Facebook - the New Frontier for Marketers
Facebook has become the next best thing since St. Joseph's Baby Aspirin when it comes to free advertising for Internet marketers. There are several ways that this popular Web 2.0 social networking site can work to get your ad seen by millions and create back links to your site.
News Feeds
You can use it to send information to your friends which will then be seen by their friends and so one, covering the globe. This feature has the potential to reach thousands in nano seconds.
The News Feed is that area that shows up right in front of your face when you log in. It lets you know within seconds what all of your friend's activities have been. It tells you what your friends are doing, what applications they are installing, what applications they are requesting of you, the groups they are joining, what they are doing with their friends, etc.
Whenever a Facebook member goes to his profile the list is there. Everyone sees what all their friend's are doing and how they are interacting with Facebook. If you change your profile information, the News Feed will publish that information to every one on your friend list.
When you join a group it is broadcast through your friends News Feed and when you leave a group the same occurs, everyone knows. Many times when your friends see that you have joined a group, they will jump on the band wagon and join too. This can take on the snowball effect spreading over countless other News Feed to friends and friends' friends. All of this will take place in a matter of days.
According to Professor B J Fogg, the creator of The Psychology of Facebook, "an application on the site can go from "literally zero to more than a million users in a week". This is a huge. After all, where else on earth can you get a million customers in a week? Again, using this platform wisely, it is a fantastic viral asset that you can use for your promotions.
The downside of this is that it also works in the opposite direction. If you leave a group and your friends see that you have left it, many times they will too.
If anyone has privacy issues, Facebook is not for you, as I have just explained, everything you do while logged in to Facebook is made public, and spreads rapidly.
Facebook Marketing Potentials for Your Business
Facebook has alloted us with several different ways to get our sites or products out there for free. The first being, of course, is the most obvious as it is what the site was first originated for....finding friends and networking with them. When you find something hot you share it with your friends.Joining groups that are relative to your marketing niche is the way to get targeted traffic. For example. If you are a yacht broker it would make sense to join a group of seafaring members. Be selective on the groups that you join and only join what you will be able to manage. In other words, don't go overboard as you will end spending more time on Facebook than you have the time for.
When starting out with these relevant groups if you can give them information of "value" without pushing your product to them at first, they will learn to trust you as an authority on the subject.
By joining into the conversation on their "wall" with relevant information and by asking questions or by both requesting and offering advice on things in your field of expertise, you can form relationships which is what social networking is all about.
You should get to know the people in your niche groups. These people will become very important in your business strategies later on as not only potential clients or customers, but as joint venture business partners.
You are allowed to post with the same venues that you use here at Squidoo, or on blogs, by adding photos, videos, graphics and links to post that you send to your group members.
You can also use the message boards to post to all of your friends, or within the groups to the group members. There is no limit to the amount of times you use the message boards, so please be courteous and don't spam or be an annoying pest.
You can join groups that are already there or you can create as many Groups as you want. You may also have several accounts.
For example, if you have a niche on yachting, but you also deal in vacation packages, you could have two different business accounts with each one focusing on it's specific area of expertise and forming groups in each area. The viral marketing potential using Groups is limitless.
Members of your group can invite their friends to join the group too. If your members like your group and are actively participating you can literally grow your audience to thousands in a very short period of time, just by friends inviting friends.
Many of the friend request are generated because someone has read your profile and is interested in the same topics that you are so they want to be your friend. This makes setting your profile correctly as one of if not the most important aspect of Facebook. Your profile needs to reflect your interest to draw like minded people.
There is an audience of around 7 million members, that are growing daily, on Facebook. Of course, not all of these people will be interested in your particular niche, but you can see the huge potential that is available.
Setting Up and Joining Facebook Groups to Promote Your Business
Facebook Ads
A business can set up their profile the same way an individual does by adding all the information and content they want, including photos, videos, music and any Facebook platform viral applications they choose.
Viral applications can be anything from casual games to environmental charities to e-commerce applications that can track purchases on partner websites.
According to Facebook's press release "Users can become a fan of a business and can share information about that business with their friends and act as a trusted referral. Facebook users can interact directly with the business through its Facebook Page by adding reviews, writing on that business' Wall, uploading photos and in any other ways that a business may want to enable. These actions could appear in users' Mini-Feed and News Feed, Facebook's popular products that allow users to share information more efficiently with their friends."
Facebook collects data from it's members (keeping user info anonymous, they claim) and provide this information to assist in targeting your advertising. For example, if an individual adds "sailing" as one of their interest they can pretty much count on receiving all sorts of ads on sailing and endorsements into friends' News Feeds.
This can be an excellent avenue for advertisers as the paid ads are relatively inexpensive, dependent on what type of ad is purchased, and are highly targeted. This makes for a fantastic ad campaign as only only people interested in your topic will receive the ads, theoretically.
On the receiving end it could become quite annoying. So far the ads are not very intrusive, but who knows what the future will hold as this becomes more and more popular.
Setting Up a Facebook Ad
How To Use Facebook Ads
Learn All the Tricks and Tips for Professional
That Facebook Now Has to Offer
In todays business market learning how to interact on Facebook is becoming one of the business worlds necessary skills.Just like driving a car, knowing how to check in at the airport, using a credit card or sending an email, social networking on Facebook is fast becoming one of the things that if not today, then tomorrow, we'll need to be able to do if we want our business to be able to compete in the fast pace world of growing technology.
