Facebook, How To Use It And Why It Is Important To Your Brand.

Facebook is Free

Really there shouldn’t be any question as to whether you WILL use Facebook, only a question of how. Facebook is FREE, it has 750 million users and growing! Why wouldn’t you be there promoting your brand? Shama Kabani, who wrote the book “The Zen of Social Media Marketing” said:

“Facebook is like a coffee shop. Everyone is there for his or her own reasons, but it’s a great place to strike up a conversation!”

Using Facebook is extremely important and for the beginning blogger, very slow in building. One of the most important things is to become a hub of information if you are a niche blog or become the life of the party if your blog is something a little more personal. Most people on Facebook aren’t looking to “buy”, they’re looking to “interact” and be part of a community. When you are running your social media campaigns on Facebook, you MUST keep this in mind. If you use every post to promote your blog with no personal message, chances are you won’t get a large response from your followers (at least, not nearly as large as you could get). The tactic I usually take, running content for a blog that does mostly personal content over at theworld4realz.com, is we take the content that is going to be posted that day and turn our Facebook posts into a theme of sorts. We only promote our blog post once, but the conversation that day revolves around the “topic” of that blog post. While, this method is still centered on what we are doing, it is more inclusive to other people by bringing in different aspects and viewpoints to that post we are promoting that day. To put it simply… We’re starting a conversation.

My Facebook Fans Never Read my Posts!

I’m going to be honest here, its quite possible that a majority of your followers will never read your post. As I said in the previous section, people want to interact. Sometimes they are simply a fan because they enjoyed a quote you sent out one day. This is why joining the conversation on Facebook is so important. Those people who NEVER read your post will always have the opportunity to read your posts since it comes through on their feed. Most users on Facebook will probably only interact with you on 1 out of every 100 posts but all it takes is that one person, one time. That one person who “never” reads your blog might then turn around and promote that post for you on all their various social media platforms and suddenly, this one person who never reads your blog brought you 100 new visitors! Don’t get frustrated if you’re not pulling as many people as you would like from Facebook to your blog or website. Be patient, keep posting great content and things will happen.

Facebook Fan Page or Personal Facebook Page?

The difference between a Facebook Fan Page and a Personal Facebook Page is fairly simple. There is no limit to the amount of fans you can attain on a Fan Page. Whereas with a personal Facebook page, you can only have up to 500 friends. Fan pages also allow for a lot more in the way of website integration through like boxes and comment integration. If you are branding something on the internet, I think this is a no-brainer. Go with the Fan page. You can keep a personal page too, but I highly recommend keeping them seperate, don’t get too involved in promoting your product on your personal page, because then you will probably neglect promoting on your fan page. When you first start, it is highly tempting to promote on your personal page, because normally you will have more friends than fans. The danger of doing this is that you never make the switch to fully embrace the social interactions you need to create for your fan page.

Where do I get Facebook Fans?

The best way to get Facebook fans is through interacting with people from your Facebook fan page. Unfortunately, on a new website or blog with very little money backing it for promotion, this usually will result in a very slow trickle of new fans heading your way. Obviously, the more people you have, the more visibility your brand will receive. So what are some “faster” ways of getting fans on Facebook?

One of my Favorites and it’s free: Rafflecopter

This is a free service that allows you to run contests on your website. The contests are for whatever you would like… For example, right now my wife’s website that I maintain is running a giveaway for a  3D Twister Radio Control Vehicle — You can check out the post for this giveaway here. Basically, you give something away in return for people liking your Facebook page, following you on Twitter, signing up for your RSS feed, liking your post, etc…

Probably the best way to convert people to your Facebook page is through :

Twitter is a great platform for getting new fans, friends, Facebook followers etc… Because of the nature of this social network, it lends to very personal interactions if done right. You will literally make new friends every day you get on there if you really want to. This platform is so powerful and has so many different ways to utilize its power, I will never be able to do it justice in this short description, but suffice it to say, if you’re not on Twitter, you need to be.

A new and upcoming way to promote your blog, make friends, gain followers (who care) is Triberr:

Triberr is simply amazing. We discovered Triberr on Twitter from some very helpful bloggers who then invited my wife to join their “tribe”. Since that day, it has been glory and good times on the blog! Tribes consist of your fellow bloggers and the concept behind Triberr is mutual support. Most tribes regularly visit, read and promote each others blog posts, websites, whatever… Triberr is set up in such a way that it saves a blogger a lot of hassles in this department. Everything is there for you, you can tweet out promotions for 20 tribe mates in less than a minute. You can like 20 pages of friends in under a couple of minutes, you can even stumble their posts on Stumbleupon! I highly recommend checking this service out for a beginning blogger (or even those who have been around for a while). If you find the right tribes, it is well worth your while!

 

These are just the tip of the iceburg, but also a great place to get started! Let me know how these services have worked for you.

 

[This is a guest post from Andi-Roo’s “Hubz” as she likes to call me on here. I am her content manager and self proclaimed SEO/Social Media guru. I don’t know everything, but I’ve picked up quite a bit over the years. I was going to start my own separate blog, but with all of the work I put into this blog, I’m afraid it wouldn’t amount to a lot, so instead I’m going to post in a piece here from time to time when my wife needs a day off from writing. Hope you enjoy the post and I hope it lends some insights to you as well.]