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Facebook right now is like the Wild West. There are people eagerly staking claims and moving from their traditional “homes”. Some people are even striking it rich. You might even see “gurus” who are selling snake oil promising that it will keep you safe. Don’t bet on that remedy as you go across the Oregon Trail yet as they haven’t even blazed the path themselves.
How are you supposed to dominate this great new territory? You have seen articles, blog posts, and been told at different conferences that it is the “place to be”. This land of 500+ million people where over a ¼ of a billion people are active daily is supposedly a land of opportunity. This massive network, which seems to be the Google killer, surely has business for you, right?
There is business to be had on Facebook, when you know the rules. A massive flood of sales awaits the business owner who tackles Facebook with the right methods. Dive into this social network without a plan of attack and you could end up like the Donner party.
With the right methods, powerful strategies, and efficient action items you can end up like Levi Straus. You will take away more gold than the best miner. Be warned, you can’t take 5 minutes of planning and expect to dominate. Don’t be concerned that it will take weeks either.
In this article I invite you to consider putting a strategy into action that will bring you new fans, leads, and business. Whether you have a physical store or you sell online, putting the following methods into action will give you the opportunity to tap into 100′s of millions of conversations.
How is your Business Different?
Before diving on to Facebook, write down how your business is different from your competition. What would compel someone to connect with what you are offering? Whether you call this a unique selling proposition or a marketing message, having an aspect that uniquely separates your business from the millions of other businesses is essential.
You may have to alter your traditional message that you use on your sales letters. Even the messages on your other marketing pieces won’t work directly when applied to Facebook. Facebook is about conversation. When people connect with your business they are raising their hand that they want to be in a conversation with your business.
More than offering simple sales, or new product releases, consider what makes people talk about your business. What will make someone want to take an extra few moments and suggest your business to their “friends”? When you can answer these questions effectively you will be able to tap into conversations. Tap into the right conversations and you will generate business.
How Can You Flood Your Facebook Presence with Traffic Like a Los Angeles Freeway During Rush Hour?
When many business owners jump onto Facebook they feel like they are limited to how many friends they have in their personal network. Some don’t even start because they feel trapped by having just a few friends!
Facebook allows you different methods of bringing traffic. Most people focus on one source of traffic. Counting on once source leads to frustration and disappointment. To achieve massive success, I invite you to consider having at least four methods of bringing new prospects directly to you. With each method of traffic you have an opportunity to reach a different type of customer.
Facebook Advertising
Facebook advertising lets you target prospects by geography, demographically, and even by what they are already fans of. It has limitless opportunities. The amount of people that you can bring directly to you is only limited by the amount of money you can invest on your credit card.
Facebook Ads are one of the most direct and immediate methods of bringing traffic on a daily basis. As people browse through Facebook you get the opportunity to grab their attention with a tiny ad! Put the right ads in place and watch your business grow.
Direct Fan Invites
There are a number of companies that offer the service of targeting specific groups of people. They take your desired target market and invite them to your fan page. With the right service and the right “fan” criteria you can bring a few thousand people to your business in just a couple of weeks. Be careful on the service you choose as you don’t want to get banned from Facebook.
Cross-Marketing
It is likely that you already have a powerful online presence. Leverage the power of your existing website or blog to get more people to join you on Facebook. With free tools, like Social Plugins, you can tap into the traffic that is already on your website.
Email Marketing
Email isn’t dead! Break through the maze of email and invite your existing customers to join you in the conversation that is occurring on Facebook. With a few targeted emails you can quickly jump to a few thousand raving fans that already know you and will keep the conversation going.
There are at least a dozen different methods of bringing traffic to you from within Facebook. The key is to put a minimum of four into action. Four sources of traffic will keep your business growing and eliminate your competition.
Transforming Traffic into Leads and Business
Traffic is great, but traffic that doesn’t convert into leads and sales is a waste of money. Some traffic can be quite expensive. Wasting that investment will hurt your bottom line quickly. In order to maximize your traffic, I invite you to consider two stages of conversion. Get these two elements of conversion correct and you will have powerful ways to grab the interest of your prospects.
Get People to Click “Like”
The first goal of your traffic is to get people to click “like” on your Facebook fan page. With less than 10 seconds to grab a prospects attention, your fan page needs to quickly pique interest. When you have their attention you can compel them to move their mouse and click that tiny little “like” button.
Grabbing their attention quickly requires rich graphics, possibly incorporating video, and ensuring that your marketing message is obvious. When your fan page is graphically rich, extends the brand of your existing business and compels the prospect to take action you will get people to quickly click “like”, giving you the opportunity to market to them in the news feed.
Building Your Email List
After you get people to click “like” I invite you to consider offering prospects an opportunity to optin to your email list. You can offer them your email newsletter, a special report, or create something entirely new. Just give them an opportunity to give you their name and email.
When you have their attention in their email and the news feed, you will be maximizing each traffic source.
By differentiating your business, bringing a flood of traffic, and converting that traffic into “fans” you will have a Facebook marketing strategy that would have made Levi Straus jealous.
