Howdy SEOmoz fans! It is an overused practice to start from some "shocking" stats and dissertate on how Facebook is powerful and important for business. So, I will just consider you all know what is Facebook and how cool it is.
What you're about to read is a step-by-step SMM strategy for promoting your business on Facebook. I've gathered all the best practices and tips that I have used myself, together with some advice that I haven't tried but am confident will work well. Ok. That's enough for the intro, let's go!
Where To Start?
1. Brand Ambassador.
First of all, don't use your personal account to promote your business, unless you want your customers to see your childhood pictures and lulz from the recent party. You can create another (purely business oriented) instance of yourself or hire someone to become your brand ambassador. This will be the person who represents your business online and handles all communications, so the info on the profile should be brief and clear and all the pictures neat and professional. Remember that users will associate your business with this guy.
Power Tip: Create a separate e-mail account in Gmail and import all the e-mail addresses of your clients there. Now when you use this account to create a new Facebook profile - the system will automatically find all of your clients in your address book and suggest to add them as your friends on Facebook! What a great start!
2. Creating a Facebook page.
Promotion on Facebook is all about having a page for your business. To create one, go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/ and click the "+ Create a Page" button.
Power Tip: "Page Name" is one of the the strongest ranking factors on Facebook search. Don't miss the opportunity to add some keywords you wish to rank for as you are not allowed to change your page name later.
Configuring Your Facebook Page
1. Profile picture & avatar.
Profile picture is one of the few things in the design of your page that you can actually customize, so be sure to make the most of it. Here are two great articles that will help you: "5 Creative Ways to Hack Your Profile Photo"; "Making the Most of Your Facebook Profile Picture".
2. Page info.
The next important thing to do is fill your Facebook page with information about your business. Most of it is stored under the "Info" tab, which you cannot remove or hide. Lots of people visit it, so work hard to make your info as brief and engaging as you can. "Think SEO" and use your keywords, as each of the tabs is indexable by the search engines.
Power Tip: if you type a URL starting from https:// in the info box under your profile picture, Facebook will turn it into a clickable link. So you can easily refer your visitors to your website, blog or twitter account.
3. Applications.
- Static FBML (Facebook Markup Language) - allows you to create 10 additional tabs, which can contain HTML/CSS, Flash, FBML, iframes and FBJS;
- NetworkedBlogs - allows you to post your RSS and Atom feeds directly to your wall;
- Twitter Tab - posts your twitter updates to a separate tab;
- Extended Info - adds an additional box which supports html/fbml, images, video and music to the left sidebar of your page;
- Fan Appz & Promotions - helps you handle all kinds of contests, sweepstakes & give aways.
Tip: you'll probably end up with lots of tabs by adding various applications. However you can easily drag them around if you think that some of them are more important.
4. Vanity URL.
To be able to convert your ugly "326727833086?ref=sgm&ajaxpipe=1&__a=7" URL into something fancy-looking, like "https://facebook.com/mybusinesspage" you need to have at least 25 fans. Once you do - go to https://www.facebook.com/username/ and click the "Set a username for your Pages" link at the bottom.
5. Custom landing page.
You need an attractive landing page, which will convert your visitors into fans. Here is when the FBML application comes into play. Using HTML, CSS, FBJS and even flash you can create awesome landing pages that people will not only "like", but link to, and suggest to friends.
Tip: If you've got no development skills you can find some nice Facebook templates that have just started to appear around the template stores.
What To Expect?
Before we start reviewing various Facebook promotion techniques, I'd like to clear things up a little bit. Essentially when someone "Likes" your Facebook page, they will be notified every time you update its status, it's almost the same as following someone on Twitter. To have your message spread on Twitter you need to have your followers retweet your post so that their followers could see it and retweet in turn. On Facebook, the principle is a bit more sophisticated: when someone likes or comments your status update, this fact is being reflected in his profile. And when your status update gets a decent amount of "likes" and comments it is promoted to the Top News section of a user's News Feed, so that more people could see it.
Now let's refer to a famous "90:9:1 Social Behaviors Rule" to understand what it takes for your message to become visible.
Let's consider that "Heavy Contributors" are those ready to comment on your update, "Intermittent" ones will probably "like" it, and "Lurkers" will read it or just scroll through. Say your page has 100 fans. Knowing the fact that only 12%-20% of all your "Fans" will see your status update in their Live Feed, we can see that:
I hope this delivers a clear understanding that Facebook promotion takes an enormous amount of effort to become successful.
Promoting Your Facebook Page Internally.
1. Using your Brand Ambassador.
- Add to friends any people that may be your potential customers or somehow relate to your business. Recently, Facebook has added Skype integration, which can suggest you some Facebook friends from the list of your Skype contacts. Once you have a decent amount of friends use the "Suggest to friends" and "Share" buttons to promote your Facebook page to them;
- Use Facebook Search to discover relevant pages, groups, events, people and even messages. With Search you can easily track any mentions of your brand and provide feedback - people really love that;
- Once you join pages, groups and events, you are able to participate in the conversation, which is a great way of direct promotion. Moreover you can see the list of the group members and easily add them to friends;
- Communicate. Once someone comments on your new status, a photo, or anything else - answer back. Moreover you need to make people love your brand and become active contributors and then brand ambassadors. 1/4 of search results on each big brand is UGC (User Generated Content).
