Facebook is known as a social networking tool for young people. Even more so than MySpace (which has gained recognition in the business world because of its MySpace music channels and other marketing opportunities), Facebook is considered the playground for people who are looking to trade conversation and keep up with friends. As such, Facebook often gets overlooked by people in the business world who find it to be a waste of their time to gossip with their acquaintances about the latest going on in the world. But despite its use by youngsters as a place for gossip, Facebook can be a great tool for driving traffic to your own site and possible generating additional revenue for yourself.

American Chronicle published an article which looks at eight reasons that businesses should consider using Facebook. There are some good points made here including that Facebook users are active users who are on the site every day, meaning that they’re looking for new information and that new information might as well be content on your site that they can drive traffic towards. Another good point is that the nature of Facebook lends itself well to traffic-driving – it’s a naturally viral hotbed where people are sharing information about their likes and dislikes which means that if they like your content, they’ll let other Facebook users know.

And a point not made in the article but which bears some attention is the fact that Facebook is indeed used by a large number of young people. This is important because it is young people who make up a large percentage of consumers interested in purchasing products and services through the web. Those who have part-time jobs or access to parents’ money spend it on the hottest new things. And if you can reach these people and convince them that what you have is that hottest new thing, they’re going to rush traffic to your site to check it out. Now, of course no one is suggesting that you head to Facebook to con kids into buying your stuff. But all good marketing plans look at their target market and if yours can include youngsters, why not spread the word through a social networking site through Facebook?

Another important thing to know about Facebook is that it offers the ability to import your RSS feed to the site. You should always import your RSS feed to your social networking sites because this increases the number of people who are going to subscribe to it. And of course people who are subscribing to your feed are learning about your new content as its available on the site, driving traffic there not just once but every time that you add fresh content. The point should be made that you can’t make good use of Facebook for traffic if you aren’t regularly updating your site content and making sure that it’s of good quality. But if you’re creating stuff that people are going to want to read, Facebook is one of the many ways that you can let people know that it’s available to them.