Facebook

Facebook is the biggest social network in the world. Therefore you must be on it, in one way or another. Some people believe that it is not suitable for businesses or website but that is rubbish. Facebook is a great way to send floods of traffic to your site.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t use FB as much as I should being a bit of a Twitter fiend myself.

 

If you are still in doubt over using Facebook here are a few stats that will change your mind.

 

Facebook stats

Ø More than 500 million active users
_Ø 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day Ø Average user has 130 friends
Ø People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook

Ø More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.

 

_Ø More than one million developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries

 

My Top 4 Facebook Marketing Strategies

#1- Your Facebook Profile Your profile is the first thing that people see when they find you. Creating your profile is easy and you only have to do it once. Fill in as much information in all the provided categories and upload a great profile picture (vital).

#2- Groups There so many FB groups to join it is sometimes hard to know which are best. Pick the ones that are closely related to your website and have lots of active members. Contribute regularly and answer lots of questions.

Groups are a great way to build relationships with people and get more visitors and customers.

You can also create your own group. This a fantastic way to become an authority in your field. For example I could create a group for SEOers or Webmasters. This would build me up as an authority in this field and also create connections with people I want to visit my site.

#3- Fan Pages Create fan pages (basically profile pages) for your website, blog, products and services. Then when people like it on FB your message will be sent viral and bring you lots of presold traffic.
#4- Events Do you host conferences, webinars, Q & A sessions. Whatever your event creating a page for it will market it to those 500 million users.

These are my top 4 but the best way to make friends and get liked is to contribute to your niche on FB. That could mean answering questions or sharing links, only you will know what your niche are looking for.

Sign up for Facebook right now and upload your profile and a fan page for your website/blog/eBook/services.

Link to your profile and fan pages from your website and other social media sites.

Join the top groups in your industry and answer 5 people’s questions everyday.

Create a group or an event and become an authority in your field.

Facebook Marketing Interview with Tim Soulo

 

This a great Facebook marketing interview from Tim Soulo of http://fbml-templates.net/. Facebook Mark Up Language Templates offer FB templates to customize your Facebook fan pages and profiles to make them look like your website to give your fan page the professional look.

How can a website owner use Facebook to drive traffic to their site?

Facebook is all about sharing content, so first of all you need to be sure that your Facebook page and the content on your website are worth sharing. If they are, you can there are two ways to drive traffic:

Posting an update on the wall of your Facebook fan page: the update will appear in the news feed of your page fans and (if you’re lucky) they will click your link. This method implies having a really huge number of fans, for statistically only 12-20% of them will notice your update.

Using Facebook plugins around your website: once a visitor clicks on a “like” button under your post it gets reflected in his user profile on Facebook and his friends see that and may follow the link. This works well if your visitors have lots of friends to share your content with.

As you can see, there’s one single idea behind both methods – you need to have a very large fan-base and each of your fans should have lots of friends to share stuff with. That’s why it’s enormously hard to start your Facebook marketing campaign, when you almost have no fans and they bring no traffic.

I didn’t mention Facebook ads or running promotions on Facebook, for this works well only for large companies and big brands, who can easily invest large budgets here.

Do you find Facebook to be the best social media marketing tool? What advantages does FB have over Twitter and the rest?

If you look at the traffic, Facebook is definitely the best, and I believe the engagement on Facebook is like nowhere else. However, comparing Facebook to Twitter is really a tough question.

In general, both of the tools have “fans/followers”, and both tools have those “like/tweet” website buttons for easy interaction with the content. And it’s equally hard to gain fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter.

Twitter may even seem more effective in a short time perspective, but I think that the main advantage of Facebook is that it’s a way more complex social platform. On Twitter you can’t have a customized page with some cool videos or flash animations, can’t create a photo album, can’t upload videos and so on.

The other thing is that Twitter is mainly a person to person conversation, while the Wall of a Facebook fan page reminds me of a forum, where people can communicate with each other. Facebook literally allows you to build a community, which is technically impossible on Twitter. Thus Twitter is much weaker in terms on flexibility, and the number of marketing tricks you can invent on Twitter is way smaller than those on Facebook.

Do you think FB traffic converts better than other forms of traffic?

Of course, not. There’s nothing better than the search traffic, but still conversion is not the only purpose web traffic can have – there’s also brand awareness, attracting natural links, gaining trust.

However, if you ask me to compare Facebook traffic to the rest of the social traffic, then I would definitely say that it’s the best. I can’t remember a case of any conversions coming from StumbleUpon, Digg or Delicious.

What are your top tips for making powerful friends on Facebook?

