Scroll to the bottom of any Facebook screen and click the Businesses link. Then, on the right side of the Business Solutions page that appears, click the Facebook Polls link.

On the Polls tab, click the “Create a Facebook Poll” button.

In the form that appears, type in your poll. Start with your question, and then type between two and five possible answers. (As soon as you start typing in the Answers field, Facebook displays another Answers field.) Then, from one of the “Set your Audience” drop-down lists, choose which Facebook members you want to see your poll: only males (Sex), only business majors or people into hip-hop (Interests), only people who live in Seattle (Location), and so forth. (You only get to pick one criterion; as soon as you choose one, Facebook grays out the other three drop-down lists.) When you finish, click Continue.

Figure 11-4. 

In the Polls form that appears, double-check your poll to make sure you haven’t misspelled anything; then pay up. If you spot a goof in your question, answers, or the audience you selected, click the Edit Poll Details button to fix it. If you want to keep your answer choices in the order you entered them (instead of letting Facebook put them in any order it feels like), turn on the “Do not randomize my answer order” checkbox. Then set the Pricing and Max Responses options you want (the higher the Pricing option you choose, the quicker you get complete results).

Figure 11-5. 

Finally, head to the Payment Information section of the page, and enter your credit card info. When you finish, click Place Order. Facebook shoots your question out to as many Facebook members as it’ll take to return the number of responses you paid for.

After you place your order, Facebook begins displaying poll results as they come in. Poll results appear as soon as you click Place Order. If you surf off to do something else on Facebook, you can get back to your poll results by heading to www.facebook.com/polls.php.

Scroll to the bottom of any Facebook screen and click the Businesses link. Then, on the right side of the Business Solutions page that appears, click the Facebook Pages link. On the Facebook Pages screen, click the “Create a Facebook Page” button.

Figure 11-9. 

On the Create New Facebook Page form, choose a category and Page name. The Local drop-down list includes business options like restaurant, park, and religious center. In other words, Local is where you indicate what kind of business you are. Turn on the “Brand or Product” radio button if you’re selling products such as pharmaceuticals or food, or if you’re in a business with a national reach such as travel or communications. Turning on the “Artist, Band, or Public Figure” radio button gives you freelance options such as writer, politician, and athlete. After you’ve picked the appropriate category and given your Page a name, click Create Page.

Figure 11-10. 

Flesh out your Page. The first thing you want to do is click the “Upload a picture” link to replace the giant question mark with a picture of your band, your product, or whatever. Then click “Add information to this page” to build a profile similar to the personal profile you created when you joined Facebook (see Creating Your Profile), by filling in Basic Info as well as Detailed Info. When you finish building your Page’s profile, click the Edit Page link to see a list of all the different applications you can upload tidbits to (such as album info, concert dates, and music clips if you’re in a band) and settings you can adjust (such as requiring your fans to be over 18).

Figure 11-11. 

Publish your Page. When you’ve packed your Page with as much info, photos, media clips, and other goodies as you can think of, click View Page. If it looks good, click the “publish this page” link (if not, click the “Back to Pages” link to make changes). That’s it: Your Page is online.

Find the Page you’re interested in (type the name in the search box, and then click the Pages tab on the results page), and then click the “Become a fan” link. This link appears on the Page itself and on the Page’s listing in your search results.

Figure 11-12. 

In the confirmation box that appears, affirm your fan status. Turn off the “Allow [this Page] to send Updates to the Updates tab of my Facebook Inbox” checkbox if you don’t want to hear from the Page, and then click Add. Facebook lists the Page in the “I am a Fan of...” section on your profile. News of your newfound fandom also appears in your mini-feed, and in your friends’ news feeds.

Figure 11-13. 

Scroll to the bottom of any Facebook screen and click the Advertisers link. Then, on the Facebook Ads page that appears, click the Create Social Ad button.

Figure 11-16. 

Tell Facebook whether you want to drive traffic to a Web site or a Facebook Page. In the Get Started tab, click either the text field and type in the URL of your company Web site, or turn on the “Help me make a Page” radio button and create the Facebook Page (see Facebook Pages: Profiles for Bands, Brands, and More) you want people to see when they click your ad. When you’re done, click Continue.

Figure 11-17. 

Tell Facebook who you want to target. As you select options on the Choose Audience tab, Facebook updates the number at the top-right of the screen to give you a rough idea of how many members are in the demographic you’ve chosen. (Turn on the Male checkbox, for example, and Facebook cuts the figure in half, since about half its members are female.) When you’re done, click Continue.

Figure 11-18. 

Figure 11-19. 

Type in your text and upload your graphic (if you have one). On the Create Ad tab, type in your ad’s title (25 characters or less) and body text (up to 135 characters). From the Photo field, choose Upload a Photo, and then click Browse to search your computer for the picture file you want to go with your ad. After you’ve done all that, click Continue.

Decide whether you want to pay Facebook based on how many people it drives to your site or Page (pay for clicks), or based on how many people see your ad but don’t necessarily click on it (pay for views). If you select the Pay for Views tab, Facebook lets you decide where you want your ad to appear: in people’s news feeds (Types of Updates) or in Facebook’s ad space (the lower-left part of any screen). If you select Pay for Clicks, Facebook decides where to display your ad.

In either case, you type in how much you want to pay—per click if you chose the Pay for Clicks route, or per 1,000 impressions if you chose the Pay for Views route. The higher the amount you type in the Bid field, the more often your ad appears (in relation to whatever other ads Facebook needs to run the day yours runs; in other words, the highest bidder gets her ads run more often). Because site traffic and the total number of ads Facebook sells on any given day fluctuate, you also need to type the total amount of money you want to pay Facebook in any 24-hour period in the Budget field. After you tell Facebook which days you want your ad to run, click Continue to preview your ad.

Figure 11-20. 

Check your ad for errors, and then enter your credit card information. If you spot a mistake, click Change Ad to go back and fix the error. You should check out Facebook’s Terms and Conditions, too. Basically, by running your ad, you certify that you’re not lying to people or trying to sell something objectionable or illegal, like drugs or porn or copyright-protected music. Then head to the bottom of the Review Ad page and click the Place Order button.

Check on your ad. You can see daily statistics as well as in-depth demographics (through Facebook’s much-ballyhooed Insights program—Social Ads (Targeted Announcements)) in as little as a few hours after Facebook starts running your ad. To do so: From the Applications menu, click either Ads, Page Manager, or “Ads and Pages” (the link you see depends on whether you’ve created an ad, a Page, or both.) Then click the Ad Campaigns tab. To see stats including impressions and clicks broken down by day, click the Daily Stats tab. To see the info in easy-to-interpret graph form, click the Insights tab.