Most business owners know that they need to be on Facebook and have a fan page, as it is the fastest growing social media platform in the world.
The statistics are staggering - 750 million users, half log in every single day (many of these 5 or 6 times a day), and it already has more traffic than Google! If it was a country, it would be the 3rd largest in the world.
83% of all businesses use Facebook, and every 20 minutes there are approximately: • One million links shared • 1.
5 million status updates • 2.
7 million messages sent • Ten million comments And that's in just 20 minutes! So now that we've established why you need to be on Facebook, the number one question is: "How do I go about doing that?" Surprisingly, of the 83% of businesses using Facebook to advertise their product or service, many are going about it incorrectly.
As you will soon see, a Facebook fan page is one of the most important and basic steps to take in developing a powerful presence for your business on Facebook.
Initially, Facebook was established as a non-commercial site strictly for the purposes of social networking, i.
e; catching up with those long-forgotten high school friends or, for the younger generations, making sure to never lose touch with those high school friends, etc.
Facebook later added powerful demographic advertising opportunities but to this day, personal profiles are still considered by Facebook to be strictly non-commercial, and this is where many businesses are using Facebook incorrectly.
The use of personal profiles to promote one's business is rampant and, in many cases, Facebook is beginning to crack down on this practice and suspend the accounts of what they consider to be the worst offenders.
So, how are businesses supposed to effectively utilize Facebook without breaking the rules? Though initially conceived for celebrities, musical groups, etc.
, Facebook fan pages (often referred to as "business pages") are the accepted way for businesses to promote themselves and to develop a professional presence.
Anyone can create a fan page- this is built into the Facebook platform.
It gives you a basic wall page similar to a personal profile, with the one major difference being the inclusion of a "Like" button, allowing fan page owners to develop followings.
As with a personal profile, one can include an image in the top left and have comments posted that scroll off the top of the screen.
Major corporations and innovative marketers have taken it a step further and have developed much more elaborate, graphically-oriented fan pages, often requiring extensive development efforts involving web design, coding, etc.
For the tech-savvy individual willing to put in the efforts, the results can be rewarding, but for the average business owner this level of technical knowledge is not easily obtained, nor is there often the time.
With the introduction of new, easy-to-use tools for social marketing, the playing field has been leveled.
One of the first tools to utilize would be a powerful, yet extremely simple-to-use Facebook fan page tool.
It should be accessible right from the user's Facebook profile, allowing them to utilize all of the functionality without ever leaving Facebook.
With a very simple point-and-click operation, a very robust fan page can be created including rich graphics, embedded videos, links, etc.
- almost like having a mini web page for your business on Facebook! In addition, it should leverage the viral nature of Facebook and expose your page to all of your visitors' 100's of friends.
With a powerful viral mechanism built-in, when someone visits your fan page you will receive an immediate notification making you aware of your visitor so that you can follow-up with them, and it will also send your visitor a customized message via email as well as a post to their wall.
This wall post is very significant because it exposes your business to all of their friends, which can be hundreds if not thousands of people, that you can now reach that you otherwise would not.
If any of them have an interest or curiosity and they click over to your fan page, the process starts all over again...
viral marketing in full force! Let's take a look at a simple example assuming each person has 500 friends and only 1% of their friends will click on the wall post to check out your fan page...
We'll start with just one of your friends that you personally invited to visit the page who checks it out and opts in receiving your wall post.
Their 500 friends are now exposed to your business.
When just the 1%, (5 people) check out your page, that potentially exposes your business to another 2500 people.
Again, assuming just 1% of them check out your page, that's 25 more people visiting your page and now exposing your business to another 12,500 people.
As summarized in the table below, this viral activity can naturally explode your traffic very rapidly: 1 visitor receives wall post = 500 friends exposed = 5 new visitors 5 visitors receive wall post = 2500 friends exposed = 25 new visitors 25 visitors receive wall post = 12,500 friends exposed = 125 new visitors 125 visitors receive wall post = 62,500 friends exposed = 625 new visitors 625 visitors receive wall post = 312,500 friends exposed = 3125 new visitors 3125 visitors receive wall post = 1,562,500 friends exposed = 15,625 new visitors...