Power Tip: When composing a message put the @ symbol and start typing the name of your business page to mention it, just like you mention someone on Twitter. This can be used as a signature to your updates.
2. Keep the page fresh and interesting.
People join your page hoping to receive some interesting stuff from you, so do not disappoint them. Facebookers usually prefer pictures, videos and links to plain text updates. Here is a comprehensive list of things that you should keep in mind to avoid losing your fans: don't post too many updates; don't automate your content; don't be a duplicate of your website and don't be boring. Your page wall is your social proof and a signal for people to get involved.
3. Cheat a bit.
Ask fellow staff & your team members to post "likes" and comments on each of your status updates to boost its rankings. Only status updates with 5 or more "likes" and comments show up in the Top News section. This will also make your wall look "alive", which will inspire your fans to be more active on your page and participate in the conversation.
4. Fill in your page with media content.
- Upload pictures of your products/services, your office and your team at work to make your company easier to relate to;
- Encourage your fans to post pictures of how they use your product;
- Upload pictures from each event you host and tag your fans there;
- Post videos of your team members talks;
- Show your products/services in action;
- Use video to respond to your fans (Bill Clinton frequently does video responses on his page).
5. Treat your fans.
You need to offer your fans something special and reward them. For instance 1-800-FLOWER Facebook page shows the discount code only when you click the "Like" button.
You can make some special offers, which are available to your Facebook fans only and are not announced outside of Facebook. It's dead easy to reward your loyal fans by promoting them to the admins of your page, which will most likely turn them into enthusiastic brand ambassadors. Anyway, if there is some prominent fan - he should be publicly rewarded.
6. Send an update to Fans.
Direct messaging is a very powerful tool, but do not misuse it. Think twice before sending a message to all of your fans - it should be really valuable if you don't want everyone to ignore it or get irritated.
Tip: Facebook allows you to send targeted updates. Think of a way you could use that feature for your business.
7. Ask your fans for help.
Now and then you can post a status update asking your fans to help build the community by suggesting your page to their friends. Just refer them to "Suggest to Friends" and "Share" links on your page and measure their response.
8. Build partnerships with other pages.
Notice that each page on Facebook has an "Add to my Page's Favorites" button. When you do this, the logo of this page appears in a special "Favorite Pages" box on your own page. People see it and they might click the link to find out more about this page.
Your aim here is to build partnerships within your niche and be "favourited" as much as possible. Add to favorites pages that you like or that your business is related to and inform their owners about it with a wall post or a private message. Most likely you will be "favorited" back.
9. Use the applications.
There are a lot of crazy apps that you can use to promote yourself. You can even develop one of your own if your budget allows that. But how do the viral applications work in common?
You need something that people would willingly launch. This might be a game or a quiz or any other kind of dynamic content that most people love. Once a person has his score, bagde, vitual gift or any other result - the application publishes it to his wall so that all his friends could see it. The application should have a clear call to action, so that new people could easily get engaged. If the application has some kind of a High Score - people will play it again and again till they outrank their friends. You can (should) use the apps for sweepstakes and giveaways - people love them a lot.
10. Spy!
Yes! Always keep an eye on your competitors, especially on those outranking you. Check what they do and if you consider it to be a successful strategy - do the same. When they fail - try to avoid their mistakes. Anyway, you should always be informed on what others are doing to promote themselves.
11. Ads?
Indeed the most common way to promote your page. But before you use it, check out these stats:
Promoting Your Facebook Page Externally.
1. Facebook for webites.
The Facebook team has come a long way toward making your website more personalized and social. There is a list of great social plugins that can be easily embedded into your website and drive lots of new visitors: "Like Button" plugin, which is almost everywhere now, "Like Box", which let's you become a fan of the website without leaving the page, "Live Stream" which is often used while broadcasting some event. Try them on your website and see what happens next.
2. "Like" and "Share" buttons.
These two are so powerful that they require a separate paragraph. Once you own an online store - those buttons are of exceptional value. Whenever you find something that appeals to you in an online store - you no longer need to copy the URL and send it to your friends to ask for their opinion. Just press the "Like" button. They will see that and comment on it. This applies to photos, videos, games, blog posts, reviews - literally anything that can be found on the web.
3. Put a link everywhere.
Once you have a website, you put its address everywhere - e-mail signatures, forum signatures, twitter info, author bio section, LinkedIn profile, links section of your blog. Do exactly the same with your Facebook page. Highlight your Facebook presence at offline events, print it on your business card, use every opportunity you have.
