Towards the end of June Facebook hit 2 billion monthly users. That’s more people than the population of China, Russia and the USA combined. Facebook aims to bring the world closer together, and whether you are a fan of the social media platform or not, it’s clearly here to stay.

How does Facebook know what you like? Facebook is a global community. It gives the opportunity for like-minded people to share ideas, collaborate, and create friendships. From liking good causes and joining groups, to updating your relationship status and your home town, Facebook uses all this information to create bundles of users that share common interests and social characteristics. At first glance knowing that your data is being used to create a profile of who you are can seem intrusive. Thinking about it more closely however, this is the only way Facebook can protect your newsfeed from becoming overrun with irrelevant information you couldn’t care less about. Without this profiling of who you are, and what your interests are, you would find your newsfeed crammed with adverts completely irrelevant to you. Why is this important for business? Facebook’s back-end interface allows posts to be targeted to specific groups of individuals.

Businesses are never able to see exactly who they are targeting, for the sake of privacy and data-protection, however they are able to target age ranges, employment, interests, and so much more.

Click here to view original web page at Lead generation and social media marketing – why it works