You can like us here at Facebook.com/jackietulos. If you would like more help with some of these strategies contact me at 888-479-8540 or go to TargetedLocal.com for more info.
How would you like to learn step by step how to
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I am only offering a limited quantity of 1000 copies of this course.
Here are some of the things I will cover in this course:
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Learn how to brand your business using Facebook
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Build a HUGE list of followers
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Network and making connections |
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Leverage Facebook users as your new super affiliates |
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I think it’s plain to see that ”How To Make Money On Facebook” can impact your business and life almost immediately…
You’ll be thanking me for years to come for sharing this with you in a way that finally makes sense and helps you get real results…all on your own.
This 6 week intense Facebook webinar series will include:
Week 1: Introduction to Facebook, Social Media Mindset, and Facebook Rules
Week 2: Your Target Market, Keyword Research, Branding Yourself
Week 3: Setting Up A New Facebook Account, Personal Information, Privacy Settings, Adding Applications, Friend Lists, Newsfeed Settings, and Email Settings
Week 4: Business Pages On Facebook, How To Create A Facebook Page, Creating A Custom Landing Page For Your Facebook Page, Engaging Your Audience, Promoting Your Facebook Page
Week 5: How To Build Your Business On Facebook, Creating Your Event On Facebook, and Managing Your Event
Week 6: Putting it all together to turn your computer into a cash cranking ATM.
Pre-Webinar Special Price Only!
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www.HowToMakeMoneyOnFacebook.net
So come join us Dec. 14, 2009 at 8:00 PM eastern time zone, to start your journey on Facebook.
I look forward to sharing this valuable information on “How To Make Money On Facebook” with you and seeing you reach your dreams and goal thou social media marketing.
See ya,
Jackie
Come see my Fan Page at http://www.bit.ly/JackieTulosFanpage
Welcome guest writer CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
Here is an article that she published on July 22, 2009. I think that it will enlighten you on how social media and Twitter is not just for fun anymore. See how small business are driving customers to their stores.
Enjoy, Jackie
SAN FRANCISCO — Three weeks after Curtis Kimball opened his crème brûlée cart in San Francisco, he noticed a stranger among the friends in line for his desserts. How had the man discovered the cart? He had read about it on
Twitter.For Mr. Kimball, who conceded that he “hadn’t really understood the purpose of Twitter,” the beauty of digital word-of-mouth marketing was immediately clear. He signed up for
an account and has more than 5,400 followers who wait for him to post the current location of his itinerant cart and list the flavors of the day, like lavender and orange creamsicle.
“I would love to say that I just had a really good idea and strategy, but Twitter has been pretty essential to my success,” he said. He has quit his day job as a carpenter to keep up with the demand.
Much has been made of how big companies like Dell, Starbucks and Comcast use Twitter to promote their products and answer customers’ questions. But today, small businesses outnumber the big ones on the free microblogging service, and in many ways, Twitter is an even more useful tool for them.
For many mom-and-pop shops with no ad budget, Twitter has become their sole means of marketing. It is far easier to set up and update a Twitter account than to maintain a Web page. And because small-business owners tend to work at the cash register, not in a cubicle in the marketing department, Twitter’s intimacy suits them well.
“We think of these social media tools as being in the realm of the sophisticated, multiplatform marketers like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, but a lot of these supersmall businesses are gravitating toward them because they are accessible, free and very simple,” said Greg Sterling, an analyst who studies the Internet’s influence on shopping and local businesses.
Small businesses typically get more than half of their customers through word of mouth, he said, and Twitter is the digital manifestation of that. Twitter users broadcast messages of up to 140 characters in length, and the culture of the service encourages people to spread news to friends in their own network.
Umi, a sushi restaurant in San Francisco, sometimes gets five new customers a night who learned about it on Twitter, said Shamus Booth, a co-owner.
He twitters about the fresh fish of the night — “The O-Toro (bluefin tuna belly) tonight is some of the most rich and buttery tuna I’ve had,” he recently wrote — and offers free seaweed salads to people who mention Twitter.
Twitter is not just for businesses that want to lure customers with mouth-watering descriptions of food. For Cynthia Sutton-Stolle, the co-owner of Silver Barn Antiques in tiny Columbus, Tex., Twitter has been a way to find both suppliers and customers nationwide.
Since she joined Twitter in February, she has connected with people making lamps and candles that she subsequently ordered for her shop and has sold a few thousand dollars of merchandise to people outside Columbus, including to a woman in New Jersey shopping for graduation gifts.
“We don’t even have our Web site done, and we weren’t even trying to start an e-commerce business,” Ms. Sutton-Stolle said. “Twitter has been a real valuable tool because it’s made us national instead of a little-bitty store in a little-bitty town.”