Power Tip: Take some twitter auto follow script that follows a person whenever he has specific keywords in his tweet. Some percent of the people you've followed will follow you back. Write an engaging request to join your Facebook page and set it as an automatic direct message to people, who have just followed you. Being launched, this system will drive some new fans to your Facebook page on a regular basis.
4. Using video.
Almost every video sharing service allows you to annotate your videos with links. This is a great way to drive some new fans onto your Facebook page. You can make viral videos, funny videos, tutorials, explanations, presentations etc. and include a link to your Facebook page with a request to join. Works perfectly!
5. Other services.
There are a lot of websites where you can get some targeted audience. For instance, upon writing this guide I've gone though dozens of presentations at SlideShare and Scribd. There I've seen many referrals to join Facebook pages specialized on marketing, and I did join some of them truthfully as I enjoyed their presentations. Examine carefully all the websites where you post information or showcase your services and think of the way you could refer people to your Facebook page.
Power Tip: In case you have some kind of a digital product - create a torrent with some demos, name it with trending keywords and upload to all torrent trackers you can find. In the info or in the comments section add a link to your Facebook page. Then go to your analytics and watch your numbers grow.
Wheew... That's the end of my guide. Sure there's a lot more to add, but I tried to keep my tactics brief, to leave some space for your imagination. I'm sure each of you can invent lots of fantastic ways to use Facebook for SMM. I am open for any questions, shoot!
Tim - nice overview post, but I was really put off by one of your "power tips." Toward the end, under the Promoting Your FaceBook Page Externally, after #3, you mention using a Twitter autofollow script to not only autofollow people who mention a keyword, but then also auto DM them with a message to "like" you on Facebook.
That's the kind of spam I see everyday that honestly disgusts me. As Tamar recently wrote, and I strongly agree, social media can't be automated.
Sorry to be a downer - I really did enjoy the bulk of the post!
I would not call that spam actually. Let's see how it works:
1. You follow the guy who wrote some "keyword"
now there are 2 options:
2.1. He has an auto follow back script which will follow you back instantly.
2.2. He'll receive a notification that he got followed by you and will go check your twitter page to see if you are of any interest to him. If you are - he will follow you back manually.
3. The script will send the DM only after a person has followed you back, which will sound like:"Thanks for following. Please also check my super cool FaceBook page at https://..."
Judging from 2.1 and 2.2 the person either does not care about spam and who he follows (2.1) or he has followed you on purpose because he likes what you do (2.2).
So practically noone is SPAMming you. You send the DM to a person who have just followed you to thank him, and point him to your FB page, because since he has followed you on Twitter, he may want to join your FB page too.
Just turn off your auto follow back script or carefully review who you follow back, and you will not receive DMs from "unwanted" people :)
does this make sense? :)
Great post! With all of my web design & SEO experience, I thought setting up a Facebook Page would be easy. I've also been on Facebook since back in the day when it was restricted to only a handful of colleges.
Boy was I wrong. Managing a Facebook page is one of the most counter-intuitive, challenging, and unnecessarily difficult things to do. I cannot believe how poor the UI is for Facebook pages, and I'm no longer suprised that many businesses just opt to create profiles for their companies as if they were people (where you have to friend request) as opposed to Pages.
I just setup Networked Blogs (also more difficult than it ought to be) and a few other tips, thanks again!
"...I'm no longer suprised that many businesses just opt to create profiles for their companies as if they were people..."
Raises hand, guilty as charged. That's what we have done, mainly because Facebook marketing isn't worth any further effort.
very nice article, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. FB marketing has been a great tool for us generate real traffic for our clients. It's one of most effective marketing techniques if followed correctly.
Great intro to Facebook marketing! I submitted a YOUMOZ article about Open Graph about a week ago that is in the queue- if it is approved for publishing and I get a chance to edit it I will be sure to include a link to this great post.
My only gripe: Tread lightly with on-Facebook promotions. If you read the promotion policy, it basically says "No, you can't run a promotion on Facebook unless we approve it." I work with a rep at Facebook right now, and was told that they are rapidly improving their technology for recognizing unapproved contests, sweepstakes, and promotions. You can have your Facebook page deleted and your business banned from Facebook for having an unapproved promotion on Facebook.There are some ways around it that are still within their guidelines. Maybe I'll write a YOUMOZ post about it someday after the other one works it way through the system. But excellent guide- anyone not utilizing Facebook in their marketing efforts definitely needs to consider it!
"My only gripe: Tread lightly with on-Facebook promotions."
Agreed! At least in our industry, real estate, Facebook marketing has had little return on time invested mainly due to the real estate agents out there spamming the platform.
That is an awesome post, very detailed. I noticed that the site at flashmint that you link to only has 12 static templates and wanted to add to that that you can actually build a custom fan page using a simple customizeable templates tool over at https://www.FanPageEngine.com.
You just select the layout you want, customize the template by filling out a few form fields and it will generate the FBML code you need for your Fan Page FBML Application.
