Facebook Marketing Phase 5: Inviting Friends To Be a Part of Your Group
Posted on April 14, 2008
Filed Under Facebook Marketing | 1 Comment
Today, I want to wrap things up with the Facebook Marketing strategy that I have presented to you over the last few weeks. This is such a powerful method of internet marketing and I will be continuing to add things as I learn them. I will also post a case study on one of our clients who has seen amazing success over the last month with Facebook Marketing.
At this point in your Facebook Marketing stage you should just be adding friends and conversing with them via The Wall or through messages. Try to honestly be their friends and get to know them. If they have questions for you about your company or niche, answer them. Be weary about pushing your group or page right now. If your friends find either of them and join, then GREAT! The Less work that you have to do the better!
- Set a friend goal, I usually set it at 250. As soon as you hit that goal, you can invite all of them to join your group that you originally created.
- To invite your friends to join your group, go to your group’s home page. On the right hand side of the page, under the picture, it says “Invite People To Join”, click on that link.
- On the right hand side of the page, it says “Invite Friends On Facebook”. There are little boxes next to their names. Select each box, it only allows you to invite 100 people at a time so you will have to do it two to three times to invite everyone.
- After selecting your friends to invite, click the blue button that says “Send Invitations”.
The main goal with building this group is to create interaction among members and hope they will click the link that takes them to the page you previously created. If you set up the page right, it will hook its visitors and direct them away from Facebook and onto your website. Well, from here on out, it is all about maintaining. Keep inviting friends every day, or every few days. Keep talking to them and building relationships with them. Create interaction in your group and on your page. Upload some cool pictures or video that will create interest in your group and on your page. There are a lot of really fun things that you can do with Facebook, just remember to put the salesman away and just be yourself until the opportune moment.
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Facebook Marketing Phase 3 & 4: Building a Targeted Group and Adding Friends In Your Niche
Posted on April 11, 2008
Filed Under Facebook Marketing | Leave a Comment
Now that we have the whole getting banned thing figured out, it is time to teach you a little more about Facebook marketing, more specifically, how to build an effective group and how to add friends from your particular niche.
- Create a group that will gather individuals in your industry or niche together. On the left hand side of the page there is a search bar. Right under that there is a list of applications. Click on the one that says “Groups”. In the top right hand corner there is a grey button that says “+ Create a New Group”. Click on that button.
Please note, groups are not for promoting a company, product, or service. If you do this, you will not succeed!
- Pick a group name that has something to do with your niche, but not your website or company name. For example, if I were creating a group for a home security company called Grey Wall Security. I would name the group something like “I Protect My Family From Intruders By… “ By doing it this way you encourage people to join and interact with each other about how they protect their families from home intruders.
- Finish filling out the rest of the information, when it asks for your website, right click the mouse and select paste. This will insert the URL to the Facebook Page you created earlier. Upload a neat picture about your niche that catches people’s interest and would cause them to click on the group.
Please remember, and I stress this; never promote your company, service, or product through your group. All you want to do is create a group of targeted individuals who have interest in the particular niche you are targeting. You will also want to create discussion and interaction any way you can in your group, but using the discussion board, wall, uploading videos, etc.
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Now it is time to start adding friends. You must also use strict caution when adding friends. If you look like you are spamming people with invitations your profile will be deleted. You must also be careful about adding too many friends at one time. If you do, Facebook will lock that feature for 48 hours and you will not be able to add any more friends until that lock is removed.
- Go through and try to find any friends from High school, College, or any other friends you have made throughout your life. Add them as you find them.
You will now start finding people with the same interests that you are trying to target. These will be your potential customers, so do this right or risk losing them.
- In the search bar on the left hand side of the page, type the keyword that you are trying to target. If I were trying to promote a home security company, I would type in “home security”. At the top of the page in the grey bar, you will see your results. When I search for home security it shows 406 people, 4 pages, 500+ groups. Each of these areas is a great place to start. I like to start with groups then move to people.
- Pick a group that has a few hundred members or more and look at all of its members. You can find the members by scrolling down the page to where it says members. You will then click “see all”.
Next to each member it says “Add To Friends”. You will click that link. This should display a message saying “Add (name) as a friend? - In the middle of this message it says “Add a Personal Message”. Unless you want to get flagged as spam, you need to send this person a message explaining why you are adding them and why they should accept your friendship.
- My messages usually consist of…
Hello (name),
I noticed that we share the same interest in (topic). I would appreciate if you would add me as a friend so we might both build our personal networks and learn from each other.
Thanks,
(Name)
This is a simple, non intrusive message and 99% of the time they will either add you as a friend or just politely decline your invitation. Very rarely will they report you as spam if you do it this way.
- Continue to do this and add about 25 friends per day. I have found that this is a safe number so you don’t get that feature locked for 48 hours and you have a fewer number of people who could mark you as spam.
Follow these steps and watch the friends start rolling in!
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Facebook Marketing: How Not To Get Banned From Facebook
Posted on April 9, 2008
Filed Under Facebook Marketing | Leave a Comment
Well, over the past week, I’ve gotten some messages about people getting banned when trying to market on Facebook.
In doing some research this morning, Facebook obviously is trigger happy when it comes to banning people and deleting their profiles. They will ban you if you are “too active” on their network. This means, too many messages, friend invites, pokes, wall messages, group messaging, group postings, etc.
They initially flag you when they think you are being too active and then the big red flags come out when they dig deeper and see that you have been sending the same messages for friend invites (yes, I am guilty), same wall posts, same group messages, etc.
