Facebook, along with other social networks, is highly valuable in today’s atmosphere of spam filters and overloaded email inboxes. It offers an immediate, direct way to contact prospects without having to use email, which often gets ignored or deleted.
Spam filters are notorious for pulling out messages, even when someone is legitimately opted into your list. They may not know how or care enough to add you to the whitelist, and now you have an inactive subscriber. Facebook has no such problems.
Below are some specific strategies to help you leverage Facebook and get the traffic you need to succeed, both to your Fan Page and back to your website.
* Interesting, Keyword Rich Profile – Make sure your profile is polished and full of interesting, keyword rich text. Don’t just settle for a couple of short lines. You want it indexed in Google, searched for in Facebook, and distributed among people’s friends lists.
The easiest way to do this is to treat it as an article that happens to be just 100 words long. Rather than jotting out random words to describe your Page, compose something truly useful.
* Product and Site Info on Your Wall – Make sure to mention your site and products not only in your description, but on your wall and in your photos. The more often you mention it, the more saturated it will be in your Facebook profile and the more likely people will click back to your site.
If these descriptions are keyword rich, there is always a good chance for you to show up in search as well.
* Post Often and Offer Value – I recommend you post on Facebook at least once a day. Even if you only post a short wall post with links back to your blog or Twitter, add something daily with value that your readers can take away from it.
The more consistently you can provide value, the more consistently you’ll receive referred Fans and your page will grow.
* Interact with People – As with any social network, you need to interact with people to get more Fans. If someone sees your page and that you’re active on it, responding to comments and posting new information, they’re much more likely to sign up.
* Utilize Facebook Apps – Apps that aggregate content are the best. You can have your Twitter posts appear on Facebook, or your Faceboook posts appear on Twitter. You can have blog posts posted, or have your friends updated when a blog post is put up.
Look for Apps that will help reach more people and generate additional traffic automatically. Automation is always a wonderful tool.
* Use Social Ads – You can always pay for advertising on the site as well. Facebook offers action based marketing that will only charge you when someone joins your Fan Page. The cost can be higher, but the reward is equally high.
Make sure to create an original, targeted ad and use the demographic research tools in Facebook’s marketing platform to hit people you’re actually willing to pay for. Poor targeting can waste quite a bit of money on Facebook.
Facebook shouldn’t be ignored. It’s too powerful of a tool to be tossed aside and not used as often as possible. With that said, you’d better be prepared to generate as much traffic as you can as frequently as you can. There are 400 million users out there, but a lot of those are businesses.
You already have competition. Treat Facebook as another marketing platform and you’ll do far better than if you just treat it as a social diversion.
