Facebook is a very impressive tool not just for individuals, but for businesses and brands as well.  If you’ve considered using social networking sites to help promote your business, here is a summary of tools that Facebook has developed to help your business.

Facebook Pages were created to give businesses their own profile on their site. Those interested in following your brand can become “fans”, and when they do so, all their friends will see this. You can include photos, videos, information about your company, and custom applications on your Page.  All activity on Pages gets posted back to your Mini Feed for all your friends to see.  

Groups are similar to Pages, but are intended to be built around a group of people rather than an individual business or brand.  Groups have no fan feature, and don’t share as much information with users’ friends.

Facebook’s powerful API allows developers to write software to help promote your business on Facebook. These applications give you the ability to say or promote anything you want about your business, and use the social links provided by Facebook.  For example, Visa created the “Visa Business Network” application to allow users to network with other small business owners.  They went on to integrate with Facebook advertising to offer those that install the app a credit towards advertising on Facebook.

Facebook has an impressive advertising engine that allows businesses to specify a particular demographic for their ads. Facebook also provides other options for businesses with a larger budget to advertise through.

Facebook Polls are essential for marketers looking to get a quick answer about a specific feature they’d like to implement, or just to find out information and opinions from a specific demographic.  

Facebook Connect enables your business website to easily integrate with Facebook.  You can incorporate Facebook into your login process, retrieve users’ friend information, and even post data back to users’ Mini Feed so all their friends can see their activity.  

This is just a short list of the many tools at your business’ disposal. As Facebook continues to develop tools for businesses, they’ll earn more revenue both for themselves and businesses building inside Facebook.