The core of your Facebook marketing is definitely your Facebook fan page. While most of the Facebook fan pages are still showing Walls to their visitors, the majority of the big brands have already leveraged the custom tabs strategy. Just check Facebook pages of Coca-Cola, Starbucks or Britney Spears to see what I’m talking about.

Once you have a nice compelling Facebook page, I strongly recommend you the “Fan only content” trick. The idea behind it is to show a special landing page to “non-fans”, which has some incentive to click the “Like” button and become a fan. Those landing pages with an incentive convert almost 99% visitors into fans. The pages of Avon & Windows are already using this trick.
Don’t forget about making a cute URL for your Facebook page once you reach 25 fans.

Now, when the page is ready and you are sure that almost every visitor becomes a fan you need to promote your page the same way you were promoting your website: from direct e-mails and up to an URL on your business card.

Once you have a decent number of fans, you can leverage them in promoting your page even further. Just make your fans interact with the updates that you post on your wall, as once someone hits “like” or comments it– all of his friends will see that. Remember the four most attractive types of content: pictures, photos, videos & games.

Be valuable to your fans. Say you’re a lawyer – you can provide free consultations on your Facebook page. Just announce that each Friday evening you will be answering any questions your fans will ask, and see how your number of fans grows each Saturday morning.

What is the future for FB and social media?

This is more of a question to Mark Zuckerberg J, but my point is that social media services will do their best to integrate deeper and deeper into our life. The last announcement of Facebook was project Titan release, which is basically a completely revamped messaging system where you can send e-mails, sms and regular Facebook messages using one singe account.

Facebook has sucked some ideas from Myspace, Twitter, Foursquare, Youtube, Flickr and Gmail. Who’s next? I think that it would be Skype with its video calls.

How important is it to update your profile and how often should you do it?

It’s not about how often you post, but more of what you post. Each Facebook page update should bring some value to those seeing it. Don’t post stuff that people don’t care about, for one foolish update can cost you a couple fans.

Speaking of update frequency, you need to actually understand what do you want to achieve. If your aim is fanbase growth, you’ll have to post a couple updates every single day and pick them carefully so that people would like them and share them with their friends. In case your updates are purely promotional– you should not post them more than once a week, for people will quickly get irritatedand “unlike” your page to stop that.

What 5 things should a new FB marketer do?

1. Create a compelling landing page with an incentive for non-fans.
2. Go through all of the social widgets Facebook has to offer.
3. Regularly provide value to the fans of the Facebook page.
4. Run a couple promotions or give-aways on Facebook.
5. Link Facebook to an offline activity.

What kind of results have you seen from Facebook?

My favorite case is the Coca-Cola Village. Every year, Coca-Cola Israel brings 10,000 teenagers to an awesome summer holiday resort. This time they installed special devices throughout the Village and each guest received an ID bracelet which transmitted its unique signal. So the guests were able to easily “Like” each of the Coca Cola Village facilities.

Those bracelets could also be used to auto tag teenagers on any photo that was taken there. The result was more than 54,000 “Likes” for the Coca-Cola Village Facebook Page, making it the most “Liked” fan page in Israel, and millions of social media interactions. This is the awesome case of how you can use Facebook in real life marketing, and the results of it can really be unpredictable.

Do you recommend advertising on Facebook and what can you do to run an effective campaign?

I hate Facebook ads on a cellular level and, besides, you do not pay someone to like you or become your friend, right? Google ads are a lot better as they are based on what you were searching for instead of offering something that you “may be interested in”.

Facebook has so many tools to use in your marketing strategy, so I recommend using the ads only in case you’ve completely run out of ideas.

 

Thanks very much for Tim for taking time out of his busy schedule to do this great interview.

 

Sign up to Facebook right now and customize your Facebook fan page with one of the templates available at http://fbmltemplates.net/.

Social bookmarking and sharing

 

Social bookmarking is the web’s answer to word of mouth

Thousands of Web pages are "bookmarked" by Delicious and StumbleUpon users every day, for others to discover. Facebook and Twitter users regularly share pages they like with their networks of friends or followers.

Social media marketing can result in solid traffic increases, if done correctly, so let's get you started doing it the right way
Social bookmarking and sharing is having your posts/pages and articles linked to from the top social bookmarking sites.

You want your site to be linked to from these sites because they have tons of traffic and will send you lots of presold visitors.

Another advantage of social bookmarking is that you don’t have to do it yourself. It is all done by your users. When they like your content they share it with their followers on their social media profiles.

