Does anybody remember a commercial from the 70s starring Heather Locklear for Fabergé Organic Shampoo? The premise of the commercial was that Heather used this terrific new shampoo and liked it so much she told two friends and they liked it so much they told two friends and they told two friends and so on and so on and so on . . . (you can watch it here if you like)

That is the best way I know how to describe marketing on Facebook. It’s perpetual. If someone “likes” your business page, two of their friends will “like” it too and so on and so on and so on . . .  FOREVER — and guess what? — it didn’t cost you a dime!

The statistics regarding Facebook users are impressive, but can be misleading depending on how you interpret them.

According to one study, done May 2010:  77% of the American population is on Facebook and they spend 56 minutes on average every single day there.

Yep. Impressive. Especially when you consider that as web developers we shed tears trying get people to spend 10 minutes straight on our sites.

However, consider this:

Nielsen Company reported that for March 2010 Facebook saw an average of 7 hours per user, for the month. That works out to about 14 minutes a day.

That same Nielsen report also shows that Facebook had approximately 117 million unique users for March 2010. If all of them came from the US that would represent about 38% of the US population.

However, Facebook states that 70% of their users are outside the US. So that means approximately 35 million of the March 2010 users were from the US, this represents about 11% of the US population.

Given this, it would probably be more accurate to say that approximately 1 in 10 Americans spends about 14 minutes a day on Facebook.

Still impressive. However you want to look at it or break it down, the fact remains. Facebook is a goldmine of marketing opportunity for your business. For very little investment, a business can tap into this powerful marketing tool and begin to get their brand in front of a very specific demographic.

In the coming weeks, I’ll post a series of blog posts on how to best incorporate Facebook into your Social Media Marketing plan. We’ll explore the best way to set up a Facebook Business page, how to get your own unique Facebook Page name, and how to set up Facebook to work with other Social Media strategies such as Twitter and your blog. We’ll even get into utilizing some of those fun little Facebook apps (and no, I am not talking about Farmville, so don’t try and sell me any of your cows or get me to water your crops.)

Stay tuned! And don’t forget to tell a couple of your friends!