Research on an Insight into Facebook usage Habits and Marketing

The impact of social networking sites extends from developing relationships and networks, to becoming key tools used by business for marketing activities. Today is the age of participation and collaborative marketing. Imagining, how powerful it would be to actually have a real-time conversation with company’s target consumer or a contact that could help build one’s business. A direct human connection builds credibility and fuels positive word of mouth. That’s the power of the social media. As the Indian economy is booming and corporate is doing brisk business, businesses need to survive in the competition which is now global. So, to survive one need to market and one basic thing to keep in mind is that Marketers are supposed to go to their target customers, not people would anymore come searching for companies. Social networking websites which engages people for longer time are now consider best platform to market their products. So, selecting Facebook marketing as the topic for this research will move forward as to how Facebook marketing works for businesses and how people respond to Facebook marketing.


Introduction
Social networking sites have become embedded in our everyday life. They have become instrumental in shrinking the world. Initially developed for personal networking purposes, businesses have begun to tap in as a way to directly reach target markets.
The impact of social networking sites extends from developing relationships and networks, to becoming key tools used by business for marketing activities. Today is the age of participation and collaborative marketing. Imagining, how powerful it would be to actually have a real-time conversation with company's target consumer or a contact that could help build one's business. A direct human connection builds credibility and fuels positive word of mouth. That's the power of the social media. As the Indian economy is booming and corporate is doing brisk business, businesses need to survive in the competition which is now global. So, to survive one need to market and one basic thing to keep in mind is that Marketers are supposed to go to their target customers, not people would anymore come searching for companies. Social networking websites which engages people for longer time are now consider best platform to market their products. So, selecting Facebook marketing as the topic for this research will move forward as to how Facebook marketing works for businesses and how people respond to Facebook marketing.

Problem definition
As the Indian economy is booming and corporate is doing brisk business, businesses need to survive in the competition, which is now global. So, to survive one need to market and one basic thing to keep in mind is that Marketers are supposed to go to their target customers, not people would anymore come searching for companies. Social networking websites which engages people for longer time are now consider best platform to market their products. So, selecting Facebook marketing as the topic for this research will move forward as to how Facebook marketing works for businesses and how people respond to Facebook marketing.

Is it possible to use facebook in a healthy way?
When it comes to Facebook, our relationship with the social-media platform could most accurately be described as "complicated." It's one of those things that we simultaneously loathe and just can't live without. The ability to be "connected" with people at all hours of the day definitely helps us stay close to those we care about -but it can also turn us into Fatal Attraction-esque stalker-monsters.
While penning the summary down, the very aura of the research objectives stormed up in my mind. Here is a typical snapshot of the very flesh and bones of the project. The whole story sets in motion from the topic of the research project that is; "An Insight into Facebook Usage Habits and Marketing" The topic very well stands as a mirror to the objectives of the study. The first primary objective is to analyze the usage habits of people on Facebook. Whereas, the second objective of the research is to understand how marketers use Facebook as an advertising medium. A questionnaire was accordingly cooked up on the flame of concerned attributes.
Thus, convenient sampling and snowball sampling was used for magnifying of the habits of usage of Facebook and marketing on Facebook. Under the survey, questionnaires were filled up through personal links.
The literature reviews in the project were a result of mammoth hunt into the article forest afoot on the net. Many relevant articles linked to the theme were drilled down on the research papers.
Through survey understanding many important facts came out which were so much stranger at the start of the research. So, is it even possible to have a functional relationship with the 'book? As with most things in life, we think it's all about finding a healthy balance. Fortunately, the demonstrably sane folks over at HuffPost Healthy Living have put together a list of tips to help you steer clear of Glenn Close territory. Click through to learn how to break the cycle of crazy.

Free advertising
In years past, many pages on Facebook could do all right in terms of driving sales and traffic to websites, without using advertising. When Facebook went public, the whole game changed. Facebook had to prove that it is best marketing vessel and any business can board the vessel and sail in it without paying a penny. The company worked hard to create ad models that are easier to use than before, trying to get more advertisers onto the platform. Last year, Facebook's Director of Small Business Dan Levy told Inside Facebook that there were 16 million small businesses with a page on Facebook. Now that total is 30 million and growing. Every single business on Facebook wants to reach fans, but those people aren't spending enough time on Facebook to account for the increased friend connections and pages to like [1].