Not to be lost in this analysis is the powerful capture capability of a Facebook fan page viral mechanism, which allows you to build a following or list of people, that have opted in, allowing you to communicate your periodic marketing messages to them.
This is accomplished through a customized gateway page which they will see when they first arrive at the fan page.
This page is often used to provide special incentives of value to their target audience getting them to opt in by simply clicking the "Allow" button and then clicking Facebook's "Allow" prompt.
The beauty of this is that your visitors do not have to manually enter their names and email addresses, they simply provide this information to you with 2 simple and quick clicks, and since this information is provided automatically from Facebook's database, its accuracy and completeness is several magnitudes better than a traditional capture page (no "bogus" emails, etc).
Not only that, but the opt-in conversion rate has been shown to be 3-4 times greater than a traditional capture page.
Finally, the last major component of a Facebook fan page tool is the ability to build a custom sidebar.
This can be done using a simple but powerful template-based system, allowing an individual to quickly and easily build custom and elaborate sidebars incorporating full graphics, images, text messages, etc.
- in as little as 5-10 minutes! Then the side bar is simply downloaded and saved on your computer so that you can upload it into Facebook.
This allows you to brand your business and make a strong impression, versus a small thumbnail picture.
The power of this extends further as you browse through other Facebook sites under your fan page identity and "like" these pages, which drops your viral business card (your sidebar) for all to see and a viral trail leading right back to your page.
(This same type of tool can also be used to build your sidebar for your personal profile as well).
And for those of you looking to diversify your income and add another income stream alongside what you are currently doing..
..
There are often very powerful and lucrative business opportunities behind these types of tools.
It's a brilliant way to leverage Facebook's explosive growth by providing entrepreneurs with a way to recommend this tool to other business owners, expand distribution, and get compensated residually for that!
The statistics are staggering - 750 million users, half log in every single day (many of these 5 or 6 times a day), and it already has more traffic than Google! If it was a country, it would be the 3rd largest in the world.
83% of all businesses use Facebook, and every 20 minutes there are approximately: • One million links shared • 1.
5 million status updates • 2.
7 million messages sent • Ten million comments And that's in just 20 minutes! So now that we've established why you need to be on Facebook, the number one question is: "How do I go about doing that?" Surprisingly, of the 83% of businesses using Facebook to advertise their product or service, many are going about it incorrectly.
As you will soon see, a Facebook fan page is one of the most important and basic steps to take in developing a powerful presence for your business on Facebook.
Initially, Facebook was established as a non-commercial site strictly for the purposes of social networking, i.
e; catching up with those long-forgotten high school friends or, for the younger generations, making sure to never lose touch with those high school friends, etc.
Facebook later added powerful demographic advertising opportunities but to this day, personal profiles are still considered by Facebook to be strictly non-commercial, and this is where many businesses are using Facebook incorrectly.
The use of personal profiles to promote one's business is rampant and, in many cases, Facebook is beginning to crack down on this practice and suspend the accounts of what they consider to be the worst offenders.
So, how are businesses supposed to effectively utilize Facebook without breaking the rules? Though initially conceived for celebrities, musical groups, etc.
, Facebook fan pages (often referred to as "business pages") are the accepted way for businesses to promote themselves and to develop a professional presence.
Anyone can create a fan page- this is built into the Facebook platform.
It gives you a basic wall page similar to a personal profile, with the one major difference being the inclusion of a "Like" button, allowing fan page owners to develop followings.
As with a personal profile, one can include an image in the top left and have comments posted that scroll off the top of the screen.
Major corporations and innovative marketers have taken it a step further and have developed much more elaborate, graphically-oriented fan pages, often requiring extensive development efforts involving web design, coding, etc.
