Facebook Social Network

Facebook is a social network service that was developed in 2004 and has over 600 million active users.  It is a household name used for entertainment and business.   Businesses use Facebook to set up a network of prospects and drive traffic to their main website.

YOUR FACEBOOK PROFILE

You log onto Facebook and create a profile. Your profile name is very important for business users because it is a name you want people to trust. Would you buy something from a person called theDude?  You should add your photo as this shows that you are confident about yourself and your business.  You need to fill in your profile details and remember that this facebook profile is an extension of you into the cyber community.  Try to reflect your personality and well as your business because people are on-line to find other people.

Facebook does not allow you to customize your wall but it is standard for each user.  It is a space on the profile page which allows you and friends to post messages for the user to see.

FINDING FRIENDS ON FACEBOOK

Once you have set up your profile you can begin searching for other people.  The aim of Facebook is mainly to make contacts and this is done by inviting people to be friends and accepting requests for friendship.  Lets say for example you are a wedding planner with a nice profile and links to your main website.  There are loads of people on Facebook planning weddings and you can invite these people to be your friend.  Once they have accepted they can browse your photos, read your profile, and visit your website.  Finding friends on Facebook can be done in various ways:

1. Use the search box at the top of the page and type in words or phrases that are of interest to you
2. Facebook recommends friends to you according to your profile. 

Click on the person and look at their profile and if their profile interests you click the 'add as friend' button.  This sends a request for friendship to the person and they accept or decline.  The point here is that they will look at your profile and business and you have brought yourself to their attention.  Once you start getting involved with groups you should avoid hard sales pitches and just be yourself and friendly in an attempt to attract like-minded people.  You can use your wall to broadcast messages to your entire friend list and list can be a very powerful tool if used effectively.  For example you could offer free sample products to get them on your mailing list, inform about special promotions.

FACEBOOK PHOTOS

Facebook allows you to upload photos and videos and so you can show your products.  Unlike other social media sites Facebook allows you upload an unlimited number of photos.  Photos can be tagged another facebook user id and this will send a notification to the facebook user and provide them with a link to your photo.  This is very useful to highlight new products to customers and bring potential business to your website

The photos are shown on your wall and can be divided up into albums.  Customers can write a review on your products.

FACEBOOK NEWSFEED

The news feed appears on every users home page and it highlights changes to your profile and upcoming events.  This can be used to advertise promotions and special offers.

FACEBOOK NOTES APPLICATION

You can post a note on your facebook account and it is a quick way of sharing information amongst your friends or group of friends.  To begin with you need to add the notes application:

Go to your Home page

• You applications option should be down the left hand side.  If you cannot see it click more
• Click on apps and then on Apps directory
• There is a box at the top left to search the apps directory where you should enter facebook notes.
• Select the application that looks like a notepad and then goto the application
• Take the write a new note at the top right side of the screen
• You can now write your note giving it a title.  If the note is only for certain people then enter some tags in the appropriate box

IMPORT YOUR BLOG

You can use Facebook along side other social media, like your blog.  A blog is a search engine friendly way to keep your public up to date on your services and products.  To prevent you re-blogging on Facebook you can link your details onto straight onto Facebook.

To do this:

• Select the notes application and then click select full notes
• You will see an option Edit import setting on the left hand side of screen
• You will be then taken to a screen to import an external blog
• Enter you blog name and then press start importing

CHAT - INSTANT MESSAGING

This is similar to the desktop instant messaging and allows user to communicate instantly

MARKETPLACE

This allows user to post free classified acts

Internet Marketing & Getting Referrals

Getting referrals is very hard thing to do but by following this guide you may be able to clear a few more hurdles.

FORUMS


Become a member of forums and create a signature with your referral links in it.  Create a post with your referral links and link the URL under your avatar to your forum post.  Now every time you write a response you signature will be automatically added.
Don't add links to your response because this is spamming and it will removed from the discussion.
Some recommended forums are:

• TalkPTC
• PTC Exchange
• emoneyspace

BLOGS/WEBSITES

Create a blog or website and post your referral links on there.  You can now advertise your blog/website on forums and PTC site adverts and attracts visitors.  Get people to become members of your website.

EMAIL MARKETING


Send emails to all your members giving details of your payment proofs, opinions on websites. Word of mouth marketing is very powerful and effective.

You could join email marketing websites like:

• mailchimp
• verticalresponse
• icontact

LIVE CHAT PROGRAMS


This can be very effective if used correctly but you must be careful to avoid spamming.

