A number of readers’ responses to the last Tim Negris articles about social network marketing, “Rules for Attending the Social Media Marketing Party“ and “Using the Right Social Media Tools,” raised questions about whether Facebook can be used effectively for marketing and, if so, how. Since Tim’s thoughts stimulated several questions, I have asked him to address this and other issues. So, here are some more of Tim’s thoughts and advice on how to get the most out of your social networks.
On the one hand, Facebook is generally more oriented to person-to-person communications between people who already know each other. However, because it is so easy to use, allows you to post all kinds of media as content, and has .4 billion users, it can be a very effective business marketing tool.
One way to make Facebook more useful for marketing is to use it in conjunction with LinkedIn and/or Twitter, rather than by itself. You can connect your Twitter and LinkedIn accounts to your Facebook account and then use them together in various ways to improve your visibility and increase traffic to your content.
Facebook Pages
In addition to your standard personal page, Facebook also allows you to set up a public page, called a Facebook Page (FBP) that functions much like a self-contained social network. You can advertise and promote your FBP on Facebook and you can set it up so that people can find it easily in searches within Facebook and in search engines. People can connect with you by joining (becoming fans) on their own without you having to ask them (but you can also invite them if you wish), and you can set up a FBP so that any Facebook member can see it, even without becoming a fan.
You can use the FBP to post text, links, pictures, and video, as on your personal page, but FBPs also have tabs for Discussions and Reviews. And, as is the case with your personal page, you can control whether or not people can post on the FBP wall. At present, when you add content to your page, your fans will not automatically be notified. You must also use “update” to let them know about new content. Nonetheless, FBPs are flexible, easy to use and are an attractive marketing medium for businesses, organizations, professionals and entertainers because any one of the 400 million Facebook users can easily reach them. And, you can drive even more traffic to your FBP by creating and using connections between your FBP, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. Here’s how.
Set up a Facebook Page
Start by logging into your Facebook account and setting up a Facebook Page. The easiest way to do this is to select Help Center from your Account menu and then select Facebook Pages in the Facebook Applications and Features section. Then, select Admins: Creating, administering and editing your Page. You should read through the sections shown to familiarize yourself with how FBPs work and then click on the link, How can I create a Page? to set up a page.
Link the Facebook Page to Twitter
On your new or existing FBP, type “twitter” in the search box and in the Applications section of the results page you will see several different Twitter-related applications, the first of which is created by Twitter and is the one you want. Select it and on the left side of the resulting page, select the choice for adding it to your page. If you have more than one page created under your account you will be given a choice of which page you want to Twitter-enable.
From here on, any time you update your Facebook Page, it will automatically be posted as a tweet on your Twitter page and be seen by all your Twitter followers, just as if you had posted it there directly. You can use hash tags and other special, symbol-driven Twitter features in the text of your FBP update. But, do note, if your FBP update is longer than 140 characters, Twitter will truncate it.
Link Twitter to LinkedIn
Log into your LinkedIn account and click the Settings link in the upper right corner of the page and then select Twitter Settings on the following page and you will see this:
When you click the link, a new browser window will open where you can specify the Twitter account you want to connect to LinkedIn. Once you have set up this connection, the next time you go to your LinkedIn Home page, you will see a Twitter logo below the Network Updates box with a check-box on one side and a drop-down arrow on the other. We will return to the check-box later. When you select Twitter Settings from the drop-down menu you will see a page where you can control which Twitter account is linked to your LinkedIn account, whether or not a link to your Twitter page will be displayed on your Linked In page, and the following:
First, note that when you connect a Facebook page to Twitter, Facebook messages are duplicated on Twitter, but when you connect LinkedIn to Twitter, LinkedIn updates can go to Twitter or Twitter updates can go to LinkedIn. This can result in duplicated messages, so, for our purposes here, we will be going from Twitter to LinkedIn and will also be using the #in hash tag in our messages, so be sure to select the second choice shown above.
Putting It All Together
You will start by posting an update message on your Facebook Page like this:
When you press the Share button, the message will automatically be duplicated on your Twitter page with a link to your FBP added to the text of your original message. The link is a “tiny url” style of link, so it is smaller than the actual address of your FBP, but since it is included in the character count, your original message will have to be shorter than a normal tweet. On Twitter, it will look like this:
If you include the hash tag “#in” in your original FBP message, the message will then be forwarded automatically from your Twitter page to your LinkedIn page as well, where it will look like this:
The transit of messages from Facebook to Twitter are virtually instantaneous, but it may take 10 minutes or more for the message to then show up on LinkedIn, so be patient; it will get there eventually.
The one original message from your Facebook Page has now been sent to all of your Facebook Fans, all of your Twitter Followers, and your LinkedIn Connections. On Twitter and LinkedIn, if someone clicks on the tiny url in the message, they will be directed to your Facebook Page, where you would presumably have content about the sale or a link to your main web page where the content will be shown. Remember, Facebook pages are searchable, both in Facebook and in search engines, so, messages containing important key words will be found accordingly.
Beware of Circular Message Paths
As promised earlier, we will wrap up with a word about the Twitter check-box on LinkedIn, which appears below the Network Updates text box and looks like this:
The purpose of this check-box is to enable updates you create in LinkedIn to be duplicated on Twitter.
While this can be useful on its own, if you are sending messages as described above, from Facebook to Twitter and LinkedIn, leave this box unchecked. If you check it, the message will not be delivered to your LinkedIn connections.
Summary
Although Facebook is generally more oriented to communications between people who already know each other, with .4 billion users, it can be an effective tool for marketing. One way to maximize online visibility is by making connections between Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. In other words, network your networks.
If you would like to contact Tim Negris, you can do so through LinkedIn or tnegris@gmail.com.
Those who enjoyed this article also enjoyed:
Rules for Attending the Social Media Marketing Party
Using the Right Social Media Tools
If you would like to contact me, you can do so by emailing me at mike.clough@bestbizpractices.org or visiting my LinkedIn page.
Posted by: Mike Clough
