What's All the Fuss About Facebook?

2009 was a big year for Facebook. In May, comScore reported 70.2 million US unique visits for Facebook (up 97% year over year) passing Myspace.com for the first time. Later the same year, UK-based analytics firm Hitwise tweeted that on December 29th, Facebook had more unique visits than Google.com. This effectively made facebook.com the most visited site in the US for several consecutive days. While marketers are still debating social media best practices, no one can deny that Facebook is becoming a more important marketing medium every day.

How Do I Start Advertising on Facebook?

Of all of the ways you can choose to start advertising on Facebook, PPC is probably both the quickest and the easiest. To begin, you will need to decide whether you want your ads to link to your company web page or something on Facebook (like a Page, Application, Group, or Event). Much of this depends on your business goals (lead generation, sales, etc.), but more on that later. Next, you will need a compelling 110px X 80px image for your advertisement. Once you have uploaded the image, written the ad copy, and setup your account (with billing info, etc.) you can literally be up and running in as little as a few hours. The thing that takes the longest time is usually waiting for Facebook to approve your advertisement.