With over 350 million accounts, Facebook offers you an ever increasing audience to market your business in. On average, a Facebook user spends 21 minutes per visit on Facebook; triple the time spent on Google search.

Knowing this it's imperitive that you start getting yourself in front of as many Facebook users as possible. The fastest way to do this is to start your own Facebook Fan Page. With over 8 million Facebook Fan pages starting daily there's no time to waste.

Facebook Fan pages are the way of the future and here's why:

1. A Blog On Heat

Blogs are great but their environment is a little closed. There's no great viral effect without effective marketing. The average Facebook user has 100+ friends. When you add content via your Facebook page it appears on your friends pages as well. Once they share your information, your message goes viral.

Simply add the Facebook Connect widget to your blog and you'll soon be giving your traffic a boost. Facebook also has a tool called Facebook Fanbox which you can also add to your blog.

So if people are logging into their Facebook account a couple of times a day they get to see your content. It's difficult to get people logging into your blog more than once a day.

2. Getting Recommended

You know that the best sale is one that's referred to you. Having a fan page can make this easier. Your recommendations go out to your friends and they can accept or ignore without the obligation felt via direct email. Fan pages offer a less obtrusive approach to getting recommended.

3. Don't Market, Engage

Don't fill your fan page with marketing hype. This is the quickest way to have people unsubcribe from you. Build a relationship first. Engage with them. On average it takes people 7 interactions before they buy from you. Keep your page social and watch your list grow.

4. The Money Is In The List

Most blogs have a capture form on their front page so the owner can build a list. Facebook Fan pages has the same feature. Now when people log into your page a few times a day, you also have the opportunity to add them to your personal email list.

Now the future of email marketing is always under the spotlight so it's important to build your list within Facebook at the same time. A bit of a protective plan just in case email marketing goes pear shaped ove the next 10 years or so. And remember our Gen X & Y friends are not big email marketing users and prefer the instant messaging features of Facebook and other social media forums.

5. Taking it Away

Facebook fan pages also give you the option of creating time scarcity through your updates. This is not possible or less effective on blogs because of the long time delays.

But with your fan page you can create urgency by including a time countdown in your updates for an upcoming launch or display limited seating for a webinar etc.

This keeps your friends engaging with you as well as building excitement via your page.

I think you'd have to agree, having a Facebook Fan page is a great tool in building your profile using cost effective (cheap!) viral marketing.

Grab your today and stay ahead of the pack. You'll be way ahead of the rest of the online community.

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About the Author - Jeff Crossriver has been marketing real estate for over 20 years. His properties rent and sell in record time using his breakthrough system for Real Estate Marketing.