Facebook: Top 3 Tactics for Making Money
This is the 6th (bonus) post in 5-part series social media marketing using Facebook by guest blogger, Alexander Alaric. You may read his other posts here.
I decided to add this post in response to questions about “where’s the money on Facebook?”. Since you have a decent understanding of Facebook now having read my other posts in this series, I’ll tell you about the 3 basic ways I use Facebook to make money.
Although you could use their PPC system which has profitable possibilities. I know people who are making good money using this but since I’ve not personally tested it I’m not qualified to advise you about it so these are ways to use it without spending money in the process.
- Groups
- Events
- Live FB on-site Chat
Groups
You know about groups already. The benefits (and drawbacks) of setting and having your own group have been discussed. However, when you have a group of 200-300 or more you can get good leverage by sending an email to the entire group. Build the community side of it.
Here’s a picture to show you that there are all kinds of groups on Facebook… there’s even one about rodents.
To make this work, you could develop a 3-6 part email series and a schedule of when you are going to send it out. Start by encouraging conversation on the group’s wall and posting interesting threads on the group bulletin board. This gets people active in your group and further bonded to it.
It’s no longer “just another FB group I’m a part of”. It becomes something they remember and the sense of community is stronger.
Then start asking them questions. Ask them about their concerns and how you can help. The more you engage your members the better.
Finally, you can send out an email inviting them to join you on your webinar/teleseminar or even your ustream.tv channel. The benefit of the ustream is they can see you making the presentation, your body language and gestures. It is almost like being live and face-to-face which is the most powerful communication.
This bonds them to you even further.
You’ll want to use a webinar if you’re doing a highly technical subject where you are going to walk them through how to do it on your computer so they can watch step-by-step what you are doing.
You could compile some of the biggest questions they asked and just do a Q&A call. That’s the easiest way to get your content for the call and it’s most VALUABLE TO YOUR MEMBERS.
This gives you a good running start.
Events
Events can be handled in similar fashion. In fact, I recommend that you combine Events with the Groups strategy. After you’ve finished the mailing series to your group, you invite them to the Events page that you have setup with the details of your call.
The really cool thing about events is that you can invite all your friends. It’s the ONE AND ONLY safe way to invite all your friends without being caught in the facebook spam filters.
Once you have sent out the invites to the friends who’d be interested (or all of them) you have the ability through your events page to follow-up with them. It separates into “attending”, “maybe”, and “not attending”. You can send different messages to each category of friends.
You can see from this image how someone raises their hand to confirm that they’re attending your event. Be sure to send a reminder and bonus info to the “attendees” to further pique their interest and increase your attendance rate.
Include additional reasons explaining why the “maybes” should attend. Make it so desirable that they want to cancel whatever else they had planned because the content of the call will be of such MASSIVE benefit they’d have to be complete fools to miss it. 
When you can make it more important than their wedding anniversary you know you have a winner. Okay I’m young so have never been married, and this level may be unattainable but making it really desirable for them is the goal.
To the “not attending” you can send a “hate for you to miss out on this valuable advice, but here’s some bonus info now and maybe I’ll make the recorded version available to you” message. This gets some of them to want your info.
Live Facebook on-site Chat
The chat bar “floats” down below. It’s a standard php bar you’ve seen.
Although I haven’t experimented with this much yet I see the widest potential of this for 1-on-1 client acquisition. For someone like me that does copywriting at $100/hr I can get on here and talk with Facebook friends whom I know are looking for a copywriter. I can see what they are needing done, what they’re looking for, and how I can create a valuable sales piece that will pull high response and ultimately make them more money.
You could be a plumber and contact local people you know are having plumbing issues (no double entendre here). You’d be surprised what people post to twitter and their Facebook status updates.
Also, if you’re an article writer, web designer, seo underground guru, graphic designer, publicist, business coach, or a host of other remote-ready consultant/service based provider the possibilities for this type of 1-on-1 communication on-site are endless.
One piece of advice…make any potential client jump through a few hoops before getting involved in a long-winded conversation with them. This will save you time and eliminate the proverbial “tire-kickers” and “looky lous”.
Nothing fancy just send a couple emails back and forth. Have them send some info to you about what they need from you, and some kind of qualifier that lets you know they’re in a financial position to pay your reasonable fee.
This saves you headache, frustration and ultimately makes you more money because you’re more efficient.
What are you still doing here? Get out there, expand your business and make more money right now!
Special thanks to Ros for her caring commitment and making this series possible. Get more social media facebook tactics here.
Popularity: 9% [?]
Twitter more with these software apps & services
You’re probably already posting tweets to Twitter directly on the Twitter web site.
However, did you know that there are an increasing number of different applications which are designed to let you post to Twitter directly from your desktop or from specific devices, including your iPhone, Mac and Blackberry?
Here’s a list of software applications and services that will make your Twitter experience simpler and more enjoyable.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Nailing the Facebook News Feed
This is the fifth in a 5-part series about social media marketing using Facebook by guest blogger, Alexander Alaric. You may read his other posts here.
