Hello, Just wanted to share my experience on social marketing. For any novice who got a brand/website/etc. and want some recognition but don't know where to start, I've placed a few stuff in relevance order. Important points are: Getting a Facebook fan page What a Facebook fan page is NOT for Getting Facebook fans Getting a short Facebook url for your fan pages Getting a Facebook fan box Getting Twitter with Facebook to Twitter auto-update Fast traffic with Stumbleupon & Digg submitting ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Facebook Pages ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Start by creating a fan page here:http://www.facebook.com/advertising/ Fan pages are free and very practical to update fans about whatever happens with your company/website. Good stories will spread in the newsfeed of your fans, which will interact with your posts. This will in turn make your posts appear in their friends newsfeed for some extra visibility. Good posts and interactions is key. But remember, Facebook users are not there to buy your stuff. Don't advertise your products, give them news and updates about your company. Fan pages are also NOT intended for general topics/likes/preferences. Their made for renowned people/company/websites. Don't make a page about something people like to attract millions of fans to then spam some links. You'll just get deleted. If you need more fan, avoid spam at all cost! Very bad for your image and it could get you banned & deleted from Facebook. I'd recommend Facebook ads. Not free, but spam free. For a few cents per fan (0.01 - 0.05US$), you can get a some hundreds of fans each month at a low cost from english speaking countries (don't put only US/UK/Canada, you won't even get impressions, use a wide selection of english speaking countries as first/second language). Target people using Facebook in english. For fans not in english countries, 1-2 cents/fan can be attained. You can also target ads to friends of your fans. These ads will display under themselves these friends who are fans of your page. Quite a nice extra. Get a short Facebook url:http://www.facebook.com/username/ You can get when you have at least a few fans a short url for your page ( facebook.com/name ) instead of the long one with numbers. Get a fan box for your website:http://www.facebook.com/facebook-widgets/fanbox.php?page_id=YOURID ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Twitter account ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Twitter is a great way to get extra visitors and reach a wider audience. Get on Twitter and open an account specifically for your brand/website: http://twitter.com/ But now, you got 2 accounts to update your audience about one website/company. It's not convenient at all to repost stuff. Let me show you this interesting link:http://www.facebook.com/twitter/ You can link your Facebook fan page to your Twitter account, courtesy of Facebook and Twitter's API. Now you can only update your fans on your Facebook pages and your Twitter accounts runs in sync with them. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Stumbleupon ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Stumbleupon is your friend for fast visitors. Bookmark a link and there's high chances you'll get a few hundreds visitors. But still, you need great content. Great content can make your bookmarked link to keep going with the people who likes it. When you got new stuff that's complete and looking neat, don't be shy to give it a go on Stumbleupon. Add a Stumbleupon button to your pages: http://www.stumbleupon.com/buttons/ Easy, free and nice with other social bookmarks. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Digg ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For some extra trouble, you can add a Digg button on your website and try to digg some content. But I've always found it harder to get visitors on Digg. Digg button with counters:http://about.digg.com/button ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Other ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There's of course plenty of other bookmarking/social medium to get reknowned on, yours to try out. Altough they might not all be as efficient, you'll probably be able to reach a few more people. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ That's it DPers, hope that helps. Namjies
Thanks for a great post Namjies! I'm a big fan of the big three: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Especially if you are a business person you can benefit from the LinkedIn platform. I also like the fact that you can link all these platforms together so that when you post on Twitter, for instance gets automatically posted to Facebook and LinkedIn as well. Saves time and effort.
I'm new in social marketing. It would be grateful if someone could give some good examples of successful Facebook pages.
I suppose I could have added LinkedIn as it can be very valuable for business services/products offered. But It's not as good for brand recognition and general connections. Mostly business or B2B as you said. I've seen your Facebook advertising guide and a bit of your stuff from your blog. Great.
I agree about LinkedIn, mate. It's more like Facebook for business contacts, which is good in that respect. I still think their Company pages are a bit lame... BTW. thanks for checking out my Facebook stuff!