Thanks, I truly didn't know about that service. Bust still I think that the hierarchy of a cool page will be like this:
1. Custom Design
2. Template
3. Site Builder
Great Post indeed. I have not read a detailed post on Facebook Marketing anywhere before.
SEO or using Social media for marketing takes time and effort but the result is worth it.
Thanks for sharing such valuable info.
Thanks Tim,
Interesting post. I'm relatively new to Facebook marketing. I've tried to use FB pages and related social plugins on product sites as endorsements (this product has x fans).
I've also tried to use FB pages to reach out to new readers for blogs so I feel I can pick and choose some of your recommendations for my needs depending on my objectives.
Very good YOUmoz post and very useful guidelines for a more profitable use of FB.
Apart all the practical tips, I remark the not-so-obvious suggestion to not use your own profile to promote your business. I say not-so-obvious as I've seen many people acting that way.
About the tricks... sorry, but I too have to agree with jgianoglio about the twitter autofollow script, as I too believe is a quite spammy practice, and everything I don't like someone does to me (and I receive a lot of spam from twitter) I don't like to do to others. Apart that I want to consciously know who I'm following and to choose who to follow.
Finally, I want to remind that no page on FB can be considered as a substitute of the real place where to bring your fans: your own website. Many people is starting to think that a FB page is the same as saying Website, and that is not absolutely so, as wisely demonstrates this wonderful post by Lisa Barone
Anyway I give you a thumb up because - as a firm believer in the convergence of SEO, Social Media and CRO - I think that more post should be published here about SMM.
I did answer a concern about twitter above, please read and we can discuss that further :)
Speaking about the website - I did not say that you don't need it. My post is called "marketing on FaceBook", so I was solely speaking about FB. I do believe that website is very important for your business, but still "website + social media" is a lot better :)
Hi Tim,
I've read your reply above about the possible "spam" issue. Your answer about how it work your tecnique had convinced me. And I ask you to not judge my comment bad as something against you (I've thumbed your post up), simply that was more a visceral reaction to all the spam I see in SMM :).
Also my reminder about the importance of the website, is just that: a reminder. More written to the more newbies here than against your post. And I felt it was due to remind it because I see many small businesses rely almost all their efforts in SMM, forgetting the basic, which the their sites itself. Just that.
I hope I made myself understand better.
Finally, I liked a lot your post, and I will surely follow your tips and tricks, as - repeating myself again - I strongly believe that a good web marketing plan has to see an harmonical and olistic use of all the tactics that can lead you the biggest benefits to your business.
Ciao :)
thanks for clearing the things out for me :) and thanks for positive feedback :)
go on!
"I want to remind that no page on FB can be considered as a substitute of the real place where to bring your fans: your own website"
Obvious and best phrase in the comments...
Hi Tim,
Nice post, it's nice to see someone looking at nuts and bolts. However, just two points:
"Only status updates with 5 or more "likes" and comments show up in the Top News section."
Is this anecdotal evidence, or have you seen this published somewhere? I know that it certainly doesn't apply to my "Top News". I routinely see updates in there that have less interaction than that at the time it shows up for me. It more seems to be based on a combination of things, not least of which is the amount of interaction I have had with that page in the past.
Also, to bring up your "auto-DM response" to jgianoglio above where you say:
"Judging from 2.1 and 2.2 the person either does not care about spam and who he follows (2.1) or he has followed you on purpose because he likes what you do (2.2)."
I can see your argument here, I really can. But I strongly urge you to reconsider it. Your "2.2" fact is not that cut and dried.Just because someone decides you MAY be interesting enough to follow, and they POSSIBLY like what you do, does not mean that they have already made clear they are receptive to your self-promotion. There needs to be more interaction past a "yeah,i'll give you a chance and follow you... let's see how you do", before the self-promotion begins.
well yes.. for sure FaceBook will not publish an algorithm officially. But in most cases 5 interactions is enough according to stuff I've read on the topic and my personal observations too :)
as for this 2.2 point.. when you follow a person, you automatically give him a permission to send DMs to you... So what I do is just use that permission to refer a person to a FB page too..
following my guide, your FB page should be different from your website and your twitter account, so it should be enough valuable to the person who have followed you to give you the right to DM it, without that fact being considered as a SPAM :)
anyway, if you are not with me on this point - that's fine... cause there's no some absolute opinion actually :)
Heh. Yeah, it's all just a matter of opinion. But just so that we're clear, yeah, when you follow someone you do grant the "right" to DM; but to my mind, that doesn't mean you should abuse that DM power with self-promotional stuff.
Each to his own though :)
"Only status updates with 5 or more "likes" and comments show up in the Top News section."
Yeah, this doesn't apply to me either. Then again maybe its because I'm the admin on the fan page hence it shows me the articles from my fan page more on the top new section. I was under the impression that as long as its a fan page news, its gets more priority on the top news section than a personal account news (hence one of the benefits of using a fan page for business as opposed to personal account). But I could be wrong...
ok. maybe in this statement I wasn't that precise, sorry :)
Great guide for Facebook marketing. In today's market Facebook takes a great role for branding your product. We all know that facebook send a huge amount of traffic to the site, but we can't aware about the proper steps. Tim you took that big role.............
