Complete Your Profile Strategically
Consider
your goals for your Facebook profile. If you want to use it as a tool
to establish yourself as an expert in your field and drive
traffic to
your blog, then you need to make sure your profile includes the
information to support your expertise. Be careful about the types of
photos, videos, and personal interests you include in your profile
though. To use Facebook as a tool to drive traffic to your
blog, you'll
need to make a lot of Facebook friends, and it's likely you won't want
them all to see those pictures of you drinking in college!
Use the search tool to
find people on Facebook. You can search by name, company, school, and
more. You don't need to know a person before you request to be their
friend on Facebook. The worst that can happen is that they decline or
ignore your request, and the best that can happen is that they become a
part of your Facebook network! You can also find people to friend by
looking through the friends of people you're already friends with and
looking through Facebook groups and pages to find people with similar
interests to your own. When you find people who match your criteria and
might be interested in your blog content, go ahead and send them a
friend request!
Tips For Effective Facebook People Search
You
can create a group for any topic or reason on Facebook and invite
people to join it. Search for groups related to your blog's topic, and
then join those groups and get active in the conversations going on in
those groups. If you can't find just the right Facebook group to
support your efforts to drive
traffic to your blog, create one! You can
send out group invitations to all of your
Facebook friends.
How to Create a Group on Facebook
Create a Facebook Page and Become a Fan of Other Facebook Pages
The
Facebook page feature is another great way to network with the Facebook
audience. You can become a fan of existing Facebook pages (just search
for ones related to your blog and then join the converation), and you
can create your own. Facebook pages can only be created by official
representatives for a company, brand or celebrity. Your blog could be
considered a brand, so go ahead and create a Facebook page for your
blog. Then be sure to feed your blog's content into your Facebook page
status updates and continually add interesting information to it to keep
the conversation going.
Link Your Other Social Accounts to Your Facebook Profile and Page
There
are many tools available to help you build a great Facebook profile
and/or page that can drive traffic directly and indirectly to your blog.
Take the time to link your blog's
RSS feed to your status updates, link your
Twitter feed,
SlideShare
content, and so on to your Facebook profile or page. This way, your
updates appear in your status stream for all of your friends to see. In
some cases, a new tab is added to your Facebook profile or page, so
content from some other services (such as SlideShare) is always easy to
find.
Promote Your Facebook Link
Include your Facebook link in your blog's sidebar,
in your email signature, and anywhere else you can think of to
encourage more people to find you and send you a Facebook friend
request.
Be Active
Don't just create
your Facebook profile, page or group and then disappear. In order for
your Facebook efforts to drive traffic to your blog, you need to
actively update your status, share great content, join conversations,
and engage with other people. By building relationships with your
Facebook friends, you can indirectly grow your blog's audience, too.
Acknowledge and Reciprocate
It's
one thing to make friends on Facebook but it's another thing entirely
to build relationships with them. Don't just spend all of your Facebook
time updating your own profile and sharing your own content. Instead,
spend the majority of your Facebook time commenting on other people's
statuses and conversations, sharing other people's great content,
responding to direct messages, and so on.
Place a Facebook Ad
Facebook ads are
fairly inexpensive, can be targeted, and can raise awareness of your
blog, your Facebook page, or anything else you want to advertise.
Be Human
Facebook has a very personal edge to it. Unlike
LinkedIn,
which leans more toward a business edge, Facebook users expect members
to be human, not promotional. With that in mind, mix your status updates
and content between promotional information and entertaining, personal
updates (just don't get too personal, remember how many people can see
your Facebook updates).
0 comments:
Post a Comment