Email Problems (Again) and Facebook Stuff!

Hi Shane

I must admit I’m not a great facebook user although I have an account and check it from time to time, but not one of these that posts loads every day about everything Im doing.

So also held off making fan pages as most time is spent trying to get SEO right on my sites and trying to push them up the ranks with backlinking etc, although very frustrating and loads of waiting, for that. And secondly, because I wonder if facebook fan pages really bring in fresh quality traffic or is it another place that existing followers join up?

Are your 100 followers new or would you say are from imimpact etc?

Thanks for the video today

Steve

Shane says:

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I think most of those 100 followers are from my mailing list. One of the things I like best about facebook is how inherently “viral” much of it is.
For example, I’ve had several posts that have gotten 300+ impressions, even though I have fewer than 100 followers and that’s simply because whenever someone comments on something, that comment appears on their wall and can be seen by their friends.

Now, if you add some incentive for people to like your page, once they discover it and you get the same kind of effect with thousands rather than just 100 people… there’s real potential there, I think.

Yes to both of your questions. I dont do much posting to them thou, the business page I have an rss feeding it with recent product listings.

Shane says:

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Haven’t done the auto-posting thing myself. But I tend to keep up with news that’s too small for a blog post and too big for twitter. :)

Hey Shane

I was a Facebook personal user for a short time, but got tired of logging in just to have people tell me where they were and what they were doing or tell off-color jokes. I couldn’t see the point.

I’ve often wondered whether a business page on Facebook would be of any use, but have no clue as how to properly build one, or what do do with it once built. Hope you can get that webinar going, it should be interesting!

Shane says:

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I don’t have the answers to most of those questions either. Hence the webinar. :)

I have seen some marketers do really interesting stuff on facebook, though.

Hi Shane,

Love your blog and your honest product reviews. I’m a facebook user and I’ve built a pretty decent sized fan page in my niche in about 3 weeks. The “trick” to getting a lot of people to “like” your page is to target less than 5000 people for one ad and use CPM for bidding not CPC (much cheaper cost per click)

-Adi

Shane says:

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I’ve never advertised my fb page before. Definitely something I need to do as well!

First I really like Sunday emails on a Monday. That’s the proper place for them after all.

:-)

Second I get all your emails no problem – maybe it’s webmail that spams you?

third, I’d be really interested in a simple outsourcing formula – buy x articles and build y backlinks in this and this way…

last I can’t abide facebook but hey if you can learn it I can too!!

Shane says:

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Thanks, Alex!

I’m not much of a social media person myself, but I think facebook is worth making an exception. We’ll see…

Hey Shane!

Definitely have a personal FB page. About a year ago I was really playing around with Social media like Twitter/FB. I found they work great, but they are time consuming. And they seem to work best if you have something your promoting/building like your own Brand. I’m really not doing that so I’ve tapered off but I figure at some point I’ll come back around to it.

LOVE your idea of throwing money at things. I think if you could say spend $100 on a project (like an adsense site) that earns you that back after 2 months would be awesome!! I think that could make a great course as well =)

Shane says:

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Getting a return on $100 in just two months would be pretty spectacular. It’s too bad that I didn’t keep track of exactly how much I invested in that AdSense site. I think it was about $60 worth of articles, plus some link-building done with software, but very little actual time invested. The ROI has not been great, but I am past the point of breaking even (although it took about four months or longer). I’ll keep you updated on how it goes on a larger scale.

Hi Shane,

I signed up to Facebook a long time ago because I thought it was a good way to have one place where I could stay in touch with spread out family, but I have quit visiting because of the taking over by friends of friends of friends … can’t stand it!

I’m often reminded of the possibilities of a business page and of course I’m aware of the possibilities as you pointed out with your 96 fans! so I’m looking forward to your webinar on the subject.

