to engage customers by asking them for tips on how to improve, and compliments on what they’re doing right. Businesses can even take this a step further by allowing customer service representatives to handle problems right from the page, with no long-winded e-mails or phone calls required.

Advertising

Facebook’s business pages are convenient in that they allow users to “like” a business. This allows you to have an almost captive audience for your advertising. Customers that “like” your page will see advertisements from your business in their news feed. Not only does this give you more exposure, it allows you to advertise to customers you know are already familiar with and fond of your business.

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American Online has been a cornerstone of the internet since it went online in the very first home. This company has enjoyed high peaks of service as well as multi-year slumps. After Google and other advertisement gurus begun to pick up speed in 2007, it looked like America Online was nearing the end of its lifespan. This was all until AOL took an aggressive turn for the better and began showing impressive profits in the first quarter of 2011. This had made AOL advertising the perfect option for businesses and business owners that are looking for an effective online component to their overall marketing strategy.

One of the changing points for American Online within the past few months is an increased network of advertising mediums including their news operation Patch and the acquisition of Huffington Post. These two news services have recently undergone aggressive expansion into new towns and providers across the country, allowing AOL new platforms from which to launch their AOL advertising tools.

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Social media is the wave of the internet future. Facebook has more than 750 million users. Through the use of Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and others you can tell where almost any person is at any given time. Everything on the internet has become social. With one click of a button you can share your favorite article with your hundreds of Facebook friends, post to any number of the hundreds of social bookmarking sites and post it on your own blog.

Businesses need to keep this in mind to succeed today. Customers are looking online to find a business’s address, checking the appropriate Facebook page to print off the daily deals and doing all their shopping online.

In order to succeed, businesses, whether an online business or a brick and mortar business that has an online presence, need to engage their customers through social media. This can mean any number of things.

First of all, every business needs to have a website and a Facebook profile page that is updated consistently. Twitter pages and Google Local pages allow customers to easily find and keep track of your business.

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According to a report from performance marketing company, Efficient Frontier and their subsidiary, Context Optional, Facebook’s cost-per-click (CPC) increased 22 percent in the second quarter of 2011 from first-quarter statistics. The report, Global Digital Marketing Performance Report, also projected an 80 percent increase for Facebook CPCs by the years end. This is true if Facebook continues to show at least a 20 percent rise in each quarter for the continuing year. The findings of the report are congruent with Facebook’s history of strong revenue growth and rapid expansion.

However, Facebook’s 22 percent increase is down from the 40 percent growth shown in the first quarter. Nevertheless, the report explains that not too much should be read into the drop given the nature of the social media ad category.

The report also noted the increased presence of advertisers on Facebook, and the resulting up swing of CPCs. This results in higher prices for brands the longer they wait to engage customers via Facebook. With brand centric data, the report stated that brands currently gaining fans on Facebook are on course to double their fan base by October 2011. This estimate is based on patterns seen since October 2010.

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