I think that having a Facebook page for your business is an absolute must. I think that a Facebook page is much more productive and offers real benefits when it comes about building a community and creating an interaction with people that are really interested in your services/products than other social networks.

Promote your Facebook Page – Spread the Word

Now, just because you create a Facebook page doesn’t mean that automatically people will discover you and become your fans. You have to spread the word about it on all the channels you already use for your business.

And one of those channels is your own website or blog. You can promote your Facebook page just like you promote your Twitter account or YouTube account: with a social icon that links to your Facebook page. It’s nothing wrong in doing it like this.

However you have a second option that offers much more information about your Facebook page and that is using a Facebook Fan Box. If you watch the video from the beginning of the article you’ll learn all that you need but I also decided to write some lines about it.

Here are the simple steps on how to do it

1. Log in to your Facebook page
2. Click the Edit link
3. In the right side of your screen you’ll find Promote With a Fan Box link
4. Click the link and setup your Fan Box (in a simple visual way)
5. Copy the code and use it on your blog
6. If you have a Wordpress blog you can use the script in two ways:
   1. Place it in a Text Widget
   2. Place it directly in your theme sidebar code. The down side of this second method is that when you change the theme you’ll also have to insert the code into the new theme
      NOTE: the script has a parameter called width. The minimum should be about 300px so that the Fan Box will look ok. You might need to adjust it to fit your sidebar. My advice is not to place it in a narrow style sidebar

Did you find it useful?

I just want to know from you if you find this information useful and also if you have other related questions. Share your ideas and thoughts in comments bellow.

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Everything that is under the form of a link should serve a purpose. You don’t just place a link for the sake of it. You use it for SEO purposes or to improve user experience or to improve the indexing of your pages. Blog tags, together with blog categories are mainly used to group the content – to make it easier to access by users.

Things to consider when you think about blog tags:

-          If you plan the list of tags before you start writing content the result will be: better organized content. If you don’t plan a list of tags you’ll end up with different tags that basically mean the same thing

-          Good planning will lead to better understanding of your content by users

-          See if you can incorporate keywords in your tag list

-          Think about link architecture: the tag list can help your indexing process

-          The tag list should be an extension to your category list: particularities, common points for different categories, additional information, etc

-          Build it with responsibility: think about what the user will get by clicking a tag. What is the value? Why to click it?

-          When using a widget to display your tag cloud you have two options: different text sizes, depending on how much a tag is used, or equal text sizes. Think about what you need. If you want people to know that your content is more about a certain topic then go with different text size.

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If you go into a bar and try to sell SEO services how do you think people will react? If you go in a park and stop people that jog to present your product how do you think they’ll react? If you see a group of people sharing stories about their latest vacation and you interrupt them to promote your service/product how do you think they’ll react?

These kinds of actions based on interruption are the worst things you could do on any social network. You may think that since so many people use social networks for business it’s natural to expect a direct sell interruption. Wrong! Indeed many people use social networks for business but the word social makes all the difference.

The idea is to interact, build relations, let people know what you do by using your bio. When they go out to scout for new clients people are interacting first and present a business card later. When a person enters a company office or visits a business blog, there is the place where they expect to see direct sale.

You don’t have to tell people what you do. They can read your bio, visit your blog, see what you tweet or post on Facebook or what kind of videos you create. The only thing you have to do is think about how to establish a connection. How to gain their trust? How to build authority around you? How to brand yourself?

More and more people are using Twitter only as a broadcasting tool. Many of my followers are spammers, bots or people that use automated tools to build followers. The problem is that you may think you have an audience when in fact you’re talking only to a handful of people.

Now, with this feature of creating lists I think many of the problems will be solved. People will create lists with users that they trust, with people that tweet in a constant way, with people that add some kind of value. So, you’ll benefit from other people’s knowledge about other Twitter users. I think this is a big step for Twitter and a way to filter the spam.

In this article I have to answer to three questions: Why to use Twitter for business purposes? then How do you know how crowded is your  market on Twitter? and finally How to attack this market?

