If you have already have an opt-in box on your website, why not add it to your Facebook fan page? Most likely you have more activity and conversation on your Facebook fan page than on your website, so it’s a great place to have people opt into your list.
I’m assuming you already have an autoresponder system such as aweber or icontact. These email marketing systems manage your list that you send your ezines and offers to by email, Most of the good ones will generate cut and paste HTML code that allows you to put the opt-in box on your website, and in this case your Facebook fan page. Of course you have to give your Fan page visitor a reason to opt-in but for now we are just focusing on the logistics rather than the marketing.
Adding an opt-in box to your Facebook page involves static FBML (Facebook markup language), but don’t let that scare you off, it is still pretty easy.
First, you have to install the FBML application into your page. Log into your facebook account and type “FBML” into the search box. Click on “Add to my page” and then select the page you want to add the FBML application to.
Now you can go to your Facebook fan page (select “Manage your page” from the Account dropdown from the upper right. Click on “edit your page” on the left. You will see the FBML application in the list (see above).
Now that you have the FBML application installed, you need to “edit” it so that you can create “FBML” boxes (boxes on your Facebook page you can customize). In this case we want to add an opt-in box. Most autoresponder and email newsletter systems will generate “copy and paste” code you can use to put on your website. In another browser window, log into your autoresponder system and highlight and copy the opt-in box HTML code. Back in Facebook, paste that copied HTML code into the empty FBML box that shows when you edit the FBML application. Make sure to change its name (eg. “Free Report”) and click on Save.
Your new opt-in box will be added to your boxes tab (which will be created if not already there). If you like to have a new tab on your Facebook fan page for your opt-in box, you can click on the “+” (see below) to add it (in this example I’ve called the FBML box “Free Report”).
Now all that is needed here is some content explaining to the user why they should opt in!
Remember that mad rush where everyone jumped on the net to choose their facebook username? Your Facebook Fan Page can have it’s own username as well. Instead of some awful URL like facebook.com/pages/name/89052720571…. (no this is not intended to be a real URL), you want a nice and simple one for your business, like facebook.com/breyerhorsecollectors
Usernames are different from the actual page names in that they are like a vanity URL for your page. The page name is what appears on the page itself.
There is a catch, however, in that at least 25 people must “like” your new fan page before you are allowed to choose a username for it. For my partner Bonnie, social networker that she is, that wasn’t a problem, she achieved that within a day. Note to self, there is a reason you partner ….
Username for Facebook Fan Page
Contrary to what I thought, you don’t create a username for your page by editing the page. No you go to a separate URL to actually create it: facebook.com/username. If you have chosen a username for your personal profile it will show you that, and if you have any fan pages, there will be a second box with a dropdown list. Choose your page from that list and then type in your username. As it warns you, once chosen, you can’t change it, so choose wisely.
Right after I posted my quibbling post on whether to create a facebook fan page or not, I got an email from a partner who wanted, you guess it, a facebook fan page. Sometimes the universe responds to what you put out there.
Making a Facebook Fan Page is relatively straight forward, there are just a few key decisions you need to make right and you can be done in minutes. Assuming you want to make a page from your personal profile (it is possible to create one from a business account, but that is off topic for this post), you log in facebook, and click on “ads and pages” in the list on the left. Click on pages again, and you will get to the Facebook Create Page Interface.
Create a Facebook Fan Page
Note that you have three choices, confusingly, none that call themselves a “Fan Page”:
A Facebook Official Page
A Community Page
A Facebook Group
If what you want is a SEO friendly page to help market and brand your business, then what you want is the Official Page. However just to be complete, let’s look at the other options. The Official Page and Facebook Groups, when you create them, have one owner, you. However a Facebook Community Page, is intended to have many authors. Use a Community Page when you have a cause or topic that you want to gather a group around and create a discussion, but don’t use it to represent your brand. Facebook Groups can be useful for your business, however they are less useful from the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) perspective. Think of a Facebook Group as if you would a list you email to, and that is an approximate analogy. But you don’t “brand” a group of people you email, that is what the Official Page is for.
Ok now that is out of the way, we have a few more decisions to make.
