Facebook as a Marketing Tool

Abstract

Social networks are one of the more notable sociological phenomena of the last years. Moreover, its apparition and acceptance by majority of the citizens also suppose an important challenge for the firms. Social networks are a new and relevant channel of communication and interaction with their consumers. For this, firms have to create their own place in the social network and actively manage the content that shares and the dialogue that is supported by their followers. In the first part of this paper, the authors explain the creation of an index to evaluate the presence of the companies in the social network more used to international level, Facebook. The Facebook Assessment Index (FAI) is formed by several indicators grouped in three dimensions: popularity, interactivity, and content. In the second part, the authors applied this index to the 150 largest firms according to Fortune 2011 ranking. At present, only 44% of these firms tested had an international official Facebook page. The results showed that the larger firms are those that in general terms best manage their presence on Facebook, have the greatest number of followers and a high degree of interactivity with them. However, the most interesting contribution of this work lies not in identifying firms that achieve higher scores on the FAI, but in comparing the pages with each other and making suggestions of ideas and practices that may improve a firm's Facebook presence as a marketing tool.