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Posts Tagged ‘facebook’

Increasingly fewer people are actually visiting web sites in a web browser. Theincreased reliance on mobile devices and social media has changed the way we “surf the web.”

In the 1990s, when companies were first dipping their toes into this ocean called the World Wide Web, they built brochure-like web sites that gave contact information and stale descriptions of their products and services. The Internet was little more than a digital yellow pages.

In the late ’90s there were enough web sites online that users started to rely on search engines to find information. The best way to get to the top of those search engines was to have relevant content. That drew visitors, and the more visitors the better.  The more visitors the more you could potentially reach through email newsletters or email contact forms, or possibly even message boards. A metric was born: traffic equals audience. And the more traffic you got, the more email subscribers you got, and the more you got to visit your site frequently the more you may sell your products or services. It was a numbers game.  A webmaster could predict with fairly certain accuracy how much return on investment he’d get based on how many page views, which translated to purchases, etc.

Now, folks aren’t going to traditional web sites as much. Many of the most visited and used web sites are social destinations built around communicating with friends and family in our extended networks of connections. We click and swipe and share information instantly. And let’s face it, web sites are hard to read on cell phones.

So how do business and organizations measure and predict their success on social media networks like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter? The answer hasn’t changed. It’s a numbers game.

Followers are to Twitter what unique visits is to a web site. If you grow your followers on Twitter (or friends/fans on Facebook), that should eventually (and quite often quickly) translate into a longer online reach.

When you attract followers through social media you’ve earned an audience that’s willing to ENGAGE your brand.  The importance of that relationship cannot be overstated.

From there, it’s not important WHO your followers are, it’s who THEY KNOW and how they can help you deliver or influence those extended followers to be loyal to your products and services.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about Facebook lately. I don’t know what it is, but Facebook seems to be hitting critical mass, as even my parents are on FB now. Here’s an article we ran on the Guru Blog at Boone Digital on how to set up a Facebook page for your business.

I’ve received two good leads and one client through Facebook, and since it’s free advertising and networking, that’s gravy. My Facebook page can be accessed from the link at the top of this web site.

Social Networking websites like Facebook are increasingly becoming the place to find more clients and business partners. These websites are not just for social networking, but for networking, period. In the first month of 2009 alone, more than 20 million new users opened a Facebook account. Tapping into that market is free and fairly simple. Here?s how to create a Facebook page for your business or organization.

This tutorial assumes you have already created a Facebook account. You need a personal account before you can create a Facebook page for your business.

1. Log into Facebook and scroll to the very bottom of your screen.
2. Click on the Advertising link in the footer links.
3. Click on the ?Pages? link (there?s a flag next to it at the top of the page in the links for the Advertising section)
4. On the Facebook Pages page, click the button ?Create a Page?
5. Select the type of business, enter the name, and proceed through the setup for your new page as prompted.
6. Upload your logo and make sure to add your phone numbers, website address, fax number, email address, etc.
7. To activate your page, you will need to ?Publish? it. There will be a link to prompt you to do this.
8. Now that you?ve created the page for your business, post it to your wall on your personal Facebook page so your friends will know about it. You can even email your friends (Facebook only allows you to message 20 at a time) to encourage them to become fans of your new page.
9. In the future, to manage your Facebook page for your business, a link named ?Ads and Pages? will appear on your Facebook page. To manage, you will click this link to access both areas.
10. That?s it!

So you?ve created a Facebook page for your business, now what? What can it do for you? How do you utilize it to create new business?

• When other Facebook users ?fan? your page, a mini version of your logo will show up on their profiles. You can?t ?friend? people with your page, but people can ?fan? your page.
• From within your Facebook page for your business, you can send ?Updates? to your fans to tell them when you have a new product, specials, events, or anything else. This is probably the best use of the Facebook pages for your business.
• Post ?Links? on your page that go to specific pages on your company website, such as your products or services page. Or post a link to an article you wrote on your website that will garner interest.
• Create and run Facebook ads for your business and send the click-throughs to your Facebook page and ultimately to your company website. There is a cost for this, but it?s fairly affordable compared to other forms of online advertising.

There are many social networking websites, but Facebook is currently the leader in users and buzz. Don?t miss a chance to market to the hundreds of millions of users that lurk on Facebook every day.