You have done a great job Tim by sharing the detailed info on how to work with Facebook and use its HUGE traffic. It was great moment to stay a while and readout whole content few times. I can even think that Facebook may be so powerful tool in internet marketing. Keep up :)
BTW... recently I've found an exiting post on facebook pages on smashingmag - https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/07/07/designing-a-facebook-fan-page-showcases-tutorials-resources/
absolute mustsee!
This is a great tips! I recently tried my hands on FBML to create nice and effective Facebook pages and was wondering how to promote them after, this is all the information I need in one place.
Thanks for the post.
Social Media, when used properly and in the right context, can be a very useful tool in boosting businesses. Using media sites though, puts a company's network security and privacy at risk, and causes problems for its IT department. Some of the threats include Malware, brand hijacking, lack of control over content and a number of other things. It is therefore important to have a social media policy in place. IT managers should explore issues surrounding social media in the workplace for them to make informed decisions about blocking social media sites, and to create a sound social media policy for their companies. Check out the following whitepapers from Palo Alto Networks: https://bit.ly/9twcQMTwitter https://bit.ly/bsrh9CFacebook https://bit.ly/94MFMBSharePoint Let me know what you think. [email protected]
This is the most comprehensive article on using FB for business I've ever seen. And I've seen quite a lot. There are loads of things in here that I didn't know.
Thanks, I was really collecting this knowledge for a long time :) And then the idea came to write the guide! I wish I've read it before I started my SMM of FaceBook :)
Good to see that it's been promoted. Loads of information in here.
I think everyone knows its against Facebook TOS to create multiple accounts, but they don't and can't police this.
Facebook should really sort this out anyway. It's ludicrous that you can't just keep your personal and business pages separate. Until they see sense, most people (quite rightly IMO) will just create multiple accounts.
Hello,
very nice article,
Just wondering how you can set up a personalized message to your Tweeter subscriber : "Write an engaging request to join your Facebook page and set it as an automatic direct message to people, who have just followed you"
I didn't find a way to do that....
Cheers,
Nicolas
there's some online service for it.. just google for automatic DM in twitter and you'll find the FAQ :)
WOW!!!
What a great post!
All in One Facebook SEO
Building a Facebook page will create brand awareness and also help with your ranking in the search engines.
"Direct messaging is a very powerful tool, but do not misuse it. Think twice before sending a message to all of your fans - it should be really valuable if you don't want everyone to ignore it or get irritated."
I think this spot on advice. One of the major challenges with all social media outlets is the signal noise. Fans will reward you for keeping quiet and when you send a message they'll know it's for real.
Thanks for the post.
Another tip: Improve your response to fan page activity by setting up a facebook alert system like Hyper Alerts
Thanks for the post. Lots of good stuff and most of what you suggest is very good IMO. A couple of comments..
1) I use my personal a/c to manage the Web Marketing for Small Business facebook page for two reasons:
- because I don't have time to manage a separate facebook identity. It depends though on how suitable your facebook identity is for friending business people. That's case by case.
- in my case my personal profile is suitable as a business identity, for various reasons.
2) On your Twitter following. Like some other commenters I don't like your recommendations here, and like them its partly because of my personal preference. Its debatable whether or not you can call it spammy, but the point for me is that automation is not social, and I think I need to write a post on this!
Thanks for the effort, I gave a thumbs up. Nice also to see so many people down-thumbing the spammy like twitter suggestions too. I was surprised people are with me on this.
Mark (in London)
Thank you for great tips, almost marketers write about positive info of social tools like Facebook and others. But, the negative info is also importance, I look forward to read from SEOMOZ then will share with friends.
Thank you for such an excellent contribution. Especially enjoyed the innovative use of Facebook pages, specifically the 20% discount after clicking "Like" for 1-800-Flowers. Looking forward to your next post!
Cheers,
Chris
Tim, what a fantastic post ! Probably the best guide to FB marketing I've seen anywhere. It inspires me to get my finger out and start building fan pages etc. Thanks !
Years ago - the same kind of write-up was written about Myspace... anybody remember Myspace and its intrinsic value for business?
Nice work!
This article serves as a good introduction to Facebook marketing. It is (however) a *little* bit out of date, it may be time for a "part 2"!
Some topics you may wish to cover in the update:
It'd also be great to see you discuss some third party listening / content management tools for Facebook pages, as there are quite a few out there - a good number of which provide real value for business owners.
