Social media is a popular buzz word right now in internet marketing circles but for good reason.

It can be a very powerful platform for getting exposure for whatever product or service it is that you want to announce to the world. The reason for this is because of the viral nature of some social media. And Facebook is probably one of the most powerful.

Facebook has over 500 million subscribers at the current time and it's expected to grow to over a billion in a few short years. That's tremendous traffic potential!

And it gets even better because of the viral nature of Facebook. And this is no more evident than when someone posts a link on their wall.

According to Facebook, each subscriber has an average of 130 friends. So that means when someone posts on their wall and it gets displayed to their "News Feed", then all their friends see it as well. And if their friends click on it, then all their friends see it, and so on and so on.

130 friends times 130 friends times 130 friends...

Well, hopefully you can see the potential we're talking about here.

But this is just the beginning.

There are many Facebook Applications on the market today that can help you to market your products or services to an even larger audience by utilizing this viral structure that Facebook has in place. One of these that we will discuss today involves utilizing what are called "Fan Gates" which are built around the "Like" function.

You've probably noticed the "Like" button in a lot of various places, including websites, blog posts, articles...just about everywhere on the internet. When a visitor to a site clicks on the "Like" button it posts the link of the website they are visiting on their Facebook Wall and then in their "News Feed" so that all their friends see it. And, as we mentioned previously, if their friends then click on the link, the same thing happens to their friends, etc.

So internet marketers who are smart then focus on ways to get their visitors to click on the "Like" button.

So what exactly are "Fan Gates" and can you use them to build your business?

You are likely to have seen these previously.

They are fan pages that are blurred out so you can't quite read what they are saying and a box will be displayed that says something to the effect of "Click the Like button now to..." and then it goes on to describe what you will receive by clicking on the "Like" button. When you do, the blurred fan page is then revealed and you can receive whatever it is being promoted.

There are several products on the market today that will help you build Fan Gates, so, as always, perform your due diligence, and check out the features offered and the price. There are a wide variety of both.

By building "Fan Gates" using a powerful Facebook App, you can take your business to the next level and increase your sales significally.