For the tech-savvy individual willing to put in the efforts, the results can be rewarding, but for the average business owner this level of technical knowledge is not easily obtained, nor is there often the time.
With the introduction of new, easy-to-use tools for social marketing, the playing field has been leveled.
One of the first tools to utilize would be a powerful, yet extremely simple-to-use Facebook fan page tool.
It should be accessible right from the user's Facebook profile, allowing them to utilize all of the functionality without ever leaving Facebook.
With a very simple point-and-click operation, a very robust fan page can be created including rich graphics, embedded videos, links, etc.
- almost like having a mini web page for your business on Facebook! In addition, it should leverage the viral nature of Facebook and expose your page to all of your visitors' 100's of friends.
With a powerful viral mechanism built-in, when someone visits your fan page you will receive an immediate notification making you aware of your visitor so that you can follow-up with them, and it will also send your visitor a customized message via email as well as a post to their wall.
This wall post is very significant because it exposes your business to all of their friends, which can be hundreds if not thousands of people, that you can now reach that you otherwise would not.
If any of them have an interest or curiosity and they click over to your fan page, the process starts all over again...
viral marketing in full force! Let's take a look at a simple example assuming each person has 500 friends and only 1% of their friends will click on the wall post to check out your fan page...
We'll start with just one of your friends that you personally invited to visit the page who checks it out and opts in receiving your wall post.
Their 500 friends are now exposed to your business.
When just the 1%, (5 people) check out your page, that potentially exposes your business to another 2500 people.
Again, assuming just 1% of them check out your page, that's 25 more people visiting your page and now exposing your business to another 12,500 people.
As summarized in the table below, this viral activity can naturally explode your traffic very rapidly: 1 visitor receives wall post = 500 friends exposed = 5 new visitors 5 visitors receive wall post = 2500 friends exposed = 25 new visitors 25 visitors receive wall post = 12,500 friends exposed = 125 new visitors 125 visitors receive wall post = 62,500 friends exposed = 625 new visitors 625 visitors receive wall post = 312,500 friends exposed = 3125 new visitors 3125 visitors receive wall post = 1,562,500 friends exposed = 15,625 new visitors...
Not to be lost in this analysis is the powerful capture capability of a Facebook fan page viral mechanism, which allows you to build a following or list of people, that have opted in, allowing you to communicate your periodic marketing messages to them.
This is accomplished through a customized gateway page which they will see when they first arrive at the fan page.
This page is often used to provide special incentives of value to their target audience getting them to opt in by simply clicking the "Allow" button and then clicking Facebook's "Allow" prompt.
The beauty of this is that your visitors do not have to manually enter their names and email addresses, they simply provide this information to you with 2 simple and quick clicks, and since this information is provided automatically from Facebook's database, its accuracy and completeness is several magnitudes better than a traditional capture page (no "bogus" emails, etc).
Not only that, but the opt-in conversion rate has been shown to be 3-4 times greater than a traditional capture page.
Finally, the last major component of a Facebook fan page tool is the ability to build a custom sidebar.
This can be done using a simple but powerful template-based system, allowing an individual to quickly and easily build custom and elaborate sidebars incorporating full graphics, images, text messages, etc.
- in as little as 5-10 minutes! Then the side bar is simply downloaded and saved on your computer so that you can upload it into Facebook.
This allows you to brand your business and make a strong impression, versus a small thumbnail picture.
The power of this extends further as you browse through other Facebook sites under your fan page identity and "like" these pages, which drops your viral business card (your sidebar) for all to see and a viral trail leading right back to your page.
(This same type of tool can also be used to build your sidebar for your personal profile as well).
And for those of you looking to diversify your income and add another income stream alongside what you are currently doing..
..
There are often very powerful and lucrative business opportunities behind these types of tools.
It's a brilliant way to leverage Facebook's explosive growth by providing entrepreneurs with a way to recommend this tool to other business owners, expand distribution, and get compensated residually for that!
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