The news feed is quite probably the most powerful part of Facebook.
The screen capture show here to the left is the news feed that appears on the Facebook home page when you first login. As you can see, some of the activities showing up in the news feed are things your friends have done. In this instance Richard created a group and had added videos to his group, and 41 of my friends are now friends with Sean.
Other items that show up in the news feed include: Read more
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Ivy Bean: The World’s Oldest Person on Facebook
Do you want to get a lot of Facebook friends fast? Then you need to stand out - just like Ivy Bean.
At 102, Mrs. Bean is the oldest person on Facebook, joining after she heard her caregivers talking about a 97-year old Facebook member in France. Bean posts news and video about herself, including the gold medal that she recently won throwing frisbees during her nursing home’s “Over 75 Olympic Games”.
Since Ivy’s status as the world’s oldest person on Facebook broke in the media, she’s been getting LOTS of friend requests. At time of writing, Ivy Bean has 8,504 fans and 4849 friends. All those requests are apparently hard to handle, according to an update posted by one of her cargeiverson August 15th:
I would just like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their friend requests and all the lovely messages left for Ivy, we are doing our best to accept everyone’s requests but have had over 8000 today. Ivy will be back on Facebook tomorrow. Look out for her next week on This Morning and Richard and Judy. Many thanks Mariessa
8000 Facebook friend requests! Zowee! Obviously, having a claim to fame that gets media attention is pretty powerful stuff in terms of social marketing.
Anyway, if you can’t get on Ivy’s friend list, you can still be my Facebook friend.
Popularity: 12% [?]
Social Networking using LinkedIn Groups
This post was contributed by guest blogger, Jim Lillig, President & Chief Revenue Strategist at Synergy Intermedia LLC. It is the second post which deals with How to Promote Your Offline Business using LinkedIn. Although it deals specifically with realtors, think about how you can apply these strategies to almost any offline business.
My first post dealt with setting up your LinkedIn profile. Once you’ve done the work of getting your localized and areas of specialties keywords into your profile, it is time to start building your business through networking.
Read the rest of the article >>
Popularity: 11% [?]
Increase Your Facebook Network with Applications
This is the fourth of a 5-part series about social media marketing using Facebook by guest blogger, Alexander Alaric. You may read his other posts here.
Start Your Own Group
The advantages:
Although it does take time to administer and oversee a Facebook group, one of the main advantages to starting a group is that Facebook allows you to mass email your group members. You can notify all the members of your group about a new product you are launching, an article of interest or some other resource of interest to your Facebook friends.
However, once you get 1200 group members though Facebook cuts off your ability to send a mass email.
You can also post messages on your group’s information section with updates anyone visiting the group can see.
Each group also has a ‘wall’ on which you can post messages and start conversations with other group members. It is similar to comments on blogs.
The disadvantages:
It takes some initial time to setup.
It takes much more time to promote your group. With a good group name you’ll get people who naturally find you and want to join because they are interested. But you’ll also need to promote your group link to really build your membership.
I recommend including it in forum posts and you can twitter about it so that it will show to your friends.
Stumbleupon and Twitter on your Profile
Stumbleupon and Twitter are two sites you need to be using if you want to dramatically increase your website traffic.
As you build your Facebook network, your friends will be able to see what you Twitter and Stumble. You want to mark some cool stuff you randomly find on the Internet that’d be of interest to your business or personal contacts to build your reputation and credibility with your friends.
They’ll be much more trusting of you and connect with you far more when you provide them value. And articles you find of interest to them is very valuable because they may not have ever seen that article without you mentioning it to them. This is just like telling your friend about that super cool ‘Iron Man’ movie you just saw.
But what is really awesome for you is that you can twitter and Stumble your own articles and products and immediately your entire Facebook network can see that and click right through to your website.
This is a very powerful technique that can bring instant traffic to even a one minute old website.
All you have to do is search under the applications for twitter and stumbleupon. Then you can place those strategically on your profile so that people can see them.
What’s really cool is it will automatically show in your mini news feed. You get instant exposure to your entire network because people do read your news feed which takes us right into our next topic.
Here is my list other must-have apps:
- Blog friends
- Blog RSS feed reader
- Business cards
- Events
- Notes
- StumbleUpon
- Video
To discover more about Facebook and claim your free social media marketing bonuses click here.
Popularity: 13% [?]
How to Promote Your Offline Business using LinkedIn
This post was written and contributed by guest blogger, Jim Lillig, President & Chief Revenue Strategist at Synergy Intermedia LLC. Although it deals specifically with realtors, think about how you can apply these strategies to almost any offline business.
Social marketing sites are proliferating at an accelerated rate today, but do you have any idea how to use these types of sites if you’re a real estate professional trying to get the word out about your business?
Read the rest of this article…
Popularity: 17% [?]
How Common Courtesy Benefits Your Online Business
Do you feel frustrated when you send an email request to another webmaster and it takes them more than a week to answer? Or worse, when they don’t answer at all? Now put the shoe on the other foot as guest blogger, Elizabeth Orr, discusses how simple common can benefit your online business.
