Facebook has announced a new small business education program, aimed at showing businesses how to optimize their individual pages and to use the social media giant’s self-serve ad platform to effectively target customers.
Facebook is partnering with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business to bring a series of web-based tools and a traveling seminar circuit targeting small businesses. The first step is to circulate webinars, case studies and tips, which are available now. In addition, Facebook plans to sponsor a series of road shows in cities across the country starting this month to promote its “Small Business Boost.”
Perhaps most notable is the final piece of the program, which will kick off in January 2012, when Facebook will offer a $50 ad credit to 200,000 businesses, totaling $10 million in free advertising.
According to an eMarketer report, 44% of small- and medium-sized businesses used social media as a marketing tool in August, and 59% spent less than $100 on social media marketing.
"We know that small businesses who use web technology grow more than twice as quickly, bring in twice the revenue, and create twice the jobs as small businesses who don’t," said to David Fischer, Facebook’s vice president of advertising and global operations. He said 9.2 million small businesses in the U.S. have pages on Facebook, but only 3.2 million of those pages have active engagement, according to a report by AdAge Digital.
Fischer added that the amount a small business might invest in self-serve ads targeted to their desired audience could range from $20 a month for a single proprietor business to thousands each week.