Fran

Shane says:

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I haven’t started using facebook as a personal thing yet. I’d probably soon abandon it, as well. But the business side of it is interesting to me. :)

I do have a personal account, however rather not for very personal motivation. I keep contact with my copywriting collegues and from time to time give referrals to our common (fan)page. It is more to allow people to get an impression of how I am as a person. I do not intend to have a page for my copywriting business (as I am busy enough) but I considered to build one for my e-book site http://www.soschaffstdualles.de. However I am a bit concerned about a lot of legal restrictions, about the dos and donts. For example, you are not allowed to use a “slogan” as a name, you are not allowed to post on other people’s walls as this would be spam etc. I am still on the fence…

Hi again (last time I only forgot, sorry for that)

Okay, I ‘ll do it: Ask the silly question. How do you make a picture of yourself appear with a reply?

PS: I was hit by the email problem.

Shane says:

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Very simple, just sign up here: Gravatar
Your image will automatically be associate with your email address for comments.

Facebook is really thing for itself… Having X fans doesn’t mean anything, more than in e-mail marketing it is required to have a good relationship to the people and providing them real value, else I see very few use for a site owner. I’ll launch a “mini-product” next week exclusively to 400 fans of a facebook site of mine and I am very curious how well that will perform compared to the later launch to the mail-list.

Shane says:

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That should be interesting to see, indeed!
I like the whole relationship building aspect.

I don’t use FB for business – I’m in the B2B market, but I do use it personally.

I would love to know your thoughts on LinkedIn – which is more suitable for B2B.

(I’m sure there are similarities in strategy & methodologies for LinkedIn Groups & FB for business).

Shane says:

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Hey Justin,

I have to admit that I’m totally clueless about LinkedIn. More so than about facebook.
I do have an account and get invited to connect with people every now and again, but I really don’t get what LinkedIn is about… I’m a bit of a socialtard…

Hi Shane

This is really good timing for me and my business partner as we have just set up a fanpage on Facebook for one of our projects, so I am looking forward to what develops with you.

I missed out on your emails and am glad to be back.

Anne

Shane says:

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Cool. I hope I can use my pages as examples/case studies for the facebook stuff.
Hopefully the “here’s how to do it” kind and not the “here’s what to avoid!” kind. :)

Hi Shane,

I too have missed your emails, glad to seem them again.

I am very interested in your Facebook (FB) webinar. I don’t like most things about FB, but, from a marketing standpoint, I think it is important to have a presence there.

I created a FB business page, but haven’t done much with it yet. Too me, FB has an unnecessarily difficult and nonintuitive interface and I’ve been too busy with the Backlink Battle Plan and other things to invest the time figuring it out. Many people disagree with me, but I’ve recently learned WordPress and set up a new site with less hassle and headache than I’ve had trying to figure out FB. There also seems to be a big difference in the difficulty level between setting up a business account and a personal account. Would love to hear your thoughts and those of your experts.

Twitter, on the other hand, is quick, easy, and hassle-free. I LOVE it! New pages on my site that I tweet get crawled by the search engines within minutes, plus there’s a record to easily prove it’s my original content. I know Twitter and FB are two totally different animals … I’m just sayin’, Twitter is a breeze compared to FB!

Regards,
TJ

Shane says:

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Yeah, FB is definitely a bit more difficult to figure out than twitter… especially when you try to find out how to turn a particular option on or off.
But I’ve been testing some apps that are made for making marketing with FB easier, and some of them are pretty impressive. Not gonna say that I’m even developing one of my own, but you never know. ;)

Hello Shane,

I believe you have latched onto something with FB. I am in the identical same place as you as regards this phase of IM.

I didn’t take it seriously until a couple of women folks I knew told me that they were running their local bizzes with it. After looking, I could see the sense of it. Biz gossip spreads faster than a sack of fleas in a dog kennel.

Adi’s suggestion was a revelation. A year or two ago I tried FB advertising, and blew thru my budget in about 5 minutes with zip to show. I ran away like bees were chasing me.

