What Every Canadian Business Should Know About Facebook Places

Good News! 6S Marketing can help you claim your business on Facebook Places Canada.

EDIT SEPT 24, 2010: Facebook Places Launches in Canada/EDIT

In early September, 2010 Canadian businesses will be able to claim their Place on Facebook. Ultimately, your business is going to be added to Facebook and the information should be accurate. Keep reading to find out how you can control what information is listed on Facebook about your business and how you can reach more customers.

Facebook Places is not available in Canada yet, but launched in the USA on August 18, 2010. According to 6S inside sources, the Canadian Launch date for Facebook Places Canada is September 3rd, 2010.

The following is what every Canadian business needs to know about getting their business listed correctly on Facebook. For official Facebook Places information from Facebook themselves, please visit Facebook.com/Places. You can also Download the PDF Guide

Q: What is Facebook Places?

A: Essentially, Facebook is launching a mobile application that allows people to “check in” at your place of business. This could be a current customer, employee or potential customer. This is similar to Foursquare or Gowalla but on a much larger scale. These are exciting times for hyperlocal advertising and geo-location related marketing. Never before have business owners been able to target potential customers on the kind of massive scale that Facebook provides.

Q: Why does this matter?
A: Facebook has over 500 million users and is extremely popular among Canadians. More than half of Canadians between the ages of 18 and 55 use Facebook, most at least once a day. Facebook Places allows your business to reach your customers and this is likely the best new marketing tool since the launch of Google.

Q: Why does my business need to claim it’s Facebook Place?
A: Every Canadian business owner should claim their place on Facebook, regardless if they plan to use it in the short term. By claiming your Place you can manage your Place’s address, contact information, business hours, profile picture, admins and other settings.

Q: Why do I need to do it now?
A: Claiming your business on Facebook ensures that you will have the future ability to take advantage of localized advertising to customers already interacting with your business. Similar to registering your domain name, claiming your business will prevent potential squatters from claiming your business. Also, there may be long wait periods or restrictions down the road.

Q: How much does it cost?
A: While claiming a business on Facebook, and setting up a Facebook business page is free, it can be complicated if you do not have the experience. 6S Marketing has helped dozens of Canadian companies with setting up their presence on Facebook. We are running a promotion for the month of September 2010 where we will help you claim your Facebook place on your behalf for $500. 6S can also help you set-up your company’s Facebook page for an additional cost. Contact us for more information.

Q: How do I get started?

A: For more information on how to get started, please contact us.

Written by Chris Breikss

About the author: Chris Breikss

Chris Breikss is widely recognized and regarded as being a man of ideas, innovation and boundless energy. He began utilizing the Internet as soon as it became possible to launch a website. 15 years, and hundreds of websites later, Chris has not looked back. An entrepreneur at heart, Chris recognized a trend pointing to significant business potential in internet marketing and search engine optimization, and in 2000, 6S Marketing was born. Chris now leads a team of 25 digital marketers at 6S Marketing and focuses his time on building the business through sales and marketing as well as research and the development of new marketing concepts and products.

Learn more about Chris »

12 Comments

Comment by Karran Finlay — August 24, 2010 @ 9:43 am

Great post Chris! Very helpful sound advice.
Comment by Christina — August 24, 2010 @ 9:54 am

Not sure how this might affect places that already have established Fan Pages? Will facebook users start looking for places using this new “places” feature or still through Fan Pages? Do you communicate with users through “places” or is it more like a static listing? We’ll have to wait and see I guess…. Does this mean I’ll now have two channels to manage on FB? Lol.
Comment by Mike Schwarz — August 24, 2010 @ 10:15 am

I really wonder how sites like Foursquare will survive this; Facebook is like a giant dragon sitting quietly in its cave eating vegetables but it’s pretty clear at some point the dragon will decide to start eating villagers instead.

It is the same way that Google was for years – quietly doing only search. Then after they got big enough they started taking out other businesses one by one, redirecting traffic from search results into their own version of those businesses (stocks, weather, maps, local business listings, free analytics, mail, you name it).

Facebook will surely follow the same path as it gets bigger, picking off complimentary business models one by one as it turns into an internet monster with tentacles wrapped around pretty much everything.

Up next for Facebook? Hmmm shouldn’t be long before they expand their advertising network to be like the Google content network, but with better targeting. Lots of money in them ads

Look out Google – they are coming for you!
Comment by Ian — August 24, 2010 @ 10:20 am

Thanks for the post Chris. Bit of a follow up from a previous question. Wondering to what degree you think this is genuine value add for existing business users, particularly those with well established customer engagement on their FB pages… versus this service being more protective posturing against the potential inroads being made by foursquare?
Comment by Jeff Kee — August 24, 2010 @ 11:10 am

Chris you rock – great explanation of how this works. Very cool feature…
Comment by Chris Breikss — August 24, 2010 @ 12:16 pm

Thanks for your comment Christina. Your Places page is integrated with your fan page but it is also it’s own unique entity that you can promote. Yes there is more work to do but the benefits are huge in that you will see growth in terms of the number of interactions with your customer base.
Comment by Chris Breikss — August 24, 2010 @ 2:46 pm

Ian, I am a huge fan of Foursquare and I agree that Facebook is posturing a little bitI mean, the Facebook Places logo is a square with a 4 in it… well it’s more like a rectangle but still. I do think that Facebook Places has a distinct advantage as they have a pay-per-click ad model worked into their system while Foursquare does not. The major problem for Facebook is that the initial feedback from users is that Facebook Places is boring compared to Foursquare (or Gowalla) so it will be interesting to see how Facebook addresses that issue.
Comment by Chris Breikss — August 24, 2010 @ 2:50 pm

Mike, I like your vegetarian dragon analogy and I couldn’t agree more. The challenge that mega companies like Facebook and Google faces is that they are trying to be everything to everyone but they don’t do it as well as some of the smaller innovative companies.
Comment by Mike Patterson — August 25, 2010 @ 10:41 am

Good post Chris, very informative. I also noticed that yelp! recently updated their mobile software with many four square-like like things. Hope you are well!
Comment by Richard — September 3, 2010 @ 8:35 am

Hey there, I tried finding facebook pages today but couldnt see it anywhere on FB… Why is the Dragon keeping it from us? lol
Comment by Tara — September 8, 2010 @ 1:48 pm

Thanks for a great post Chris, very helpful and well written. One question tho’: because Places isn’t available in Canada yet, how can you claim a business’ Place for them this month? Or have I misunderstood? Thanks, Tara
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