Scott Seaman of Blowing Rock, N.C., also uses Twitter to expand his customer base beyond his town of about 1,500 residents. Mr. Seaman is a partner at Christopher’s Wine and Cheese shop and owns a bed and breakfast in town. He sets up searches on TweetDeck, a Web application that helps people manage their Twitter messages, to start conversations with people talking about his town or the mountain nearby. One person he met on Twitter booked a room at his inn, and a woman in Dallas ordered sake from his shop.
The extra traffic has come despite his rarely pitching his own businesses on Twitter. “To me, that’s a turn-off,” he said. Instead of marketing to customers, small-business owners should use the same persona they have offline, he advised. “Be the small shopkeeper down the street that everyone knows by name.”
Chris Mann, the owner of Woodhouse Day Spa in Cincinnati, twitters about discounts for massages and manicures every Tuesday. Twitter beats e-mail promotions because he can send tweets from his phone in a meeting and “every single business sends out an e-mail,” he said.
Even if a shop’s customers are not on Twitter, the service can be useful for entrepreneurs, said Becky McCray, who runs a liquor store and cattle ranch in Oklahoma and publishes a blog called Small Biz Survival.
In towns like hers, with only 5,000 people, small-business owners can feel isolated, she said. But on Twitter, she has learned business tax tips from an accountant, marketing tips from a consultant in Tennessee and start-up tips from the founder of several tech companies.
Anamitra Banerji, who manages commercial products at Twitter, said that when he joined the company from Yahoo in March, “I thought this was a place where large businesses were. What I’m finding more and more, to my surprise every single day, is business of all kinds.”
Twitter, which does not yet make money, is now concentrating on teaching businesses how they can join and use it, Mr. Banerji said, and the company plans to publish case studies. He is also developing products that Twitter can sell to businesses of all sizes this year, including features to verify businesses’ accounts and analyze traffic to their Twitter profiles.
According to Mr. Banerji, small-business owners like Twitter because they can talk directly to customers in a way that they were able to do only in person before. “We’re finding the emotional distance between businesses and their customers is shortening quite a bit,” he said.
More Articles in Business » A version of this article appeared in print on July 23, 2009, on page B6 of the New York edition.
Ready to jump into Twitter, but don’t know how to get started? Follow these 10 tips and you’ll fit right in.
Is it finally time to take the Twitter plunge? The free service that lets users micro-blog 140 characters at a time had accumulated around 1.9 million users as of December 2008, according to comScore. If you are just now jumping on the Twitter bandwagon, or are intimidated by your inexperience with Twitter etiquette and acronyms, allow us to share some Twittery tips that will make your experience easier and more enjoyable.
1. Shrink Your URLs
One of the most common uses of Twitter is sharing links. But you only have 140 characters to work with, so instead of sharing a long URL, use one of several URL-shortening services to shrink that link. Some of our favorites include tinyurl.com, is.gd, ow.ly, and bit.ly.
2. RT = Retweet
If you want to copy and paste someone else’s tweet, that’s totally accepted and appreciated, as long as you give the original tweeter credit for it. Just put “RT @name” in front of their tweet and post it yourself.
3. Direct Messaging
With Twitter’s direct-messaging (DM) function, you can send a private 140-character message to another user, kind of like abbreviated email. However, you can only direct message Twitter users that are following you.
4. Use the @ Sign
To create a reply or to give someone props on Twitter, simply place an @ sign in front of their Twitter name. If it is a reply, the @ sign must be the first character of the tweet. To see replies to your own tweets, click on @Replies from your profile page.
5. Search For Your Friends
Search.twitter.com works well for finding your friends, celebrities, or organizations, or for searching for specific topics you’re interested in.
6. Categorize Your Tweets for Added Visibility
If you’re tweeting about a popular subject (Obama, Lost, etc) putting a # in front of the subject makes it easy for others to find your tweet, and perhaps they will want to follow you. For example, when the plane crashed into the Hudson River in January, #flight1549 became a popular tag and search term.
7. Share Pictures
People love sharing their photos with the world, and some even break news with them, like Janis Krums, who used TwitPic to post one of the first up-close photos of Flight 1549 on his Twitter feed. Services like TwitPic let users easily upload their photos and post them directly to Twitter.
8. Tweet from Your Phone
Twitter allows you to update your status and receive updates via text message. Under Settings, go to the Devices tab and enter your phone number to start sending and receiving mobile tweets. If your incoming tweets/texts are overwhelming you, disable this option by going back to the same panel and following the instructions.
9. Pick a Good Desktop Client
Tweetdeck
With desktop clients such as TweetDeck, Twhirl, and TwitterFox, you can receive tweets in a much more manageable fashion, especially if you follow a lot of people, respond often, and use direct messages a lot. TweetDeck, for example, allows you to create specific groups, if you want to split your feed into individual columns.
10. Download a Mobile Client
If you have a BlackBerry, an iPhone, or another smartphone with Wi-Fi or 3G access, a mobile client might be a better option than using text messages. Mobile Twitter clients worth checking out include Twitterific, TwitterBerry, PocketTweets, and Twidroid.
So tweet me back to let me know how you do at: twitter.com/jackietulos
Jackie Tulos
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