More than a billion people are on Facebook, using it for many reasons: keeping in touch with friends and former classmates, playing games and liking a group or organization.

Use Facebook for Your Business’ Advantage

Making status updates and posting photos can help a business. A social-media strategy should go beyond that.

“This is a business revolution that is taking place right now,” says sales and marketing consultant Jennifer Abernathy to Success magazine, “and it is good to have a presence there.”

Choose Your Path and Stick to It

Abernathy, author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Social Media Marketing,” equates a Facebook presence to having a free booth at the world’s biggest trade show. The key is to develop an authentic voice, identify a target audience and be open when its Facebook presence and technology changes.

Businesses should look the best on the web, according to Reputation.com, an online reputation management company. Businesses need to control online search results. Reputation.com acknowledges, because these results often have incorrect or outdated information. That can negatively affect how Internet searchers view the companies.

Integrate Facebook and ORMs

Facebook can further enhance online-reputation management.

Michael Bird, president of Spindustry, a social-media consultancy based in Des Moines, Iowa, tells Success a businessperson should take time and develop a slow-building strategy. A business should not post only about its products but insider tips, contests and headlines appealing to a target audience.

Let’s say your Facebook page draws many fans. Now what? According to SmartBlogs, attention should be given to what the brand will do with these newly formed relationships. It’s like getting a return on investment after an acquisition.

Facebook has suggestions on how to best use it for business:

• Build a page
• Connect with people
• Engage an audience
• Influence friends of fans

Specific tips include creating a good cover photo and crafting a sentence about what a company does. Adding Facebook ads and quality posts is essential. To engage viewers, the business should ask questions to obtain feedback, plus have special offers and exclusive information on its Facebook page.

The Arizona-based State Bicycle Company boasts $500,000 in annual sales from its Facebook coupon codes and traffic. To make people familiar with the business, State Bicycle’s profile picture on Facebook has the company logo, while its cover photo contains an image of one of its new fixed-gear bicycles.

Keep the CEO Visible

Abernathy adds a company’s CEO should have his or her own Facebook page and stay visible. To keep a Facebook page lively, employees, partners and customers can be profiled. A video of a team of manufacturing plant is another good enhancement.

Keep Your Audience’s Vision In-Line With Your Business’

SmartBlogs has more ideas on planning a social-media campaign, comparing it with art thievery. That means not trying to sell a “painting of dogs playing poker,” but something of value — like a Rembrandt. Start with a big goal and focus efforts on what customers want and the issues important to them.