The following are some good site:

• Woome
• paltalk
• talkcity
• myLot

ADVERTISING IN THE REAL WORLD


You can create flyers and distribute them hand to hand or post on notice boards or advertise in newspapers, or make car stickers etc.

TRAFFIC EXCHANGE SITES


With these sites you surf sites in return for visits to your site.  This will really work especially if the idea is new and exciting and easy to promote.

The following are good sites:

• EasyHits4U
• trafficera
• trafficswarm
• sweeva
• trafficadbar

ADVERTISING WITH COMPANIES

A very effective way of getting referrals is to advertise with other companies by placing banners and backlinks on their page.  Another effective method is to use Google adwords to promote your site through the internet.

The following are recommended:

• Google adwords
• Bidvertiser
• Admedia

Article Spinning

Writing articles with backlinks to your site helps with the page rank and promotes the site higher up the search engine.  Therefore the more articles you have pointing back to your site the better your ranking should be.  Unfortunately it doesn't quite work that way because the articles need to be unique.  Google does not penalize sites with duplicate content but the duplicate content does not feature well in SERPS (Search Engine Results page),

Article Spinning has therefore been developed.  An article can be spun in various ways:

• A web owner may employ writes to article spin manually
• Writes can do their own article spinning manually
• Writes can use article spinning software

See Introduction to Article Writing  

Why Use Social Networking

Social networking sites are important to put you in touch with your target audience and tell them about your products.  Some social networks are designed primarily for business users so that you can share information, probably get a new business partner or gain a new customer.  Social networking site focus on meeting new people

There is nothing new about social networking and that is why people join the chamber of commerce etc but social networking sites have had an explosion of popularity over the last year.  With web 2.0 bookmarking sites a user can search for information and see how many other people have found this website useful instead of getting all the nonsense from a Google search.

Social networks are easy to uses and so more and more people are using the likes of MySpace, YouTube and this in turn attracts more people.

When you become a member of a social network you have to set up a profile and this means you can research the person and their products before getting in contact with them.  If they have the products you need invite them to be your friend so that they can see you and follow links back to your blog or website.

Most social networks are free to use which increases their popularity for example MySpace and Yahoo! 360.

Every business should join some social networking sites because the potential audience is enormous and you will find people who are interested in your product.

To start with:

• Pick you social network with a large or  target audience you require
• Set up your profile to tell people your name and what you do
• Begin by making contacts by joining groups, inviting friends, making posts, sending private messages etc.
• Build anchor text links back to your website from high ranked social networks - punch to your SEO

Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking is a community link sharing area. Examples of social bookmarking sites are:

• Digg
• Reddit
• Del.icio.us 
• Stumblupon

Social bookmarking your website or blog can help its page ranking (PR) by providing a backlink.  The advantage of social bookmarking is that the backlink  has been given by a human who can understand the content of the page as apposed to a spider.

You need to submit your webpage to a bookmarking site and then get people to vote for your site.  I have explained one way of doing this in the blog  Promote My Site for Free 

You need to understand whether the link is classed as good backlink and to find out this you can view the page souce of the social bookmarking site.  Find your URL link in the code and if it is tagged as nofollow then the search engine disregards it. The link is also disregarded if your webpage URL is followed by another URL.  This is called cloaking and the backlink will also be disregarded

Writing an Article

To increase exposure of your website you need to write articles on quality websites giving your website backlinks.  When writing an article you need to have at least 3 paragraphs with 2 or 3 sentances in each paragraph.  Repeat the main title as much as you can whilst maintaining legability.

When writing an article the title should be in H1 tags and each word should begin with a capital letter.  The article title should not be keyword stuffed and should read in a natural way.

At the end of writing the article you need the all important anchor text.  The anchor text should match the title and take you to the website being promoted.  Before writing the article you need to consider the metadata and keywords which need to be relevant to the article and the title.

Writing an Article

Promote My Site For Free

I have just created a website and I chose Microjobs as one of the sites to promote my site for free. I have a profile page where I can add photos and videos to promote my site for free.

On signing up to Microjobs you get a $5 bonus which can be used on campaigns. The minimum cost of a campaign is $3 and you could use this to have the Microjobs users share your site on their favourite social network.

I also complete tasks at Microjobs which include bookmarking, article writing, video editing and many more to earn extra money. This money can then be recycled into campaigns to promote my site for free.