Share more frequently
Before, posting too much was considered annoying but today it has become compulsion to post regularly so that target customers can know that this company exist. Customer reach has become very vital for a company who has to survive in today's fast moving world. Companies were told to post a few times per week, but usually no more than once -maybe twice -per day. Because of this, the importance of the success of each individual post was very high. It's a big reason why we started obsessing over the reach metric. The truth is that the rules of posting less frequently no longer apply.

Retarget website visitors
The connections, one can make, translate into more traffic to the website which in many cases is the point of sale. Therefore in this competitive era, social media marketing is increasing day by day.
Facebook is word that has become a part of today's vocabulary. It is a social networking website where interaction with other people online is possible. Today it has over 100 million active subscribers and is continuing to grow. For advertisers or internet marketers, this kind of numbers is hard to pass up. With so many people in one place at one time, this website will definitely be a dream-come-true for internet marketers. For businesses, internet is the place where they can find more people to buy their products or services and thus, expand the number of customers they get. The best place for a business to market its products is undoubtedly Facebook in today's times. It will surely add to the potential of the business.
All the features that Facebook provides will enable the businesses go a great way to market their products or services. With Facebook, they can be sure that it will be able to provide them with more targeted traffic to their official business website. In fact, the members themselves can advertise their Facebook page for free which is ultimately the Facebook Marketing.

Create online offer
If one has a business on Facebook, one is selling something. It could be a product or a service, but in the end one sells something. If it's a retail business, Facebook offers are extremely helpful. One has to create an offer from one's page to attract customers to the store. However, Facebook recently got rid of the ability to create Offers for online businesses. Or so it seemed. One can actually still do this, though it's a hidden functionality.

Comparing link click data
Marketers' obsession on reach metric prevents them from focusing on what actually matters. A prime example is when sharing links where the goal is to drive website traffic. The most important thing is that one get link clicks. So, sure, that one could create a text update with an ugly URL in it. If one is going to share a link, than share a link. It's not a text update. It's not a photo, first of all is the matter of virality. If a photo with a link in the description is shared, it looks different when seen from the second or third degree. The link is far less prominent. But one can't ignore Graph Search. Facebook will eventually provide the ability to search for posts.

Tracking conversion of ads
Only sending links and filling up forms is not enough reason to be happy. One has to also concentrate on conversion rate. Otherwise it can be a colossal waste of time. When using conversion tracking, one can also combine these results with Facebook ad reports to help discover how to get the lowest cost per conversion. If one does not use conversion rate one can even use Google analytics to check whether ad led to conversion or not [2].

Facebook users in India
Usage of Facebook in India has shown an increasing trend. Numbers of users are around 100 million.
Facebook users in India have all kinds of users including from general public to politician Pranab Mukherjee and Narendra Modi. Numbers of users are less as compared to India's population but it is much when compared globally [3].

Primary objectives
• To study and analyze usage habits of Facebook users.
• To study the concept of Facebook marketing taking individual case study of various brands having Facebook presence.

Hypothesis 1
• Ho: Relationship between numbers of friends and frequency of logging onto Facebook is not independent.
• H1: Relationship between numbers of friends and frequency of logging onto Facebook is independent.

Sampling Sampling process
A sample design is a definite plan for obtaining a sample from a given population. It refers to the techniques or the procedure the researcher would adopt in selecting items for sample. Following three steps is followed to formulate the sampling plan.

Deciding the sampling unit
• All the users of Facebook in Noida.

Deciding the sample size
The sample size is 100 Facebook users of various age groups are surveyed through questionnaires to know their usage habits.

Sampling technique
It is a non-probabilistic in which following techniques are used.

For questionnaires
• Convenient sampling will be used to survey the users.
• Snowball sampling will be used to get contacts of the users of various age groups.
• Quota Sampling will be used to bifurcate data of the survey of 100 respondents into various groups according to age, gender, occupation, etc.

Sampling frame
Sampling frame includes all Facebook users of Noida.

Sampling elements
Sampling elements includes both male and female of age group of 13 to 50 years who uses Facebook.

Scope
The scope for this research extends to the Facebook users in the city of Noida.
The respondents are from age group of 13 to 50 years.