I use facebook for catching up with friends. I just can't catch up the idea of how facebook fans can be useful for a business. I host a online GPS Service and created a product page also. Just scratching my head on how to increase the fans and what benefit it would offer me?
You can post a message in your account linking to one of your content. The message will automatically display in the walls of your fans.
Your posts & updates show on your friend's feed and can be seen by their friends -> resulting in overall growth of your following. Then you get to distribute your message (ad/product) to more people.
Perfectly put. It is still amazing to see how people know that it is important to get themselves on Facebook and the like, but don't know exactly why. Good luck.
The value of Facebook fans is the same as the value of any kind of traffic to your website: publicity. Even if your fans don't actually buy anything, they help to get the word round about your services. Facebook Fan Pages are a far more effective marketing tool than paid ads. There is extensive evidence to support this.
That's not really a fair statement given that you have to look at different metrics. For example, a raw service which is completely and utterly focused on high end acquisitions, e.g. a civil law firm would probably be far better off and generate a far great ROI by looking at search options, because they can only provide their service upon request. On the other hand, a funky t-shirt company would probably generate a better ROI using Facebook fan pages due to the fact that they're not working with keywords, but instead demographics. I often see big companies advertising via social media thinking it's the bees knees, but I honestly cannot see them generating ROI on their advertising spend, as their isn't even a degree of sales infused with their very poor brand building campaigns. On topic, Facebook fan pages are more of a social platform for companies to directly engage with their fans and consumers updating them on what the company is doing, promotions etc while also consistently reminding them of your brand, and creating a demand for them to engage in - something Zynga Inc (Mafia Wars, Farmville, Cityville etc) publishers have done extremely well, as they currently have over 100 million active fans and application users. From the prospective of the majority of day in day out internet marketers on this forum, the appeal is the fact that you can gain targeted fans and send them updates to their newsfeed, or if they're application users, send a post to their wall for all their friends to see. As for your online GPS service, I really can't see the use unless you want to engage in some kind of branding campaign.