- Corey
I was very excited about reading your post. However, I can't seem to get past the first paragraph where you recommend creating a seperate account to promote your business. While I totally agree that this should be the way to do things, Facebook specifically says that you cannot create two Facebook accounts. This is from their "help center":"Maintaining multiple accounts, regardless of the purpose, is a violation of Facebook’s Terms of Use. If you already have a personal account, then we cannot allow you to create business accounts for any reason. You can manage all the Pages and Socials Ads that you create on your personal account."Again, I agree that you do not want to mix your visit to grandma's with promoting your business. However, Facebook, for reasons only known to them, says you absolutely cannot create two accounts. It would seem that Facebook would want to encourage the creation of multiple accounts if for no other reason than to boost their number of user stats. Also, you would think that they would "get it", that companies want to promote their business on Facebook, companies are run by people, people want to post their vacation photos, but they do not want to pester their friends with business promotions.Did I miss something about creating multiple Facebook accounts? The quote I pasted in above was from a search today (July 22, 2010).
Love the article, great work!
This is great info. I have been trying to promote both my sites, www.RobMillerBroker.com and www.ShorSaleSources.com on facebook for awhile. I am new to this blogging and finding a ton of good info.
Thanks,
Rob Miller
Great post. Gone over it carefuly twice.
One part puzzles me. Direct messaging fans. I can't work out how to do that on my fan page.
Does anyone have an idiot proof explanation of how to direct message fans on your fanpage?
Thanks Tim,
Interesting post. I'm relatively new to Facebook marketing. I've tried to use FB pages and related social plugins on product sites as endorsements (this product has x fans).
I've also tried to use FB pages to reach out to new readers for blogs so I feel I can pick and choose some of your recommendations for my needs depending on my objectives.
Very helpful article! It would be great to get some newer material in here. FB has changed a lot...
C
This is a very useful article. Unfortunatelly several things have changed in the last 2 years!
For example all Facebook Businee Pages have been updated to the new Timeline format.
Here's a newer and pretty useful guide on Facebook Marketing, on how to start a marketing campaign and some of the latest best practices: Facebook Marketing Guide and Best Practices
Hope you wil find that useful!
Useful knowledge about Facebook Marketing. Waiting for updates!
Really Great Detailed info for facebook marketing! I really liked the info at point 4.Vanity URL; that changes ugly URL to your fancy business name! Keep up the good work. I also come across some tips about facebook marketing can be found at https://marketingextreme-facebook.com/. Have a great day!
The pinnacle of facebook marketing is to put the page link in all relevant places. All others are just to read and share.
I think a good mix of organic and paid marketing is important for all types of social media and Internet marketing campaigns. I also think that training is going to be more important as companies need to learn how to handle social media among their employees as well as have a good understanding of how to utilize and manage their own branded accounts better.
Take a look at facebookmarketingsoftware.com.. it helps you narrow your facebook search to grown your facebook fan presence.
Great stuff, I would love to see 2012 update for this.
Is it possible to combine 2 facebook pages into one? I named a facebook page and then needed to add to the name but instead made a fresh page now both have fans but they are both one company and I want to combine the fans into one.Any advice?
Great information about Facebook marketing and its really useful to seo guys
This is one of the most useful posts I've seen in a long time. Thank you so much!
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A photo contest is one cool way how to engage fans and motivate them to bring in their friends. One of our customers gained 22K fans(started at 11K, ended up with 33K) thanks to holding a photo contest with a nice prize to win. You can try number of photo contest services out there like the one mentioned in the article - or if you don't want to pay daily fees, higher price when you gain more fans etc. you can try our photo contest solution with all the features for one final price https://www.eazycontest.com
Very comprehensive article.
FBML is a must, as is adding a compatible storefront if you’re running an e-commerce website, as you can sell right through facebook, without your customers having to spend the effort in clicking to your site. Check out Easyjet’s page for a great example of this.
Thanks for the information – it’s a great source of anyone wanting to set up a page.
Awesome post. Just when I thought I knew everything that facebook had to offer...
I usually just skim through websites like these, but SEOMOZ has some badass content so I thought I'd join and let you know how much this article rocks.
Thus far, I use the "Like" plugin on my website, but I really wasn't aware of all the other social plugin available.
I do feel you should elaborate on creating ads on facebook (although there may be articles on this elsewhere on the site, this article should have definitely touched on that more). I've done this a few times they really haven't got me anywhere... I'll run a search and see if you guys have anything for me.
This i great article and i have enjoyed this article this can be fun and also important thing is that we can really improve traffic, that is great stuff so social media marketing is going to be a great stuff in near future in marketing sense.
This is just brilliant, I am going to work through it step by step. Can you explain the relationships between Groups, Pages and Profiles, is there some sort of diagram somewhere. I have trouble finding my own page without resorting to the search.
Try going to Account > Manage Pages
Or just go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/
There are a lot of posts about the difference between pages and groups.
like this mashable post - https://mashable.com/2009/05/27/facebook-page-vs-group/
You can add your pages and groups as favorite onto your profile page. No need to use the search then ;)
Facebook is one of the largest marketing platforms on the Internet today and is the perfect place to promote your website, service or product. Thanks for informative sharing..