How to get your posts shared more

 

Ask your visitors to share your content at the bottom of your posts

Allow comments, people love linking to their own work and comments provide that opportunity

Have plenty but not too many social bookmarking buttons. Sure you need enough to make it easy for the user but too many will scare them away. This is my social bookmarking bar:

Write great content

Use images and videos people love to link to videos in particular

Be controversial, don’t use this tactic too often though

Social media interview with Tamar Weinberg of
http://www.techipedia.com/ a social media consultant

Thanks to Tamar Weinberg for doing this terrific interview. Tamar in my opinion is the best social media expert in the world.

Tamar was rated the #11^th most influential internet marketer of 2009 and included in the Top 21 Social Media Super Stars Under 30 In 2008.

She runs the highly successful website http://www.techipedia.com/ and is the author of New Community Rules a very popular book about social media.

1) Do you think social media is the best way to market your website to new visitors?

Social media isn't the only way to market but it definitely is a good way. It may not be the best but it's up there and is truly important. Business is simply a social process, and it's important to connect with your product or service users in the online space.

2) Do you find that visitors referred from social media sites are worth more than a normal visitor who comes from the search engines?

I think that they come to sites for two different reasons: either they're searching for it or they're being told about it through a friend. Each is valuable. One might be more valuable depending on where they're at in the buying process. The other has its benefits because they may not necessarily be looking to buy but at least they are aware that this company or product exists.

3) A lot of people have given up on Twitter or Facebook marketing lately because they feel it takes up too much time for a limited reward, would you agree or disagree with these people? And what can you do to maximize the value of your time on these networks?

I think that any social interaction takes time and that's just the nature of the beast. If done right, you can make tremendous relationships that can be highly rewarding. Engage, don't just broadcast, and come bearing gifts.

4) Which platforms do you find most effective at sending visitors and gaining followers? (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN etc)

I think that gaining followers is the wrong question. It's not about getting more numbers. It's about making new contacts who will ultimately buy from you.

Depending on your industry, the platforms may differ. Generally, Facebook is a good hitter because with 500 million members, you can't go wrong. Twitter is also a good place to make some more targeted connections. LinkedIn is great for professional leads. There are also niche communities that should definitely be untapped.

5) I see more and more people with social media buttons (social bookmarking) like Digg this on their web pages, which buttons are the most used by users to share your content?

I think the best ones to use are the Twitter and Facebook share buttons. With Digg, if you have a button and no Diggs, it looks bad for you. It's poor social proof. With Twitter and Facebook, it's almost by default that your socially-engaged customers will share that content if it's good.

6) I know you are a member of many social networks but do you feel for the average website owner it is important to be on many sites or to be really active on just a few sites?

I think it's important to fish where the fish are. I use a billion social networks but only a few actively. For business owners, be where your customers are. Spreading yourself too thin will just burn you out.

7) If you are just starting to use social media what is the best way to get new followers on these sites?

Connect with them slowly and engage with them. Talk to them and just share cool stories. You don't have to self-promote right away. Sure -- that will come, but nobody feels good about telemarketers and it's no different in an online medium.

8) On Twitter I see lots of people following people just to get followed back and then unfollowing people if they don't get followed back, what do you think of this practice?

I think it's not genuine. It's not a question of quantity. It's a question of high return on investment. I promise you that having 20,000 followers and no clicks on any of your links isn't going to benefit you in the slightest.

9) What are your 5 favorite social media tools or gadgets?

 

Rapportive is great - it's an integrated CRM in Gmail. HootSuite is wonderful for managing different social networks.

 

Google Reader is great for consuming RSS.

 

Skype/Digsby is excellent for team communication over IM.

 

Gmail is like my Microsoft Outlook: I bring all of my email accounts to the cloud.

 

10) If you could leave us with one action point on social media what would it be?

It's a social medium, so give of yourself before asking for favors. And be responsive. If people talk to you, you have their attention, so make the best of it.

11) Tell about your book The New Community Rules?

The New Community Rules is a primer to social media marketing and covers everything from why that's important to how to maximize each popular social network for the highest ROI. You can get it through www.newcommunityrules.com.

Thanks very much to Tamar Weinberg for doing this terrific interview. Tamar is a true social media expert and she can be found at the following places:

http://www.techipedia.com/
http://www.facebook.com/tamar.tech
http://www.flickr.com/people/pixelopera/
http://twitter.com/tamar/

If you want to know how to really propel your social media efforts buy Tamar’s book at www.newcommunityrules.com.

Or visit her website and follow her blog to add to your wealth of social media knowledge.
I really hope that you enjoyed this eBook and I hope it will help you grow your social media empire.

But social media isn’t enough you need links from other sources as well and the best place to find out how to build these links is my 260+ page eBook on link building.

With over 86 link building strategies and multiple industry expert interviews and a 60 day money back guarantee you simply can’t lose. Get it here, http://www.2buildbacklinks.com/link-building-mastery.html.