Facebook Fan Pages - How Smart Business Owners Are Gaining Massive, Laser Targeted Exposure Online

First Facebook was a place for college kids to exchange photos and updates. Then suburban soccer moms and corporate workers got in on the fun. Now, Facebook has become the medium of choice for business owners and marketers to reach a hungry audience.

We all know that Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and LinkedIn are great places to make business contacts, but how exactly are smart business owners using Facebook to grow their bottom line?

Just recently, the only way to monetize Facebook was to bombard your friends with status updates related to your business or self promotion. Friends were busy posting updates about kids events, inside jokes, announcements about reunions, and what they ate for dinner, and marketers were harassing them with info about their business or lifestyle.

I was guilty too, most of my updates had something to do with how great my free lifestyle is and why those cubicle workers should look at what I'm doing. Now that I've stopped doing that - I've had time to reflect. Isn't that kinda like the friends and family approach that MLM uses? I'm supposed to be a professional internet marketer for goodness sakes - attract people to me that are actually searching for what I have to offer. Why did I feel so guilty about posting 'lifestyle' status updates?

Because there was no other way to use Facebook to grow your business...up until now.

With the growth of Facebook fan pages, business owners and internet marketers finally have a platform on Facebook to reach a targeted audience, without all the annoying 'business-like' status updates.

The Facebook fan page can look very similar to your personal Facebook profile page, or you can choose to have it look more like a 'real' website - but within the Facebook interface. On a standard Fanpage, you can basically post pictures and text info about your business.

On the other hand, there are several 'Fanpage builders' out there on the market that will allow you to design your Fanpage to have more functionality. You can upload banners, graphics, videos, and even an opt-in form to capture visitors name, email and phone number.

You can invite friends to see your new Facebook business fan page by posting updates and links to it in your personal profile wall. But that is kinda like what you were doing using the old-school techniques and perhaps bothering and turning off friends who really don't want to see that stuff.

Smart business owners are using Facebooks pay-per-click advertising platform and driving those clicks to their new business fan page. The pay-per-click advertising platform is extremely user friendly, allows laser-focused demographic targeting, and is scalable. Imagine your Fanpage is marketing a organic dog food, and only having your PPC ad show up on Facebook profiles of people that dogs or the word organic listed in their profile.

Driving relevant traffic to your new Facebook fan page is the key to monetizing this new platform - it will provide a professional look to your business, and give you massive exposure on the world's 2nd most visited website.