Social networking is alive and well, but many people rule out Facebook as a medium for business promotion since it is best known for reconnecting with school friends and other non-business liaisons. However, I`ve recently discovered a couple of things about Facebook that I didn`t know before.

Facebook Ads

If you`ve been on the site, you`ve seen that there are ads which appear to the left of your page. Now, what you may not have noticed is how targeted these ads are. See, with Facebook advertising, you pick your demographic. Want to target women living in Kentucky with bilingual kids? Go for it. You select what you are looking for and Facebook will tell you how many people your ad is relevant to based on the keywords in people`s profiles.

You can set your cost per day, pay per click or cpm (pay for every 1,000 views) and all this is on one of the biggest social networking sites of all time. It seems like a great way to go to me. Now, if I just had a credit card . . .

Facebook Pages

On Facebook, you have a profile page, but did you know that you can also have a business page or even pages (you`re allowed as many as you want!)? That`s right, you can set up a page designed to promote your business.

It looks a lot like the group pages, with space for an image, and areas to add information, photos, video, etc. to your page. There is also a discussion module and a Wall feature so you can interact with your fans. Fans being people who come to your page and sign up to be a fan, of course. You can even send out updates to your fans once you have some, something like a newsletter.

There are three distinct types of business pages, Local (for restaurants, bookstores, etc.), Brand or Product (shoes, baby items, etc.), or Artist, Band or Other Public Figure (writers, bands, etc.). They are free, but you do have the option of setting up advertising right on Facebook for your pages.

This is a whole new side of Facebook for me, but it seems to have great potential. Do you have a business page on Facebook? Leave the URL in the comments or email me and I`ll have a look. In the meantime, feel free to stop by my writing page and become a fan!