I could not find anything online about how much is too much. I read hundreds of posts this morning. Some people are getting banned after inviting 70 people to join their group. I read that someone got away adding about 2,000 friends before getting banned. I don’t think Facebook really has a standard that they are trying to have us abide by. They are just watching how active a Facebooker really is and what exactly it is they are saying to different people. If you are super active and are saying similar things to everyone, then you are gonna get wrung up!
This really puts a huge kink in what we are trying to accomplish with Facebook, but doesn’t shut us down completely unless we continue to be stupid!
Here is my revised Facebook / MySpace (yes, I am applying these strategies on MySpace as well) strategy…
1. Cut the number of friends that I am inviting from 45 per day to 25 per day.
2. Personalize each message for the individual. No more canned messages that are copied and pasted.
3. Invite friends all day long instead of inviting them all in the morning. Spread the 25 throughout four of five hours.
4. I will start to vary the groups that I am inviting people from and not just targeting one.
5. Try to take some of my conversations off Facebook (via email). This is for if you have a few really good friends you like to message.
6. It will probably be safe to message the whole group, once per week. I feel that anymore may attract even more attention from Facebook.
7. It will probably be safe to message all of our friends 2-3 times per month whether we are inviting them to join our group, send updates, etc.
8. Try to vary the way you talk to your friends. Using their Facebook Walls and messages equally.
If anyone else has other ideas we can keep this strategy rolling strong, please add to this list by commenting. We need all the help we can get!!!
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Google Bombing - Ouch!
Posted on April 2, 2008
Filed Under Article Marketing, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | Leave a Comment
Where in the crap have I been? Do I live in the freaking stone age? This morning I just learned about a concept that is very important to Search Engine Optimization. It is called Google Bombing! Up until recently, it was a best practice to have external links pointing at your website with the exact same anchor text. Meaning, if I were going to link to this blog, I would use the anchor text “Internet Marketing” whenever I linked to my site. I don’t know when Google made this change, but as of today, for both me and you, THIS IS BAD!!!
You are going to want to mix things up in both terms of anchor text and where you are getting your links from. If I were targeting the word “Internet Marketing”, I would possibly use the following words as my anchor text.
- Internet Marketing
- Powerful Internet Marketing
- Internet Marketing Techniques
- Easy Internet Marketing
- Make Money With Internet Marketing
- Boost Traffic With Internet Marketing
You get the picture. If you need help finding good variations of your keywords, you can use the Google Keyword Tool. It has become my best friend as of late.
So, you need to start varying the anchor text, but still have the keyword that you are targeting in the phrase. This will give your website more credibility and power in the Google ranking system. You must also start varying where you are getting links from. You should have a balanced mix of Article Marketing, directory submission, social network bookmarks, press releases, etc. Each of these will show Google that you are not trying to side step their rules. You need to be a team player and follow the rules and Google will reward you.
This is some crazy stuff, but it doesn’t surprise me in the least. Google is always changing things in their algorithm to penalize those SEO’s who are just spamming the crap out of everything. It just means that you and I have a lot of work to do on our sites and in getting new varied links coming back to our site. I will continue to post about Google Bombing as I learn more.
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Facebook Marketing Phase 2: Building Out Your Facebook Page
Posted on March 31, 2008
Filed Under Facebook Marketing | Leave a Comment
Today I will write about the next step in your Facebook Marketing journey. Now that you have had time to create your profile and really deck it out you will start to design the beginning of your Facebook promotional tools.
- You will start by creating a page. A page is where you can, and will promote your company heavily. To create a page, begin by scrolling to the very bottom of any page you are on and click on “Advertisers”.
- On the right hand side of the page it says “Facebook Pages”. Click the grey button toward the bottom of the page that says “+Create Facebook Page”.
- You have three category options. Select “brand or product” for the highest chance of success. I usually leave it on product, but if you can select a more specific category, please do so.
- Select the name of product. This will be the name of your page, so please make sure to spell it right and use title case when typing it in.
- The first orangish box is the box for your picture. I would recommend uploading your company logo for your picture. Click Upload a Picture in the bottom left corner. You will then browse for the picture or logo you wish to use. Click “browse” and select the file you want to upload. Make sure to check the box that says you certify that you have rights to distribute the picture and click upload picture.
- Just below the blue bar at the very top of the page, you will now click on the grey tab that says “Basic Info”. Fill out the date when the business was founded.
- Right next to that, click on the “Detailed Info” tab. This is where you will put your company website, blog, forum addresses. Give a very detailed overview of the company and state your mission. Describe the products that you will be selling or services you will be offering and click save changes.
- Just to the right of the Detailed Info tab it says “Back to editing (page name)”. Click on that link.
- You are now ready to publish your page. On the right hand side of the page, you will see a box that says “This Page has not been published. To make this Page public, publish this page”. Click where it says publish this page in red and you page is now live on the Facebook network.
- Right under your Page name it says “view page”, click there.
- On the right hand column, there is a list of actions starting with “Edit Page”. Go down that list to where it says “Become a Fan”. Click that link.
- In the navigation bar of your web browser you have a pretty long URL. It should look something like, http://www.facebook.com/pages/(page name)/938378376363. Highlight this URL with your mouse, right click and select copy. You will then need to paste this URL when it asks for your group website.
Make sure that you page looks professional and has plenty of information about your company and your product or service. This is the only thing that your friends and potential customers will see on Facebook before forming an opinion about your product or service. This is your chance to steal them away from Facebook and lead them to your site to close the sale!!
Take your time, do it right, and see success!
Best of luck to you!
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