facebook for business

We’ve all done it. We’ve opened our Facebook emails, read an emailed comment from our Fan Page that ignited our creative juices, and hit reply only to realize that Facebook doesn’t allow you to reply this way. Not anymore!

Facebook recently launched the capabilities of replying to comments via email. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a message from Facebook in each of the emails that reads, “New Feature: Reply to this email to comment on this post.” This is a fantastic feature for anyone who manages a fan page. Manage multiple fan pages as I do, and it is a gift. Today, I’m referring to it as my special holiday gift from Facebook.

I’ve always monitored comments via email. My email feeds into my Blackberry. Now, I can reply faster and easier to keep discussions going and without logging into Facebook. This saves me a ton of steps, not to mention a whole lot of time. Thanks Facebook!

*Hint: Don’t try to reply to emailed messages from last week. The feature wasn’t implemented and is likely not to work on older messages.

You can use Facebook to promote your business, start conversations with customers, build brand recognition, and solicit user feedback. It is a growing trend. WOW! Facebook is incredible!

In order to proceed, you must have a personal Facebook page, and we strongly recommend that you are familiar with some of the basic features of the application. That was the purpose of yesterday. Now, let’s get started with a business page. We want to make this effort as easy and effective as possible.

You have two free options on Facebook. You can create a Group or a Page for your business. We recommend building a Page, and here’s why. Pages were designed to accommodate viral marketing. Viral marketing is a method of spreading word of your product or service rapidly from one person to another. For business, this is a good thing.