Just as you learned all of your other business skills, you can learn how to strategically grow your business using Facebook as a business tool and you don't have to do it yourself. Once you have learned the strategies you can easily train your assistant to handle it for your you.
Before I found this course, I had Googled what felt like the entire internet looking for a good tutorial that would help me find the right applications that I needed on Facebook together with the knowledge required to utilize them to their fullest.
If I'd found this course I'm recommending to you now - Facebook for Professionals - then I'd have saved myself months of searching and an incredible amount of wasted time and to me time is money.
You can quickly and easily raise your visibility, increase your traffic, grow your client list, find joint venture partners, and make more money once you know the secrets to optimizing your Facebook Activity!
If you are a Facebook member you already know how time consuming it can be. There are dozens of small - yet extremely important and highly effective applications that can be utilized to increase your business presence. Once you know what these applications are and where to find them you can then delegate them to a trained assistant.
I had joined Facebook for the marketing aspect of it but wasn't getting the hang of how it was suppose to work. I was having a difficult time "seeing the forest for the trees" as I was so overwhelmed by all of the silly game applications, friends request and the hundreds of emails attached to them.
I was beginning to hate Facebook's intrusiveness and began blocking all applications and was just getting ready to wipe out my profile and close my account when I found this course - Facebook for Professionals
Facebook for Professionals course is so much more than a Guidebook! You'll receive exact step-by-step instructions on how to do EVERYTHING on Facebook, from setting up your profile the right way to only attracting the business associates you need to attract, to building a membership site.
It teaches the correct way to achieve joint ventures to further your business, it tells you what should be delegated to your assistants and what shouldn't be and so much more. This is an incredible course that teaches the skills every business owner of today needs to know. Without these skills you won't be able to compete in todays market and will get left behind.
Get Facebook for Professionals today.
Facebook users warned about ads
If you are from the UK....
"Credit companies are using the Facebook social networking site to target young people, a debt charity has warned.
Credit Action says adverts promising cheap loans for people with poor credit ratings are appearing on the site and many break advertising regulations.
In particular, they are promoting two new products - payday loans secured against a salary or logbook loans secured against a car, it says.
The charity has made a complaint to the Office of Fair Trading.
Credit Action says many of the adverts contravene UK credit advertising regulations, usually by failing to give details of interest rates.
It is now advising Facebook users to warn the website about adverts which break the rules.
A charity spokesman said: "Social networking sites, Facebook in particular, have become hugely popular in recent times, and not just with users." "
To read more of article: BBC News
Another Successful Way to Utilize Facebook Ads
Facebook Advertising | Nodro.com
Facebook Targets Ad Traffic
"It is such a popular method because they can target young people with whom the site is so popular"
Credit Action
Message in a Bottle Application
This application allows to to create a brief message on a scroll, with a where you can mention anything you want; such as your product, service, blog or website.Put the scroll message in the bottle and "throw" it into the ocean. It floats away with the tide, and as the tide ebbs it moves around the world for other members that are subscribed to this application can see. People can read it, write comments on it and they can click your link and visit your site or check out your product or service.
You can also able to check and track the messages and comments that you receive in your message area.
Facebook on Amazon
Facebook For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))
Amazon Price: $14.95 (as of 10/13/2008)
Facebook Marketing: Leverage Social Media to Grow Your Business
Amazon Price: $16.49 (as of 10/13/2008)
60 Minutes - The Face Behind Facebook (January 13, 2008)
Amazon Price: $17.95 (as of 10/13/2008)
Beware of the Nonsense Applications
Another application that you will need to put a stop to are the walls. "Super Wall" and "Fun Wall" give anyone the opportunity to post anything they want, such as graphics, video and yes even porn. You have very little control over what goes on. You can delete anything you want off of of your walls, but by the time you see it to delete it - it may have been there for days for the whole world to see.
Just remove them because all they are is "spam walls", unless of course you like that sort of think.
To me they are time robbers or time wasters and have no other purpose.
22 May 2008
applications can no longer "require members to invite, notify, or otherwise communicate with one or more friends in order to gain access to any feature, information, or portion of the application, unless (a) it would be logically impossible to deliver that content without the user's friend(s) also using the application, and (b) the fact of this requirement, and the reason(s) for it, are explicitly and prominently explained inside the application before the first element of the flow path users would reasonably expect to lead to that content".
Hopefully this will put an end to a lot of the aggravation and annoyances that comes with all of the nonsense applications.
Keep Your Personal Life Seperate from Your Business Life
I am a firm believer in privacy and don't feel that the whole known universe ought to be privy to my personal life. IMHO it is vital to keep my business life and my personal life separate.The way that you do this on Facebook is very simple to do and I found a blog posting that shows you step-by-step how simple it is to set up.
Adding Businees "Friends" to Facebook
New Amazon Recommendations for Facebook
If you loved I'm on Facebook--Now What???: How to Get Personal, Business, and Professional Value from Facebook, you might also enjoy:
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New Guestbook
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webdune
I am very interested in thie topic. Thanks. Good lens. 5* from me. Posted August 25, 2008 |
| TheoBaskind
Facebook Marketing with News Feed is an awesome Lens. Anybody marketing on the Net is missing out on a powerful tool if they aren't using Facebook for networking. Posted June 27, 2008 |
| MyKidsInheritance
Hi June! I've been a member of Facebook for a while, but have not taken enough time to really see all of its tools & uses. Thanks so much for all the info!! Posted May 19, 2008 |
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Great lens! I didn't know you could use Facebook that way. Very informative. 5 stars. Posted May 08, 2008 |
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