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.

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5. How to Connect with Influential People on Facebook