How to (and How NOT to) Market on Facebook
by Ernest O’Dell – Guerrilla Internet Marketing
MAY 10, 2010
Unless you’re a hermit and have been living on a deserted island in the middle of the South Pacific for the past 4 or 5 years, you know how popular and widely used Facebook is today. Just a few years ago, you had to relentlessly encourage friends and family to join this social networking website. With over 400 million users, it has gained substantial coverage in the news media, as well as Twitter and a few other unknowns. Nowadays, it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t have an account on Facebook.
Facebook overtook MySpace as the Number One social networking website on the planet last year and is also giving Google a run for its money when it comes to generating traffic. When you understand how important Facebook marketing has become for your website, you’ll jump on the bandwagon and learn how to use it properly. Done right, you can make a name for yourself and become an authority. Done wrong, and you’ll be totally ignored and banished to the nether regions of oblivion.
What It Is, and What It Is NOT
- It’s Not A Pitch Zone
The most important thing to remember about social media is that it’s not a place to blatantly advertise your product or service. While you might have hundred or thousands of connections on Facebook, it is annoying (and offensive) and borders on outright spam for you to constantly barrage your newsfeed with self-serving promotions. If you do this, you will not get any favors from other users, and you will largely be ignored and even receive bad reviews. Worse, you will get disconnected from others in your connections and blocked… FOREVER.
Social media is used for building relationships with other people who have feelings, likes and dislikes, just like you. Some of them can turn into potential clients in the market, and others will refer potential business to you–ONLY if you have something of value to offers.
There are a number of ways you can do this:
- you can post helpful information (links) that helps them solve a problem.
- you can personally chat with them to assist them.
- you can create content addressing the needs of users and post it.
The bottom line is that you want to be seen as genuine and helpful. If you’re not, then you’ll be seen as just another nuisance.
Word can get out about you in one of two ways: You’re either the “real deal” and before you know it, people will become interested in what you have to provide in terms of products and services. Or, you’ll become known as just another rank amateur and banished along with the rest of the spammers.
And, trust me: there’s more of them on Facebook than you care to know about. You’ll meet them soon enough.
The things you share on Faceboo, or any other social networking site, should NOT be the “latest and greatest” business opportunity or product that you’ve found. It should be useful information that can be helpful to other users. You can share helpful information in the form of teasers that will interest people enough to ask and wonder if there’s more, and have them subscribe to one of your autoresponder series. Or you can invite them to subscribe to a regular newsletter you publish. Offering free stuff is great for getting attention too.
How To (and How NOT to) Market On Facebook
…or any other social network for that matter.
The great thing about Facebook is that from the outset, it has encouraged all users to use the website as a means of sharing information and marketing whatever they please. You must be careful, however, as to how much information you share, as not everyone on Facebook is really who they say they are.
Nevertheless, Facebook has developed a lot of ways for users to do this. You are not obliged to use every single one of them, but a combination of carefully chosen venues can help you improve your Facebook marketing.
Facebook Fan Pages and the New Like Button
This is probably the Number One marketing tool on Facebook. I’ve written a few posts and articles on the subject, which you can find on this blog.
Facebook describes Fan Pages as “a public Profile that enables you to share your business and products with Facebook users.” It is specifically designed for promoting a business and everything it has to provide. People can then become a Fan of your page and when they do this, they let their friends know that they’ve become a Fan of your page via their News Feed. The potential for your Page to gain a lot of popularity in a small period of time is great.
Not only that, but each post you make to the status wall of your fan page gets indexed into the search engines automatically–which is good, if you’re trying to build back links and traffic to your site.
It all depends on the content you deliver to people. If they find your information useful to their pursuits, you’ll have a large following. Violate that first rule of trust in the relationship, and you’ll see your membership dwindle, and you’ll start getting bad reviews… not only in public, but in private.
You need to show them a reason to become a Fan of your Page as well as a reason for staying on. So, don’t blow it. Over promotion of a product or service on fan pages can be just as detrimental as doing it on the regular profile page.
Facebook Events and Groups
Create “special interest” groups fits nicely into some people’s social models. It can also be a great way to communicate with like-minded individuals. A Facebook group can also be used for company employees to communicate with one another and you can either make them public or private.
Events are another great way to get information to your peeps. They can be held at a certain date and time, and depending on your type of business, you can create one for a local or international audience. It can be any one of the following:
- seminar: It should be introductory and free but you could promote a paid one too.
- webinar: A seminar conducted online which anyone in the world can join.
- product/service launch: If you are about to launch a product or service, this is a way to gain attention.
- news releases, press releases, announcements or “technical papers” and Special Reports.
The best part about creating an event on Facebook is that it can go viral, and before you know it, people will be attending your event in droves.
Advertising on Facebook
A little over a year ago, Facebook introduced an advertising service where people can place segmented ads promoting their website or their Facebook Page and they pay per click (PPC) or impression (CPM). It works in a similar way to Google Adwords.
You can target your ads to certain geographical locations, demographics and social actions. For example, given the programmatic nature of Facebook, you can attach your ads to social actions, age and gender. If you were a wedding photographer and wanted to promote your services, your ads could be set up to appear only to females between the ages of 18 and 30 and whose relationship statuses indicate they are engaged.
Or if you were a real estate photographer working in a particular geographic region, you might segment your ads to only be shown to those in your driving radius. So, if you were in the Atlanta, Georgia area, you would want to segment your ad to that area.
Don’t Fight It: Embrace Facebook
If you want to market your website online, you’d be absolutely crazy not to use Facebook marketing as one of your key strategies. It’s cheaper than Google AdWords, and it’s better targeted. Just be careful not to get caught up in it too much because it can become a very time consuming — and expensive — activity.
Article Marketing on Facebook
Several categories and tags to consider when promoting your articles on Facebook:
- Advertising
- Blogs & Podcasts
- Business
- Ecommerce
- Linking Strategies
- Marketing
- RSS (Really Simple Syndication)
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
- SMO (Social Media Optimization)
- Search Engine Positioning
- Security
- Technology
- Communications, Telecommunications, and Unified Messaging
- Video Marketing
- Web 2.0
- Web Design
- Webmasters
- Website Promotion
- Website Traffic
- Article Writing
- Copy Writing
…and a plethora of many other subjects.
The key to remember about using Facebook is the distribution of information. While you want to guard your personal information as much as possible, you do, however, want people to know as much about your business as possible. Doing it in a way that is not offensive or intrusive, while building relationships with your connections is the way to do it.
Violate this primary rule, and you’re toast!
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