The ways in which you connect with others as you build your presence on the web has a direct bearing on your reputation and your potential for success.
For example, many of us belong to services through which we connect to exchange links and hopefully, build traffic.
If contacted, it’s important to respond politely regardless of whether you intend to accept or reject the request.
You may look at the other site, and decide that you simply don’t like it. You may see a site that is full of broken links or that certain areas of the site are still under construction. Perhaps the site topic has no relevance to your own and you see absolutely no value whatsoever in exchanging links.
Don’t ignore requests and don’t reply with a blunt “no” and dismiss them. Convey rejection in the nicest possible way. The other webmaster may not be aware of a specific error on their site. Let them know. The benefit of the doubt doesn’t hurt in a sentence or two.
No-one is expecting you to become an instant mentor, but suggestions for improvement are almost always welcome. Leave the door open for a future exchange after changes have been made that makes the other site more relevant to your readers.
If you have offered the option on your site for readers to ask questions, you have the responsibility of responding in a timely manner.
Answer as completely as you can, and if you don’t know the answer, be honest enough to say so. Make an effort to find an answer or direct your reader to someone who can give them the information. Don’t leave your reader hanging, or hope that they go away. Give the courtesy of a quick response.
This holds true if you invite comments of any kind on your site.
You have to be prepared to accept criticism gracefully, or at least go in with the idea that people are entitled to their opinion.
Likewise, don’t ignore those who leave positive comments. If you were face-to-face with someone and they complimented you, would you stand there and just stare blankly at them? Most likely not. You would thank them. Although the commenter may not be looking for acknowledgement, everyone likes to get it. That is just human nature.
People won’t forget any negative response they get from you, they will also remember you for extending the courtesy of positive acknowledgement.
Positive feedback can also come back to you “in gold” as well.
A simple polite request for confirmation of information to promote an event plus the request to link (which was initially not thought possible) resulted in a prominent and important link from another well-known site. In addition, that Webmaster offered his personal assistance in website building. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Elizabeth Orr savors and shares all things rhubarb - including growing and harvesting tips, recipes, rhubarb crafts and even rhubarb festivals - at Savor-the-Rhubarb.com.
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Is Your Blog Featured On Facebook?
I submitted one of my blogs, FunnyVideooftheDay.net, and it’s already ranked in the top 20 within the humor category and the top three within the entertainment category.
The reason it’s ranking so high so quickly is because this is a feature on Facebook that’s just starting to take off. And, we all know that the best time to jump on any opportunity is at it’s infancy, right?
The way your site is ranked is by the number fans who have joined your blog within Facebook. To see how this works, visit this page for my blog and you can see how the application looks within your profile. Feel free to become a fan if you’d like, and you’ll see how the blog will then end up within the Blog Networks section of your profile.
To submit your blog, all you have to do is go to the Blog Networks section of Facebook and submit your blog. It’s that simple. We’re all here to get more traffic to our websites and blogs, and the Blog Networks section is one of those hidden gems that everyone with a blog should definitely take advantage of.
Good luck and happy bloggin’ and Facebookin’.
Jason.
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How to Connect with Influential People on Facebook
This is the third in a series about social media marketing using Facebook by guest blogger, Alexander Alaric.
It’s great to have thousands and thousands of friends, but building a relationship with just one person who is highly influential in your market could be more valuable to you than all the rest of your Facebook friends put together.
To get these folks on board, start by making a list of between 30 to 50 of the top influencers in your market.
Keep in mind that these are busy people and that they have new people contacting them all the time who also want to use their expert power, so you will need to decide how you are going to set yourself apart from the crowd to get their attention and make them want to help you.
The easiest way to connect with these power brokers is to offer to do something for them first because this starts the ball rolling.
In simplest terms, “you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours”.
So when you help get the word out about their business or their product or give them a testimonial they will be more inclined to help you after you’ve done that for them.
Most people I see make the mistake of asking for something before first giving something.
Don’t make this mistake because getting them to accept your friend request is all you want to do righ now. Then you can deepen the connection with further communication and offers to assist them.
You do this because the power of your network can really be more important than the size of your network. As well the strength of the relationships you have with those people in your network can be far more powerful than the size of your network.
You can open the lines of communication by sending them an e-mail asking about their business, what they’re working on, or what you could do to help spread the word about their business.
You can also make a text post on their “wall”. This is something unique to facebook (myspace.com calls it ‘comments’) which allows you to post a text message on to their profile that they and anyone who views their profile will see.
There is now also a cool floating bar that hovers at the bottom of your screen when you’re logged in to facebook which tells you how many of your friends are currently online and gives you the opportunity to have a live text chat with them. So you can have an instant messenger type conversation with those big influencers when they’re online. Using this tool alone could be a great way for you to get your foot in the door with power brokers in your industry.
Do it today. Make your list of influential people in your market and start making friends in high places.
To discover more about Facebook and claim your free social media marketing bonuses click here.
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