A really useful and informative article that opens up the mindset to using social media in a more positive way to promote businesses, rather than the normal boring homepages you get. After the recent bad press Facebook has had (certainly in the UK) after the tragic events involving the gunman Raol Moat, it goes to show that although it has been abused in the past and probably will continue to be abused in the future, it`s about how you utilise the tool that makes the difference. I am not particulalry a huge fan of Facebook, believing that as a regular user I don`t want to and shouldn`t have to put up with constant advertising messages just because I happened to have mentioned something in a comment once, or joined a particular online game or group. However, I think it does have many benefits and I think business promotion is one of them. Great advice and innovation in thinking how to use the tools available to your advantage. Can`t wait for more!
Excellent! I love your explanation and i'll share it.Congrats!
Hi Tim,
nice article i was wondering how to go about setting up a Company page in facebook book and your article has given a lot of good pointers.
I've had a Fan page for our farm for about six months now, and I've found its best place is for funnelling traffic to our website. While I totally agree that Facebook is a huge traffic site with a lot of people to reach, I also agree that it can't substitute for your website.
I set up the page specifically as a referral to our site, and it's great for maintaining contact that's more fun and casual (as opposed to a professional website) with established clients. The limitations on a Facebook page do get in the way of really expanding on limited time and budget.
Great ideas overall for someone who can make the effort of Facebook marketing worth their time and work, but one has to be careful not to step on any Facebook toes, as was pointed out.
Good stuff! I've known about the profile picture thing for a while just from noticing that my vertical photos always look sharper than my horizontal ones (on my personal page), but its good info for everyone to have. Thanks for this! Now we just need a twitter article :P
Must agree: Took me a while to get all the way through but the article certainly shared some interesting ideas. I especially liked the skyscraper-like profile picture at the very beginning. We definitely should use Facebook more! Thanks
Informative article! could you go into more detail about #5. Treat your fans?
I'd love to know how to reward folks for 'liking' my page with a coupon.
Thanks!
Awesome post, with lots of power tips. Congrats!
I found this post about FB to be very helpful. I do have a question though. I created a business FB page off of my personal FB page. Are you recommending creating a completely separate business FB page using a different e-mail account? What is the difference between this and a FB page connected to your personal FB? What are the disadvantages?
It does not matter how the page is created.. the point here is not to mix your personal FB account with your business page
Tim I had the same thoughts to #1 I think it does matter and that you should just create a page from your personal account. I have created multiple business pages and manage them from my personal account. And nowhere on those business pages can you find anything associated with me, and it just makes it a one login to manage many. I found early on when I tried to create a separate account just for business pages you still may use a different email but your name is on the account and when others search for your name they found both my personal and business pages. And like you mentioned I do not want my clients seeing old college pictures or party pictures. I do not think you are wrong with #1 just the way you worded it. This a great post and I thank you for the tips I did not know about keep up the great content.
It's actually against the Facebook TOS to create a second personal account as suggested in the post. It's unlikely that FB will find it, but if they do, they can (and will) delete the account without warning.
I've always found it best to create a business page through my regular personal account. There's no evidence of who's managing the business page unless you decide to put it there, so it's not like you're exposing your personal life to your legions of subscribers.
Really great post Tim, great compact but actionable piece of content!
I still have some natural sceptisism towards SMM as a complete media strategy (it's social, it is created by the community, you don't create the world, the world creates you - kind of thought, but that might come due to my inexperience to this), but I have to say that this article does mention some appliances which are really value-adding for brands (ie. the landing pages).
Thanks again!
Well done on a great article. I adopt very similar approaches for business, but there are a few more points and gems in this that will be of great help!
Great job.
Wow!! This was a long read!! But worth every minute of it...
Got lots of tips I'm going to experiement on my page right now... Especially the part about asking for help from your community in things like liking a page, never thought to actually Ask in the first place!!
Thanks!! :-)
Good post for the new people to FB marketing I would also advise checking out Inside Facebook and All Facebook for more information on this style of stuff =)
I found this post really useful. Is there a "Twitter marketing - Ultimate Guide!! anywhere?
Excellent post bu You. I didn't knew how to take user name for FB fan pages but today u have clear all my doubts. After reading your post i immediately set user name for my biz page.
Also tips which u have shared is awesome keep updating Thx for ur help
This is a fantastic run through of facebook promotion. We have only recently started our facebook page and struggled to get enough fans to create the vanity URL. It is picking up slowly though, and having a custom landing page will hopefully help this out!
I think my spare time may be taken up by reading through this and related tutorials to help us out. Starting with the landing page and maybe a few custom tabs.
The live twitter feed seems a really great idea too, combining the two most powerful social media networks.
Thanks very much for the great insight.
I like the post and appreciate the good work done. Keep it up.
I would also humbly encourage the use of credits to those content elements or people's ideas you use to create such valuable stuff.
For example I accidentally discovered right in the opening of this article an image I have bought, paid for and personalized with my own hands, used freely and with no credit whatsoever.