Your next decision is to decide whether you are a local business, brand/product or a public figure. As far as I know this decision can’t be changed currently, so choose carefully. Once you have clicked on the option, you will get a drop down to define your choice further. In this case we are creating a fan page for a website about Breyer Horse Collectors, so I choose “website”. Finally you want to choose your page name. I went with all lower case no spaces because this is how the website name appears on the actual website: www.breyerhorsecollectors.com. Again this is something that can’t be changed later.
Click on “Create Official Page” and you are done! Now the next step is customizing and getting fans.
Google is constantly tweaking and refining its algorithm, but a couple of times a year a significant enough change is made that webmasters really notice. This most recent change, called the “mayday” change due to it’s timing (around May 1st) impacted long tail searches the most. Some sites noticed, some did not. Matt Cutts in the below video explains more:
Imagine a world where large critical projects never catastrophically fail. No huge BP oil spills. A world where T-mobile Sidekick users didn’t wake up one day to find their phones had lost (literally) their life into the great bit bucket in the sky.
Why is this so hard to get right? In the software arena, missed project deadlines, or worse buggy software, are chronic problems that have plagued the industry since day one.
In the web space, projects suffer even worse. Often, unlike their software brethren, web projects don’t have dedicated QA (quality assurance – testing), network and deployment topology is a neglected after thought, and the under-resourced team has to live with a schedule that basically consists of “get it up ASAP, we will fix it later”.
Some days this is cause for despair. If a big company like BP can’t get a drilling project right, how can we keep a large web application smoothly running, given all the cards stacked against it in the first place?
It is the very transient nature of the web that saves us. Sure the code was slapped up there ASAP and sure it was hacked and tinkered with to massage it to ever changing requirements (”well now that I see it … it needs to …”), but web infrastructure often doesn’t last. Web sites are continually evolving and changing. A project is doing well if it lasts more than 3 years without a major rewrite. Vendor platforms get swapped in and out like a new pair of shoes.
With the web we can tear down the foundations and rebuild at the whim of the latest VP. It just takes money. We don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike BP. And given the chaotic nature of the web .. that’s a good thing.
Despite about having gone public about creating a Facebook fan page, I have not created one. But I’m not in complete inertia regarding Facebook pages. Sometimes when you put an intention out to the universe, it responds. This response came in the form of a business partner asking for help.
Bonnie wants a fan page for her website on collecting Breyer Horse Models. And she did create one … well not exactly. At first I was confused I could only see one page created from her account which had to do with her organic wheat business but nothing about Breyer Models. Then I realized what she had created was a Facebook application rather than an actual page.
In poking around discussions on Facebook pages, I’m picking up a lot of confusion among people creating and trying to use them. When you go to the create page, you have to decide whether you are an “official representative” of a brand, local, or public figure. You have to specify your page name. Turns out these things, once set, can’t be changed. The person that wanted to create a facebook page for their website and used http in the page name. Sorry, he has to start again with a new name. The person who decided their page was more of a brand than local business? Same answer.
There is also the confusion of community pages and groups (also presented as options on the create page form). Which one do you choose? If ever there was a market for a dummies book, Facebook was it. And sure enought, there already is a “Facebook for dummies” book with it’s very own facebook page..
Unfortunately the page is not being kept up (last wall post was a year ago) and the reviews of the book not promising (”useless” was used as a description). Then there is the matter of the rapid change of Facebook, a book that was published more than a year ago is already out of date for the Facebook of today. Let’s hope for a revision.
While wordpress.com has given you a way to blog under your own domain using custom mapped domains …. it hasn’t been a perfect solution. If you set it up right when you started blogging, there is no issue, your content gets out on the net under your own domain (eg. joesmith.com rather than joesmith.wordpress.com). But for those of us that have a subdomain well established under wordpress.com it was less than ideal. Why? Because the redirect from xxx.wordpress.com to xxx.com was a 302 redirect rather than a 301 redirect.
302 redirects, which means “temporarily moved” are treated by the search engines in an unpredictable manner, your original URL might get indexed or your new one .. who knows. In contrast, a 301 redirect, “moved permanently”, created a much better chance of your new URL getting the index and the traffic.
wordpress has fixed this now though, now the redirect from your wordpress.com subdomain to your custom domain is now a search engine friendly 301 redirect. Now, there is no excuse for me not to create a domain for my real estate wordpress.com blog.
Facebook’s privacy settings can be a confusing tangle of options, just check out this new york times graphic for an overview.
