Do you know why people love Facebook so much? It’s a fun way to follow your friends’ activities, look at pictures from their trips and see what types of fan pages they have joined. The draw to Facebook is the ease connecting with people you see every day, people you haven’t seen since high school, and sometimes people you don’t even know! Facebook isn’t just for kids anymore. It is becoming increasingly more popular with the 30-, 40- and 50 year-old crowds! I don’t think I can go a day without hearing someone mention Facebook—in the salon, at the gym or even in my gift boutique. Then, one day, it finally clicked. If my customers are on Facebook, then why aren’t I?

Sure, I was on Facebook for my personal activities, but my business was not. So about six months ago, I created a fan page for my gift boutique, Swagger Gifts (www.facebook.com/SwaggerGifts), and since then it has been a fun and profitable way to interact with my customers!

The first step was to create a free fan page for my business. I recommend you create a fan page rather than a group. One of the main reasons is a fan pages are indexed by Google, while groups are not. This is the best way to make your Facebook efforts help your other web efforts! Setting up a fan page is relatively easy. At the main log-in page for Facebook, about the middle right of the page, there is a link that says “Create a page for a celebrity, band or business.” Click that and it will lead you through creating a new page. Choose your type of business, type in your business name, authorize that you can create the page and click “Create page.” It will then ask you to either login to your existing Facebook account or create a new one. After that, the page will be created. You can now add a photo, edit your information, post events, etc.

One of the options you have with a business page is Facebook ads; these are ads that will appear on the side of people’s Facebook pages when a certain keyword or target is identified. People click on the ad to go to your website or a Facebook page. I will admit it; I was drawn to the extremely small financial investment required for Facebook ads. As with Google, Facebook allows advertisers to choose their own daily dollar amount to spend, along with the choice between pay per click versus impressions. So I wasn’t worried about the expense of experimenting with Facebook advertising. Go to www.facebook.com/advertising/?src=pf if you are interested in advertising on Facebook.

In early November 2008, I created an ad that was similar to Google’s advertising program to see how it would affect my business. I went with pay per click, set a budgeted amount to spend, and uploaded my ad. To my dismay, all of my money was gone after a couple of hours. None of the clicks converted into orders, and I had no new connections to my Facebook fan page. How did that happen? So, as a glutton for punishment, I tried it again the next day with the same results. I sat back to think about the experiment and it hit me. I know businesses are making money off ads, but they’re spending a lot of money to do so. At this point, I wasn’t willing to spend any more of my precious money on Facebook advertising. So, I decided to take the more social route and turn my in-store fans into my online Facebook fans.

Social media, such as Facebook, is basically real life on steroids. I still think it is crazy how quickly information travels. Let’s say for instance, your friend had an amazing trip to the beach. You, her 300 friends, and possibly your 300 friends are updated almost instantaneously. How? Your friend Heather posts an update that reads “Great trip to the beach!” and uploads the photos to her Facebook photo albums. You see the link and make a comment on a photo. Now that comment resides on her Facebook page as well as yours. Let’s say your other friend Jill, who does not know Heather, sees your comment and checks out her page. Why would Jill do that? Because that’s how social networks work! Jill now feels connected to Heather because you are their common link.

Here are tips I gathered on that chain of events and how to use it to market my business on Facebook:

1. Market your Facebook fan page to the people who already love you.

When I created my Swagger Gifts’ Facebook fan page, I sent out a newsletter to my in-store distribution list to announce the big news and encourage them to become a fan of Swagger Gifts! I also added a link to the Facebook page on my website and blog, posted signs in the store, and told everyone who walked in the door. We had about 60 fans by the end of that first week!

Since the first day was such a success, I wondered how I could increase that number. I noticed other store pages with similar numbers with no activity or additional fans after the first couple weeks. So, what would make people come back? Social media is very similar to real life. If you build it, they will come. However, it’s not going to build itself! So I thought about what made our store successful and came up with three things: our products, our customer service, and our special events. How to convey that on Facebook was the challenge.

First, we uploaded pictures of our store and our most popular product lines, posted invitations to our in-store events, imported our blog, and began writing on our own Facebook wall. Finally, we started holding weekly Facebook events to keep in front of our fans. You can do this in so many ways—be creative! Remember, the story above—if one of your fans writes on your store’s Facebook wall or comments on a store photo, it will show up in front of their friends. The social cycle will begin. If the friend likes what they see or read, they could then become a new fan of your store with the cycle continuing to their friends. We now have fans from all over the country just from people saying how much they love our store and inviting their friends. It’s just like word of mouth buzz in real life!

So who cares how many fans you have if they don’t do anything, right? You have to encourage them to do something! That something could be to think of your store when they need a gift, an accessory or just some good old-fashioned retail therapy! Or you can have them sign up for your newsletter or encourage them to attend an event. My advice would be to have fun first, and the money will come. We have had so much fun connecting with our new fans from all over the country. Their positive comments have been very rewarding, and many have become customers. Customers that although we have never met in person, already trust us with their most important gifts because of the connection we have made online. I feel like I know some of our Facebook fans as well as the people who actually come into the shop. That is pretty powerful stuff.

Facebook has become a very profitable way for customers to purchase items we post either online or in the store. It was all because they are allowing us to be part of their online lives! Don’t worry if they don’t do it immediately—be patient. We just received an Internet order last week, from a customer that wrote in the comment section, “I saw this on your Facebook page at Christmas and I’m getting it now for my sister’s birthday!”

So whether your objective is to have fans from all over the country or just your town—you can achieve that through Facebook. Social media is an amazing asset for each of us. You just need to know how to make it work for you.