Facebook is a social media platform established in 2004 by university student Mark Zuckerberg. Roughly 2.89 billion users are currently on Facebook. It is free to complete a profile and these profiles can be used to connect with friends, family and co-workers. Users are able to share statuses, images, videos and music. In order to connect with other users, you send friend requests. Once accepted, these users can view each other’s full profiles including past statuses, photos and personal information like relationship status, age and employment status.
Each person’s profile includes personal information such as names, nicknames, where you live, date of birth, where you studied and life events. Profiles also have profile photos and cover photos, which are displayed publicly on a profile. Each post made on Facebook will have a “React” feature where one is able to react either positively or negatively to a post. This is a unique feature to Facebook. In addition, each post will have a comment section where people are able to make comments on the post, ask questions regarding the post or tag friends in the comments. Tagging someone on Facebook is as easy as just typing an @ along with the intended person’s name. Tagging can be done on photos, statuses or in comments, as prior mentioned.
As well as making friends via Facebook, one can also like pages. Liking a page means that the user will receive updates like statuses and photos and also can comment and like the posts published by the page. For example, if someone to like the page for “The X Factor”, the person who liked the page would get accessed to updates regarding “The X Factor”.
Facebook also provides a messaging service called “Messenger”. Messenger allows users to send private messages and make group chats with people they are friends with on the platform. Businesses can also use this tool in order to message potential clients who may have queries regarding their business. You can sign up to Messenger without a Facebook account or page however you will be required to sign up with your phone number.
Facebook is a service that is popular amongst many different audiences. It is universally popular with people of all age groups possessing accounts. This means that Facebook is great for advertising since there are so many different people using the platform every day and it is a relatively low-cost marketing tool.
Through a Facebook business page, potential customers are able to access basic information regarding your business as well as photos and videos about your business. You can also use Facebook as a tool for providing customer support to those who may need it through the use of Messenger and comments on posts. You can also use Facebook as a free promotional tool by allowing users to share and like your posts therefore the posts will show up on their friend’s timelines. Along with this, Facebook can generate more traffic to your website due to the fact that you are able to publish a link to your website on your page.
Facebook has many benefits when it comes to business uses however an issue of personal privacy has been brought up many times as well as issues like security. These issues are important to note and more information regarding how to stay safe on the internet can be found in the article “How to stay safe on the internet”.