A handy tool can be found at www.reclaimprivacy.org. What you do is drag and drop the scanner from the site to your bookmark bar, log into facebook and then click on “Scan for Privacy”. Most of my settings in the scan were tagged as “caution”. Only “friends can accidentally share your personal information” was marked as insecure. However clicking to fix and rescanning didn’t work. So I went and looked at the actual settings. Most of the information listed I really have no problem with people sharing. Many marketers would love to have their website shared .. even accidentally. I have turned off sharing of my religious and political views and relationship status (more because I don’t want to be targeted in any way rather than caring what is shared about me).
Some people really don’t want their information shared at all. Personally I think of facebook of a giant bulletin board. If you use it, you just need to accept that your privacy is limited on it, if you have stuff about you that you don’t want to be shared .. then just don’t post it. As Marty Cooper (father of the cell phone) recently said on a 60 minutes interview: “Sorry. Privacy is a thing of the past”.
There is no question that Facebook Fan Pages is a powerful tool in getting businesses found. A few months ago I was searching for businesses to help me secure a rental property. After trying a couple of queries, I found a facebook fan page for a business that installs temporary steel shutters on rental properties. Their page was boring, the same marketing message over and over again on their wall. However, the point is, I found them, they got my business, and my search query would have never found their website.
Clearly, from the SEO perspective, a fan page is a force to be reckoned with.
I would be reamiss if I didn’t point out you don’t get this same SEO bang for your buck (well your labor buck) with facebook groups. If you want an alternative to an ESP (email service provider), maybe a facebook group is something for you to consider. But if you want your business to be found, do a fan page.
Being in the business of giving out web advice, I should do a fan page, right? And yes I’ve been meaning to for a while. But I haven’t quite aligned my internal thinking about facebook quite right yet. I mainly use facebook to catch up with friends, past colleagues. I get annoyed with the few marketers I am connected to that woodenly spit out their messaging out in posts day after day. Only a select few do it right by making it personal and inviting conversation.
So I haven’t quite come around to expanding my use of a tool I solely use on a personal basis to a blatant business use. And “fan” page? What an affront to my inner lone wolf. I have to ask people to become a fan? Ick. Not too mention that I have to deal with this needy wall thing that wants constant feeding. Did I mention I’m not a natural extrovert?
Facebook itself isn’t helping. There is that whole convoluted privacy thing that has everyone up in arms. Did you know that May 31st is Quit Facebook Day? And I quote “Quitting Facebook is like quitting smoking..”. Maybe I should sit back and see how this turns out.
However that would be just too easy. I’m in the business of giving web advice remember? Especially SEO advice. So I will create a fan page. Hold me to it and don’t let me waffle anymore.
What’s the difference between Google’s Adsense and Adwords programs?
Adsense and Adwords work together but are frequently confused. I find it most helpful to explain from a perspective of what role you are playing on the internet.
If you are a publisher, in other words you blog, write articles, or otherwise put content on the internet, then you may want to consider adsense as a way to make money online. Web site owners can set up adsense ads on their sites, and if their site visitors click on the ad, the site owners gets a commission. Setting up adsense ads is easy.
You create an account with google (you can use an existing gmail account)
You pick what style and colors the adsense ad will appear as on your site
You cut and paste the generated code to your site
Google looks at your content and figures out what ads are relevant to show on your site.
If you want to advertise on the internet, then you should consider adwords (also known as Google PPC – pay per click). Your goals might be to drive more traffic to your website so you can sell online or build a list through an opt-in box. Adwords takes a little more to set up than Adsense but it’s not too hard to get started. Here’s a couple of things to keep in mind.
Each time someone clicks on your ad, you pay a fee, so it is easy to run through a lot of money. Most experts advise setting a small daily budget until you have the ad tuned. Make sure you do your numbers. If it costs you a $1 per click and you get a 10% conversion on the traffic, then will you make money on a $7 product? I don’t think so.
You will have the choice on whether to advertise in the search engine results pages in the sponsored listings, or through the adsense publishing network. Each is a different strategy.
Pay attention to your keywords, you have a lot of control on not only which keywords your ad shows up for but whether you want to just appear for an exact match, the keyword phrase in a larger search term or keywords in any order.
While it’s easy to get the basics, it’s another to be successful. Google Adwords (or Search Engine Marketing) is a specialized field that successful marketers can charge good money for a successful campaign.