Here it is in its original appearance:
https://www.masternewmedia.org/the-brand-ambassador-marketing-model-guide/
Crediting its use would have only made me happier and aware of your good work, stimulating me as well to promote it.
Now the sensation from my end is a bit different.
So, to increase the trust and credibility I humbky suggest you pay greater attention to this small details, as I am sure this overllok, was not certainly done on purpose to avoid finding a good image without stealing it from someone else work.
Keep up the great stuff! .. and keep a good eye on walking your own preaching... ;-)
Sorry mate, I've found it in Goolge Image Search and didn't actually bother about it's origins..
Sorry if that hurt you, the picture is truly very good :)
Tim, Thank You!... This was a very informative post using Facebook to your advantage in the Social media scheme of thing.. You shared on some points I never thought about when setting up a facebook page... Great post and thumbs up!
I had no idea you could use HTML on your facebook page for custom branding - great tip!
Great article to move us past the basics with our fan page. The Brand Ambassador really interests me. Could you expand on how that is set up?Are you suggesting to create a profile for the business page? Doesn't facebook frown on that?Thanks for the article and to all commentors who added links!
Thank you for the excellent Facebook idea. The customized homepage is a great addition for companies using Facebook. This will allow us to standout from the competition.
Great work! This will is a great resource for anyone with a Facebook page.
Great article to move us past the basics with our fan page. The Brand Ambassador really interests me. Could you expand on how that is set up?
Are you suggesting to create a profile for the business page? Doesn't facebook frown on that?
Thanks for the article and to all commentors who added links!
great article, I need some time to put a side for Facebook. Look like it will be time well spent.
Great YOUmoz
Best intro to Facebook I've seen, got me to finally begin sorting out the page for my business. I've made a start with a new profile pic, nice url and landing page, and I've seen a massive increase in click throughs to our website. Thank you! Feel free to check us out on Facebook.
I'm really glad my tips did help you! :)
Thanks for taking the time, great post!
It`s really gr8....post...!
thanks 2 everyone for kind comments! The number of them really makes me want to contribute some more posts to SEOmoz :)
Excellent article Tim. In our 'mom and pop' business, I do the website stuff, and the wife does social media. I do not think social media is worth the effort, but the wife does. I'll forward this one to her. Really great job in putting a ton of information in front of our eyes. :)
What a helpful article! - thanks for taking the time to write such a great tutorial on FB fan pages. --- Andy :-)
Great Great Great Post. I think I might have to dedicate my sunday to using that FBML app.
I used facebook marketing right after beta and I wasn't too pleased with my results. However, now that i can do some custom script, I think the possibilities might be endless.
keep up the good work. =]
Great post! Now it's time to go work on my fanpage! I've also used the FBML to add a Free optin gift and to promote my other social networks!
Thanks for the great tips!
Tim,
Great post! Our company has wanted to tap into social media for sometime. I think compared to other social networks, liked LinkedIn or Twitter, each network can have it's own strategies and be it's own beast.
Please post more!
Mike
Great post here Tim. It was great to get this yesterday morning as I read it on my way to a training session on how to Maximise Facebook Marketing and nearly everything was covered in the session
Really good. A lot of things in here I've not yet implemented yet! Thanks for the guide!
Hi Tim,
What a highly informative article, packed full of great ideas!
I have not yet promoted a site using Facebook pages and the project I am currently working on (online sale of chocolate treats & gifts) is well suited to this form of marketing. This article gives me the perfect starting point to build a Facebook marketing strategy so thank you for your contribution :-)
Many thanx,
Chris
Great article, the only thing I'll say is that the last time I checked, "vanity URLs" were only available to those with more than 100 or 1000 fans.
.
It is most definitely 25 fans.
If you have a profile account (ie an individual account) that you admin your page from, you need to pick a short URL for your profile BEFORE you can pick one for your page. Do not use the URL you want for your business/page for your "personal" profile! You cannot transfer your vanity URLs, and Facebook will not help.
Once your profile has a short URL, you can make one for your page.
You actually do not need to set a vanity URL for yourself before setting it for a page :)
You just need to notice a tiny link at the footer and go there at once, instead of setting an URL for your personal account so that to proceed to vanity URLs of pages you own. just try :)
Seen a pal make that mistake.... definitely choose the brand URL for the public page.
Got one with 30 'Likes' - no problem.
Good article. Good idea.
I'M NEWBIE AND I WOULD OF NEVER EVEN THOUGHT ABOUT FACE BOOK THAT WAY.ALL I WAS DOING IS POSTING MY SITE LIKE A MESSAGE.I GOT ALOT OUT THIS ARTICALE THANK YOU FOR ALL THE INFO (MAD COOL) EVERYDAY YOU LEARN SOME THING NEW I SWEAR IT'S AMAZING.HOW MUCH I'M LEARNING FROM THIS NEW AVENTURE IN MY LIFE.I'M WOW'ED EVERYDAY.
awesum work dude.....
thanks u soo much for such a useful knowledge.......
prends soin de toi #@!%$#^$%&