When marketing types discuss social media, they mostly mean Facebook marketing. Why? It’s simple. A mere 1.038 Billion people use Facebook everyday across the globe.

Yea. Billion. With a B. Daily.

If you are in marketing or communications, your job has two parts. Part one is to find your audience. Sometimes it’s easy, often times it’s not (more on this topic in another column). Part two of your job is to message to them in a way that activates them. There’s no point in putting your message out there if no one is inspired to take action, or even knows what “action” looks like.

A sound Facebook marketing strategy that incorporates organic (the stuff you post) and paid elements is essential to make Facebook work for your business.

First, let’s understand organic.

You need Likes. They aren’t as important as they used to be when Facebook first launched, but they are valuable. Think of a Like on your page the same way you think about an email subscriber. You need a good audience first, then you can deliver a message.

The good news is, if you have fewer than 1,000 Likes on Facebook (like most small and mid-sized businesses), about 25 percent of your audience are seeing your posts – in advertising terms, think of this as an “impression.” Compare that with the industry standard email open rates (the perfect comparison, honestly) and you find that Facebook delivers your content to roughly five percent more people than email does. The amount of post engagement and business activity from your Facebook efforts is up to you and the quality of your content.

Okay, we have the basics of organic down. What about paid?

To start, it’s not a scary scam to pay for marketing on Facebook. Like any other digital strategy, there’s an organic component and a paid component (yep, just like search marketing). Organic takes longer, but holds its value stronger and builds brand and perception better (again, just like search). But, paid gets those quick results we all love. There are a LOT of ways to do paid marketing on Facebook, but here are two important things worth locking in your memory.

Number one, build your audience with a Likes campaign. You don’t have to go broke here, but you need an audience to talk to, and a great ad for your page will build your audience. Or, pair a great ad with a charity match. For example, for every page Like give a buck to charity.

Number two, use the data available on Facebook to drive highly qualified website traffic. Facebook lets you build an audience based on database information from reliable marketing database sources like InfoUSA and Acxiom. Database data is combined with Facebook activity data to get an incredibly valuable and accurate picture of someone who may be interested in seeing your information. It’s both fair and useful.

Making a difference for your business with Facebook is more than doable – it’s essential. Make a strategy, and get to work!