In order to be successful online, you need a variety of different tools. Your website, your email marketing list and your Twitter account are all important tools but if you've been dragging your feet about starting a Facebook presence, now is the time to start! Facebook has become more and more important - and will continue to do so in the year to come. Not convinced? Here are eight reasons why you should be marketing on Facebook now and into the future.

Facebook is popular.

Facebook users total 500 million as of mid-2010. For this reason alone, Facebook offers a great opportunity to reach out to a massive group of people. No matter which niche you're in, you can find people to market to on Facebook. Although the site is popular worldwide, there are 100 million U.S. users alone.

Facebook users are active.

It's one thing to have a lot of users, but it's another to have active users. Facebook boasts some of the highest usage statistics of the net. In fact, any given day 50% of Facebook users are on. Most users are on at least once per day.

Facebook users spend a lot of time on the site.

Not only are Facebook users logging in each day, but they are spending lots of time there. As a whole, Facebook users spend over 500 billion minutes per month - or 8.33 billion "free" hours. This means that your audience will have all of this time to be exposed to your advertising.

Friends are influential on Facebook

When someone joins your Facebook group or likes your new product, you're not just getting that one new fan. You're potentially getting a whole lot more as well - their friends. Because whatever a person likes shows up on their friends' walls you'll get extra exposure above and beyond your advertising.

Facebook is integrated into the rest of the web.

During the last year, Facebook has become even more integral to the way people use the Internet as a whole. Facebook Connect has allowed the Facebook experience to become integrated with nearly 80,000 sites. This means Facebook is a central hub for online content.

Facebook allows you to share multimedia easily.

Liked a video from another business? Want to share an interesting photo you think your fans will like? Facebook makes it easy. You can simply add the multimedia to your newsfeed and it will show up for your friends and fans to interact with.

Facebook offers instant access to your market.

When someone visits your website, you're not sure who they are - but Facebook gives you an edge. With just a few minutes of searching through Facebook profiles, you can get a good sense of who your followers are and what they are interested in. This can help you plan your future marketing.

Facebook offers targeted advertising.

Beyond starting a group and encouraging fans, you can also use Facebook's advertising platform to display ads to interested users. Unlike other paid advertising systems, Facebook allows you to target your advertising to people with specific hobbies and interests. This can make your advertising a lot more effective and drive a lot more traffic to your website.

For these eight reasons, you need to get on Facebook today!