If you’re using Facebook, you’ve seen the “Like” button with the thumb-up icon on the right side of your pages. While the “like” feature used to be for wall comments only, it has become the hottest new marketing trend of the summer.

Facebook can now show your business ads to users who are both in your target market AND are already friends of your business. Or, you can put the FB “Like” icon right on your studio website. When someone clicks it, a new comment appears on their News Feed with a link back to your website or FB page.

Think of it as word-of-mouth combined with social networking. Given the size and growth of Facebook, this one new feature alone could boost your entire marketing effort.

Learn how to implement the “like” button for Facebook. If you’re not using Facebook, this may be a good reason to get started.

Facebook lets you buy ads that show on the right side of a user’s main page in Facebook. They don’t cost much, and are easy to target to specific audiences. For example, you could create an ad that targets only 20-30 year old women in your zip code.

If you’ve considering buying ads on Facebook, you may be interested in a recent study by the Nielsen Group. They looked at ads by 70 different companies and discovered that ads that include social advocacy are 2-4 times more likely to be clicked on, recalled or to lead toward a purchase.

What does this mean to you?

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Even if you’re studio is already on Facebook, you’re always looking for more fans. The question is, how can you get them?

Kraft Foods did it by asking folks to become a fan, then fill out a form to get a coupon for a free box of Mac & Cheese. To date, they have about 200,000 fans.

The take-away message here is, if you want to get something, you’ve got to give something. It would be easy to duplicate this for your studio, collect email addresses, then send a coupon for an upcoming special.

• Holidays
• Senior Portraits
• Wedding Consultations

Don’t just launch this Facebook promotion alone. Instead, make it part of your next marketing campaign. Use the same coupon in your email newsletter, mail it to previous customers, and put it on the front page of your website. Multiple impressions are a proven way to boost your campaign’s success.

Give it a try!

I read a great article entitled, “How to Market Your Business with Facebook” in the New York Times Small-Business guide, and thought you might like a story I found in it.

Some guys use Facebook to find single women. Chris Meyer used it to find women who are already engaged.

Mr. Meyer, a wedding photographer in Woodbury, Minn., had had little luck with traditional advertising. A full-page ad in a bridal magazine generated zero leads and a trade show yielded only four bookings, barely covering the cost of his booth. But Facebook proved a digital bonanza.

Mr. Meyer aimed at women ages 22 to 28 who listed their marital status as engaged in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. He estimates that he has spent about $300 on Facebook ads in the last two years and has generated more than $60,000 in business. He says about three-quarters of his clients now come to him through Facebook, either from ads or recommendations from friends.

Bottom line: If you are a wedding photographer, your prospective customers spend more time on Facebook than they do reading newspapers, e-mails or mailers. You need to go where your customers are. Learn more.

This is part 2 of a 2 part series on using social networking to promote your business. Read part 1 here.

Getting Started - The presenters all made the same point: the only way to get started in social networking is to jump in. If you haven’t already, start with a Facebook business account. If you already have a personal account, read these instructions.

If you are looking to update your website, a blog is a good way to get started with social networking (you are reading a blog). Use it as a “portal” for your entire website: portfolios, services offered, prices, and contact information combined with links to your RSS feeds, Twitter and Facebook accounts. After researching many types of blog software, I can recommend Wordpress.

Takeaway Points - As I sat through several presentations, I wrote down some common ideas that every presenter emphasized:

• Think “build community”, not “communicate with.”
• Social networking requires your most passionate people. It won’t work if you just give it to an employee as one more task to be completed on a daily basis.
• Avoid the “if you build it they will come” syndrome. Setting up a Facebook page is only the smallest first step. Plan to work with it every day or at least every other day for several months before you see real results.
• Measurement is hard. The number of “clicks” or “friends” or “eyeballs” you receive will not necessarily translate into sales. Instead, you have to trust that as social networking grows, the businesses that are part of it will grow too.
• People support organizations or businesses they love. The strength of social networking is that it allows you to develop these relationships.
• The technology is easy. The human empathy, passion, and commitment is hard.

This week I attended a conference on Using Social Networking to promote businesses, and of course, I kept trying to think of ways it could benefit professional photographers. In case you haven’t been keeping up with the latest internet buzzwords, social networking refers to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, instant messaging and chat.

While social media is simple to use and free to implement, it will cost you time and diligence in order to make it work to promote your business.

When you think about ways to promote your business using the Internet, you usually think of websites and e-mail. While these are important, they are designed to “communicate with” a customer. You might tell a customer about your services or about a sale, for example.

In the last few years, marketers have discovered that people don’t want to use the Internet just to get information – they want to use it to make 2-way or social connections too. Instead of “communicating with” a customer, businesses use social networking to “build a community” with their customers.

Let me give you an example. A local pub in Flint advertised their St Patrick’s Day specials, then asked their friends “who is coming over after work?” Several dozen people I knew answered online. When I asked them why they went to that particular pub, they said it was because they saw on Facebook that all their friends planned to be there too.

Let me give you another example. Bob Fish, co-founder of Biggby Coffee in Michigan, uses social networking like Facebook and Twitter to let his customers know when he’s going to be visiting one of the over 100 franchises. If you meet Bob at a Biggby Coffee shop, he will buy you a free cup of coffee. This virtually free social networking is considered a critical part of Biggby Coffee’s success according to Entrepreneur Magazine.

Next week I’ll give you some specific steps that you can do to implement social networking as part of your marketing.