What never occurred to me was to use it to promote my own FaceBook page to get followers. (I think that is what she said.) There must be a ton of “why didn’t I think of thats” out there for us.

I’m ashamed at how badly I understand the thing. I just never hit the books on FB like I have for everything else. But I have been curious. Mighty curious.

I will greedily await your webinar on this Facebook thing that most 11 year olds know more about than me.

Norm

Shane says:

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Another fantastically quotable comment from you, Norm. :)

We’re defintely behind the 11-year old’s on this, but I believe we can still catch up. I’ve also seen the model of using FB ads to promote a niche targeted fanpage and then promoting stuff on that page. Apparently, it works for some.

Hey Shane

Signed up with FB personal years ago but found out pretty quickly that if I wasn’t going to use it for branding, it was just a time suck. Got about 600 friends on it and a PR3 on my profile page, but don’t really use it.

I mostly do affiliate marketing so haven’t used FB fan pages yet, although I have some WP plugins that I could use to build them with.

I have started to use FB likes, twitter etc on my aff review pages as it looks as though Google may now, or some time in the near future incorporate them into their ranking algo.

Also looking at the G plus 1 and automating the process.

No doubt that FB for branding and FBFP/marketing can be an excellent marketing/traffic source if used properly.

Cheers,

Hugh.

Shane says:

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Hey Hugh,

From a few recent measurements made by the SEOmoz guys, it looks like Google is already taking facebook shares into account, for ranking pages. So far, I think they’ve only been able to detect a correlation between the two. That doesn’t mean that the shares are necessarily causing the high rankings, but it’s not a strech to guess that they play a part.

From what i gather, a lot of IM’ers are currently cashing in by creating FB pages for offline businesses, so that’s also an interesting approach.

Hi Shane,

I use facebook personally. I’ve decided that I will only be friends with people I am actually friends with in the real world so it’s only for personal use. I thought about building fan pages but never really got around to doing it because I don’t understand the dynamics around SEO etc on facebook.
However, my younger son who is 13, asked me how he could build a fan page regarding his favourite soccer team. So I did a bit of research on how to do it and we setup a fan page, he did the design and it took us a good part of an afternoon with a couple of follow up sessions where I showed him how to filter and post RSS feeds from news sources. Well, guess what. He now has almost 500 fans and its growing faster than my mailing list!
So there is certainly something there and I will be very delighted to attend the webinar. Actually, I may ask my son to join as well.
Take care and all the best
Thesis

Shane says:

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Oh, wow! Well done on building out that page!
500 and growing is good stuff. :)

Hi Shane
Yes I am regular private FB user and have just had a Business FB page done through a course I did but have not spent much time as in trying to gain more LIKES yet.
I will be very interested in your throwing money at it project as I know this is something I need to on with ( Outsourcing ) as I work in the offline niche I need to be busy generating clients not doing the tech work.

Cheers Dean

I am certainly using FB to stay in touch with real friends and family. It’s just the greatest tool for doing that.

I have recently also begun to build fan pages for business but other interests that I have – hobbies for example. The whole way of going about marketing anything or advertising is completely different to the normal way of doing business on the internet. You have to remember that people are not there looking for the latest and greatest deal or gadget, but to socialise and have fun. There are a number of people I am learning from who know how to do it right and their methods do work.

I have been reading some of Seth Godin’s material lately too and I think he has a real handle on the direction of marketing right now. There is a move right away from the traditional models of interruption marketing to what might be called social marketing. Recommendations from within your social network. That’s why we have to be involved with FB and the like. But for those who have had success so far in the IM arena there is a lot of unlearning to do I believe to do it right.

Anyway Shane another great topic of discussion. I could talk about it for hours….

Graham

Shane says:

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That’s an interesting point you make. I think this is one of the challenging but also interesting things about facebook (and other social sites): learning how to communicate, so that it gels well with the users of those sites.

