The right way to expose your website to over 200 million people
Internet marketing mavens talk a lot about the power of social networking these days- and for good reason. Social networking websites like the ubiquitous Facebook have emerged as powerful promotional tools for businesses while providing members a platform for communication, entertainment and information sharing. Understanding the potential of Facebook for your business and exploiting it in the right way can drive huge amounts of traffic to your website. Like many other internet marketers, you can enjoy a surge in traffic with some simple Facebook activities.
Here is what you need to do to start using Facebook to your advantage:
- Create a profile and add your information to it
- Join networks
- Join relevant groups
- Start adding friends
- Update your feed with text messages, links, video clips and pictures
- Interact with your friends and other members
- Add widgets (Facebook applications)
Creating an interesting profile is really important. Whether you’re a freelancing individual or a business representative, your profile will be a reflection of you and what you’re about. That’s why it’s important to present yourself in the best possible way. Give clear and sufficiently detailed information about yourself and your business. Feel free to add links to your website and describe what you do. Always remember to talk about how you and your business can be of benefit to potential clients. Once your profile generates the right level of interest, your website will automatically see an increase in traffic.
Facebook works on connections. Members add friends to their profiles and the “friends” can see everything they post. After creating your profile you can join certain “networks”. You can then use those networks to search for people within them and send them friend requests. You can also start by “befriending” people you already know- colleagues, ex-classmates and friends. You can also join Facebook groups that are relevant to your line of business to find like-minded people and potential clients. Remember to keep your profile settings to “public” so that friends of friends and others can stumble across, and access, your profile.
To keep your friends updated and inform them of any new offers you are making professionally, there is a “feed” system you can use to leave messages and updates. You can tell them to find out more details on your website, hence, providing stimulus for a traffic increase.
Your feed appears on all your friends’ profiles when they log in to their accounts. So, hypothetically, if you have 500 friends, and you update your feed with a message including a link to your website, a description of it and/or an accompanying picture or video clip, your 500 friends will be able to see the message right from their profile when they log in. Clearly two things are of importance here: Having a lot of friends and regularly updating your feed.
A very effective way to make your profile interesting is the use of Facebook applications. You can attach any number of these fun little widgets to provide information about yourself in an appealing and attractive way. Apps like the ‘Marketplace’ and ‘Blog Friends’ widgets can be really useful to you. And if you use a combination of social networking sites, you can use some cross-posting apps to save time (for example, to publish the same message on your Facebook as well as Twitter).
Social networking websites like Facebook are emerging as essential marketing tools. Getting traffic to your website from your Facebook profile is becoming a dependable and successful technique. In today’s competitive scenario, it is imperative for your business to make use of this useful trend.
