All About FaceBook

**Engage** · August 7th, 2010

Hi Jo, again, welcome to the forum.

I must say, you are quite articulate, and well suited to the print medium, so I predict good things for you.

You've done a good job of explaining the theory of social marketing, which I do understand, even though I'm not up to speed on the day to day mechanics of using these sites.

Social Media is not just a hype, it's the new way of doing business, people don't want to be sold too anymore they want information, conversation, help, support and direction and facebook does just that.

Yes, I know exactly what Internet users want.

Everything.

For nothing.

I'm being silly, but there's some truth to it too, and that's kind of what concerns me about investing tons of time in sites like FB etc. Endless hours making breezy chit-chat with window shoppers is a plan that needs more than theory to back it up.

The great thing for your business now is the facebook fan page, which is truly interactive.

I do need to learn more about fan pages. I did read a long and specific article about FB's options more than once, and must say, to me, just one vote, the set up of options at FB is a hopeless muddle. But, truth be told, I'm pretty fussy about interface design.

It does take more work than google, that's for sure. To be successful you have to be present.

I'm agreeable to more work, if it leads to more results.

I'm only at the beginning of my facebook journey to be honest, I don't know much yet about how to truly deal with customers and advertise my fan page etc, but I am attending a webinar later by a guy called Chris Farrell.

I understand, and wish you great luck. Really I do, you have the knack.

All I'm really saying here is that everything I've read about FB so far is like your post, high on enthusiasm, short on real world facts.

I've seen so many things come and go in 15 years, I guess I've become a tad too skeptical. Ok, my problem, I'll work on it.

Thanks!

**Entreprenette** · August 9th, 2010

Hi Engage,

Thanks for your positive comments, always appreciated!

After my training this weekend, I can confirm that I think sites like Facebook are the future and the fan page is absolutely amazing.

Consider this, I'm a newcomer and the first thing I do is set up a blog. I post 100 posts and work my backside off to get it ranked in google, which depending on your niche could take months. (My blog is still alexa 435,000 and no rank so I've still got a lot to learn there!). I've also got a landing page out on the web and aswell as posting content on my blog, I'm submitting content to high ranking blogs on the web in order to get myself seen and direct people to my landing page, but I can't use them on my blog as they have to be unique content.

Now, let's say I set up a facebook fan page. I can set up my landing page within the fan page, link to all the articles I'm submitting and make my own posts (granted you can do all that on a blog too), but I can very quickly get in front of an audience of millions and build my fans, my followers and my lists to the thousands in no time at all, without worrying about keywords and ranking, simply because of the viral effect a facebook post has.

Anyway, the proof is in the pudding, so I'm off to set up a fan page and see how it works. I will report back and let you know my results!

Jo :-)

**Engage** · August 9th, 2010

Anyway, the proof is in the pudding, so I'm off to set up a fan page and see how it works. I will report back and let you know my results!

Excellent idea, thanks, yes, please do.

If possible, just a suggestion, you might begin by setting up systems to track both the time invested and the traffic received from FB.

We already know you are going to receive traffic from FB. What we don't know is what that traffic will cost you in terms of time.

There are still millions of clueless folks like myself who have yet to use FB, or make good use of it. If you can document some results, and marry the data to your articulate cheerful nature, you may earn a new career leading we pilgrims to the holy land.

**Blueridge** · August 9th, 2010

I think because FB is still so new, people with any kind of measurable results are keeping them close to their chest, unless you want to pay $1999.00 for a course with lots of "bonuses".

If it's any help, when I joined FB (thee years this winter) just for personal reasons, I found about 100 friends the first couple to three days and sent them all friend requests, mainly people I new since grade school. I grew up and lived in VA my first 25 years and moved to Maine nine years ago. Never really stayed in touch with any of them, but caught up quick with all of them.

I spent about 30 - 60 minutes (never more than an hour and that long was rare) on the weekdays (no weekends) talking with folks, sharing things I liked, and today, I have 367 friends, most of whom (70%?) have requested to be friends with me...mainly from my high school or just VA, but of all ages. And all people I really never, if at all, interacted with personally before.

Living in Maine, and with the nature of my J O B, the majority of my time in the summer is spent away from social activity on a pc, but come the cold again, my friend list will grow another hundred after I'm active there again for a while.

With that many people, for free, I think it would be insane to not spend a bit of time daily to try and measure something out.

I started http://www.facebook.com/WebLifeToday June 22, 2010, only kept up with it for two days and got 36 followers. I now have 48, 40 of which I am FB friends with. I don't even know where the rest came from yet, either Twitter, FB or SSWT.

The last full week of August, my hours at work are going down to 40 and I'll be moving to second shift, my boy will be in school and I can build my blog for Web Life Today. It will be interesting to see how it all grows, but I am especially excited to have FB to be able to broadcast my blog posts out on, with all those people to be able to click "Like" and share with their FB friends and their friends and their friends and their friends.

I've been in sales for 15 years and have never been as excited to reach people in such a way that FB provides. YouTube is cool, Podcasts are great, Press releases get noticed, Article Writing is solid, by they can all be "Liked" now and the people using FB see it.

Free Hosting and Easy as Can Be (Done For You!) Website Set Up for the Newbie!? If it's a quality service I can't see how it couldn't spread like wildfire on FB.

in addition, WebLifeToday.com has no content other than the title, and a live link is not posted anywhere and people have been visiting it...it's been around since June 22nd as well and last I saw in July it has had a couple dozen visitors, lol.

**Scootek** · August 9th, 2010

I am still trying to use FaceBook effectively. I hear that a FaceBook business page does not come on search results from normal FaceBook users. Is this true? If so, isn't it better having a personal page?

**Blueridge** · August 10th, 2010

Originally Posted by Scootek

I am still trying to use FaceBook effectively. I hear that a FaceBook business page does not come on search results from normal FaceBook users. Is this true? If so, isn't it better having a personal page?

Do you mean searching FB? Or searching a "regular" search directory like Yahoo! or Google? Either way, you have SO many people only using FB to search for things on the web, it is going to be worth while to incorporate FB into your marketing.

If you have a quality service/product/offer and can be honest, upfront and SHARE with your community, your followers will only keep getting growing and they will only be more and more responsive to what you have to offer.