I was talking to my grandmother the other day and I related how I had recently reconnected with a high school friend through Facebook. Now, my grandmother thinks that a calculator is needlessly high tech when a slide ruler can do the same thing, so you can imagine how the Facebook conversation went.

Me: “Well, grandma, I friended Cassandra, she posted on my Wall, I tagged an old photo of myself, and then I beat her in a game of Bejeweled.”

Grandma (staring blankly): “You lost me at ‘friended’.”

Okay, so not everyone is on-board with Facebook (or other social media). My grandmother isn’t. But lots of people are, so businesses are, too. If your business isn’t marketing on Facebook, you should at least weight the opportunities and think about it. You might find that it’s not right for you, but you won’t know until you’ve given it some thought. I’ve listed the opportunities here and scored them on a scale of 1 (yikes!) to 5 (woot!).

Display ads. This is probably the best known and go-to marketing method for Facebook. They are Pay-per-click ads that show up all down the side of nearly every page. I don’t know about you, but for me they always show something like “shocking weight loss tea” or “I made $12,000 licking stamps”. Score: 2. Yeah, that’s right, I’m scoring them only a 2 because I think most of them are pretty lame. If you have a really creative ad that doesn’t offer shocking tea or $12K, then you might be able to bump that score up to 3, but I think you should spend your energy somewhere else. Read more about it here.

Business pages. Imagine your own Facebook profile – complete with friends and a wall – but in place of your beautiful face, there’s a brand. And instead of your name, there’s a business name. Business pages look and act like friend pages. People become friends with various businesses and leave messages (and presumably, those businesses have the opportunity to leave messages, too, although I’ve never seen it). Score: 3. I think there’s huge potential here that Facebook and the participating businesses are ignoring. And not every business is going to be so compelling that someone will want to friend you. I’m hoping that Franklin’s Industrial Gaskets (proudly serving Wichita for 50 years) will gain a following. But I’ve been wrong before. Read more about it here.

Groups. If you can’t figure out what a group is, based on the word “group”, go look up the word in the dictionary. A group is… well… a group. It’s a collection of people on Facebook who are interested in a similar thing. Maybe like a club. You can post announcements and pictures and links and have conversations. Just like any group ever conceived.

There are groups for everything. I’m not kidding on this: specific TV shows or movies, fans of just about anything, protests and social causes, groups to honor the recently deceased, and even groups to encourage non-Facebookers to get on Facebook. Score: 5. Yes, I think a group is one of the better ways to market your business. Now, OF COURSE you don’t want to start a group with a name like “The Group to Promote How Awesome My Business is”. Instead (and this is where the strength of Facebook comes in), start a group about the need your products or services solve. So, if you sell luggage, start a group about travel (maybe travel disaster stories or lost luggage frustrations or great vacation memories, etc.). (You’ll have to sign in to read about groups).

Applications. Facebook lifts its hood and shows programmers some of its inner workings so they can create applications. Some are good. Some are annoying. Hire a programmer, create a compelling application (anything from a game to something people can collect) and get it posted on Facebook. In terms of opportunity, I’d score apps at 4. If you can create an engaging experience for your users, they’ll be exposed to your brand again and again. Read more about it here.

photo credit: abulhussain