How to advertise on Facebook

Nowadays Facebook seems to be getting more visitors and is a major competition to companies like Google and it also seems that advertising services like Google adwords are facing a stiff competition with the likes of facebook. Perhaps you might not have already known this; Facebook is the social network that has taken the world by storm and as I write this, they are already getting bigger and about to make their Initial public offering. Plans are underway already to change the face of online advertising and they already have a platform to do this, already offering the services and bringing in higher returns for advertising.

Between Google and Facebook
Even Google bears witness to the force behind facebook as it recognizes that the social platform leads as the second most visited website in the world: See http://www.google.com/adplanner/static/top1000/. Although the list doesn't include Google itself which is still reputed as having a larger network and traffic. With the rate at which facebook is growing however, it only makes sense not to miss advertising opportunities with the social giant.

What Google has: Search network
What Facebook has: Social network

Alexa lists Facebook as number 2 -
Adplanner lists facebook as number one apart from Google -

Although these two internet giants do offer a bit more than just their primary services for free but it seems with the momentum at which sites like Facebook is growing, it may only be a matter of time before it really goes bigger than Google. Facebook also offers search services for free and this it does in partnership with another big giant Bing owned by the Microsoft which was once a leader in search engines known as MSN.

How to pay for Facebook ads
You would make use of a credit card or facebook coupon in completing your payment process. You would then receive a feedback notification if the payment is successful.

Things you will need to advertise on Facebook
- A facebook account
- A valid credit card or facebook coupon
- Ad write-up and image

How much does it cost?
You can set a daily budget from something as low as $5 and may decide to pay as low as $0.01 per click. Facebook advertisers can also opt to pay on a CPM basis rather than a PPC basis. So with about $10, you can ge started with running your facebook ad

How to start advertising with Facebook
To get started:
1. Go to http://www.facebook.com/advertising/
2. Click on create an ad
3. Design Your Ad: Enter the title and description of your ads. Make sure they conform to Facebook rules. See:
4. Upload an Image. It is a requirement
5. Targeting: You can choose which countries to target. The default will be the country registered in your profile. You can also target potential customers based on age, sex and interest listed on their facebook profile.
6. Place the settings for your campaign: This would include things like daily budget, pricing and schedule. For pricing per click, facebook normally suggests a cost per click for you but you can change it by clicking on "Set a different bid"
7. Review your order or Just place the order for that ad you just created
8. If successful, you get a response, your ad was successful
9. Your ad should be live in a few minutes. To make changes to your ad, you can go to your ad page and click on edit. You can change most things about your ad from there

Managing your facebook ads
After you've already setup your ads and want to return to managing it, you can always do so by going to facebook.com/advertising and click on "Manage your existing ads"

Tips:
You can set your daily budget as low as $5 and your cost per click as low as $0.01. By default, it can be much higher than traditional online advertising.

Conclusion
If you are into the online advertising business whether as an agent or client and you don't have Facebook in your portfolio of service providers, perhaps its time you think twice about it. Advertising with Facebook offers you a more closer interaction between you and potential customers in a way that most other networks may not be offer. Afterall, man is a social being and what better platform to advertise if not on a social network.

In essence, if you are not advertising with Facebook, you would be missing a lot of people.