Hi Shane,
Yes, I am a facebook user and I have a “like” page. It’s not been all that successful though. I ran a few “ads” but did not really get many likes. I do have 194 likes right now, but it’s been that amount for several months now.

I could stand to learn how to better approach getting more exposure to my fanpage. I have to admit, this facebook fanpage is on the first page of Google. So, I must be doing something right…..right?

Tim

Shane says:

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Yeah, you must be doing something right indeed. :)
Hopefully, I can soon find out a bit more about it, since FB is still rather elusive to me.

I keep meaning to explore the business aspect of FB, but with everything else I have to do it just keeps getting pushed aside. I really would like to master it at some point.

Shane says:

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Yeah, you can’t do everything all at once, right?
Something I need to remind myself of again, one of these days…

Also…I’m thoroughly impressed with the results you’re getting with your Adsense site. Well done!

Hi Guys,

I was doing my morning reading and came across a Search Engine Journal article y’all might find useful.

The article is focused on how Twitter impacts search engine results, but they reference a study done my SEOMoz that surveyed 132 SEO experts about what they thought were the most important social media factors. Not surprisingly, authority of tweets and number of tweets came in #1 and #2 respectively, #3 was number of Facebook shares and #4 was authority of sharers.

They also quote a Bing rep. who says, “We do look at the social authority of a user. We look at how many people you follow, how many follow you, and this can add a little weight to a listing in regular search results.”

Here’s the link if you want to read more – http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-twitter-works-to-impact-search-results/30514/

The takeaway – as busy as we all are running our businesses, we just can’t ignore the marketing power of Twitter and Facebook . Google and the other search engines are giving them more and more importance, we need to too. Sooo, Shane, I’m doubling down on my vote for your webinar.

I wonder, do two hands in the air carry more voting power than just one?

Regards,
TJ

I forgot to clarify in my last post that, according to Matt Cutts, Google DOES NOT currently crawl Facebook wall pages and does not use Facebook likes and shares as a search ranking metric? Therefore, Google misses any linking going on there directly.

It’s possible that, indirectly, Google may pick up on Facebook links from other sites that do crawl Facebook and are then indexed by Google, but, obviously, that’s less than optimal.

A new post a few minutes ago at Search Engine Journal reiterates Google’s position, stating, “While it’s possible that things will change, especially if Google secures a partnership with Facebook, there is no current indication that Facebook likes have a direct impact in Google search engine ranking.” – http://www.searchenginejournal.com/simple-answers-are-facebook-likes-part-of-googles-algorithm/30594/

Just something to keep in mind.

Regards,
TJ

Shane says:

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Thanks for the link!
It seems that facebook likes and shares are incidental with whatever other social factors improve Google rankings. The correlation is so strong (see http://www.seomoz.org/blog/does-google-use-facebook-shares-to-influence-search-rankings) that it does make one wonder. It might still be an indirect factor in terms of facebook likes and shares causing something else that causes better rankings… definitely something to keep looking out for, though.

Hi Shane, thanks for a great Sunday update which you posted on a Monday, I,ve watched on a Thursday and am looking forward to the webinar about Facebook on Friday!

I have a personal facebook page, tried setting up a page for a website but gave up as I didn’t know what I was doing and I was not happy with it! I think this is part of the way forward but I am also very interested in the google +1 (I have just installed the free wordpress plugin for this on a couple of my sites) – it will be interesting to see how that develops too.

Evidently social media is not going to go away so I am looking forward to learning more on the webinar.

I would also be really interested to learn more about outsourcing.

Thanks
Alison

Hi Shane,

I used to use Facebook socially for a club that I was in but dropped that some time ago. However, as a result of following another SEO training course I learned about the “Posterous Method” that you mention in Backlink Battleplan. One of the sites you can include in your Posterous network is a Facebook page. So I have used a Facebook page via Posterous for building backlinks. I have not used the Posterous network that extensively so cannot comment particularly on how effective including the Facebook page is.

Thanks,

David.