Let’s get started with the first question, and that is why to use Twitter for business purposes. I think that everyone that is using Twitter and have his/hers updates publically has an objective. Twitter is a different social network than others. The stream is live and real-time. The level of connection is deep. The feel of an actual meeting is present. Twitter it’s easy to use and configure. If you know what you’re doing you can attract very quickly many eyes on you. The pitfall of Twitter is to have many spammers as followers and thus you may have the impression of an audience which in reality doesn’t exist – or to have as followers people that have few tweets but follow thousands of people. Tweets are shown in Google searches and also the Twitter username so you can use it for SEO purposes.
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Google is still the best website as a traffic sender. But the new social media websites are gaining ground and more people are owning accounts. Chris Brogan talks about the “people referred web” and the power that social networks have to deliver traffic. I think that besides Google you should also try to dominate YouTube, Twitter, FaceBook and LinkedIn. Each website has its own rules for ranking but all four can help your business a lot by increasing awareness and trust. And most important by creating a human face attached to a business.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this one. Leave a comment or send me an e-mail.

Business relations are based on trust – especially on the Internet. There are many ways to build trust on the web and one of those things is to give away free knowledge. As many as you can and as valuable as you can. Now, I’m sure many will ask: if I give it all for free why should a person still hire me?

And I would answer with another question: if you know how to make bread, why do you still buy it. Or if you know how do they make computers why don’t you make one for yourself? Because you lack either technology, or advanced knowledge, or why spend time on it when you can buy it.

This is the answer to your question. People want to see that you are up to the challenge. That is why every article you publish should prove that you can handle any situation. You have to position yourself as a person that knows his market and that provides answers.

If you will give away knowledge for free, in time it will happen one of these two things:

1.    You’ll get more potential clients
2.    You’ll build trust and when you’ll want to sell a product or recommend one people will believe you

This is my take on free knowledge. What do you think it may bring you? Let’s talk in comments bellow.

Definition: a broadcaster on Twitter is a person that is not interested in engaging with others or build relations or communicate

The odd thing is that many times the tweets contain useful tips and suggestions or useful links. So, why this can be a problem? Because it lacks interaction. You see, there are many broadcasters on Twitter. That is why you see every day hundreds of tweets about the same article, in the same form: title of article plus a link to it. There is no value on that.

We never do this in real life. We never recommend a book or a movie like that. We always express an opinion. And this is what I think is missing from Twitter right now. Look at Chris Brogan. Every tweet he puts on is an invitation to engagement and communication. We should learn from that.

I think that this is the real meaning of the phrase: “add value to your network”. When we talk about Twitter that phrase can easily say: express a quality opinion on an article – don’t just tweet it. What does this mean? If you express an opinion it means you care about your friends and you have the ability to make your own judgement. Many people are afraid to say that they don’t like an article. Many people tweet links to articles that I bet they didn’t even read.

Let me know what you think about all this. I think we can improve Twitter by what I said above.

1. Listen. Always pay attention to what people are talking about your niche market. You can set up alerts for that.
2. Interact. You are on social networks to build trust around you. So, after you listen to people’s problems interact with them and try to offer them a solution
3. Listen some more. See if your actions were successful.
4. Provide quality. Be a constant provider of quality information: either we are talking about content or suggestions (tips, advices)
5. Be ready to manage a crisis. You have to expect that not everyone would like you. So, if someone talks bad things about you, it would be a good thing to have an already thought plan on how to react.
6. Be the starter. Sometimes you should be the one that starts a conversation.
7. Don’t talk bad things about someone: eventually it will turn against you
8. Be sincere. This is valid on all social networks. If you are planning to post direct sales make it clear in your profile. Otherwise people will start to ignore you.
9. Never spam.
10. If you are entering a conversation don’t do it just like that: add something to it.

The idea for this article came to me when I launched my new blog. I thought that if I would ask some of my friends from Twitter to tweet something about my blog I would get some really good traffic. I don’t have to say it, because you probably guess: nothing extraordinary happen. Why?

I think that a series of events offered me the chance to understand that the social world of the Internet is no different than the real one. I realize that there are different ways to leverage yourself but in the end it’s all about influence. In that moment I realized that it doesn’t matter how many followers you have on Twitter.

Many users think of the number of followers as some sort of currency: the more you have the more power you have. Well, I think it’s true – in some aspects. What they don’t realize is that many of them are not holding the right currency. Just like in real life there is the mighty dollar and the euro or the English pound and then there are many others with less influence.
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