While I was drinking my morning coffee and flipping through the morning news shows, I came across a station that was reporting that people were giving up Facebook for Lent, or at least that they were trying to.  I thought to myself about how kids are going crazy with all types of social networks. When I got into the office, I did a little research and found that it was parents and adults who said they were giving up the popular social media site for the next 40 days, not necessarily kids.  Is this site really so addictive that people are making the conscious effort to actually stay away from this site for 40 days?  As an online marketer, I thought about how if people feel they have to give it up, they must be spending an amazing amount of time there.  

The truth is that people do spend a lot of time on Facebook.  From communicating with friends, to reviewing goods and services, Facebook is becoming an all inclusive site.  More and more business pages are trying to promote their products and services in front of a new audience.  To truly utilize Facebook for business purposes, more time is required to maintain your presence than is typically required with a website.  Facebook is user friendly for even the most non-technical types, and the flow of information and discussions happen in real time.  If you manage a business’ presence in Facebook and miss an email, or reply to someone’s inquiry too late, you run the risk of showing lack of interest on your page.  To help you better manage your Facebook account for your company, here are a few simple tips.

• Login at a minimum of two (2) times a day.  By logging in twice a day you can be sure that you are monitoring what people are saying or discussing on your page.  Over time, if you find that you are getting more interaction, you may want to increase the frequency.
• Respond promptly to discussions or Facebook emails.  Good business etiquette is that you respond to inquiries within 24 hours.  The same should go for Facebook.  You can think of Facebook as just another way to disseminate information, and if people have to wait too long, they may decide to go elsewhere.
• While not required, try giving something away on your Facebook page.  I am not talking about a free product or service, but a free video, photo, or information will be sufficient.  This can entice people to become your friend or fan and keep them coming back for more.  After all, the idea is to get your consumer engaged.
• Update your Page often.  Update your status, photos and information to reflect your most recent products, services and promotions.  If people return to your page and there is nothing new, why should they come back?  A simple way to accomplish this is to feed your blog to your Facebook page via RSS.  This will ensure that every time you make a post, it is automatically uploaded to your Facebook page.

With the popularity of online video increasing everyday, it is not surprising to see people utilizing online video sites to promote their products or services.   More than 14 billion people watched online videos in December of 2008 which was a 13 percent increase over November as reported by comScore Video Metrix service.  YouTube, which is owned by Google, is the clear leader in online video.  While you should be promoting your videos on YouTube, there are a few other channels that seem to be doing the right things and could eventually be contenders for the valuable video market.  Some favorites include:

Vimeo – Like YouTube, you can upload videos, join groups and comment on other videos.  Vimeo does allow you to pay for a pro subscription which enables you to upload more videos per month, and offer your viewers high definition .

VideoSurf – This site is a little different in that you must have your videos hosted on your site and then submit a video feed.  The unique patent pending feature of VideoSurf is that they claim to have technology that can “see” inside your video to index content about videos.  The idea behind this is to ensure that the video that people click on contain the information they were actually looking for.  Many times a user will click on the video thumbnail expecting one thing and before they know it, they have been “Rick-Rolled”. 

Blinx – Unlike other multimedia search engines that attempt to re-purpose technology built for the Text Web, Blinkx uses a unique combination of patented conceptual search, speech recognition and video analysis software to efficiently, automatically and accurately find and qualify online video.  Unlike other sites, you don’t actually upload a video, but if you have video on your site, there is a chance that Blinkx can crawl it and index it for their engine.

By utilizing many different video formats and channels, you have a better opportunity to reach those who are already watching video online.  Videos can also be used and embedded into your other marketing initiatives such as press releases, social media channels (Facebook and MySpace) and email blasts.  Video is very easy to use and can help you to deliver your marketing message in a new and interesting way.