The social media is all the rage on the Internet these days as evidenced by the popularity of websites such as Facebook and twitter. For example according to digital buzz blog: “With over 600 million users, Facebook is now used by 1 in every 13 people on earth, with over 250 million of them (over 50%) who log in every day.”
“The average user still has about 130 friends, but that should expand in 2011. 48% of 18-34 year olds check Facebook when they wake up, with 28% doing so before even getting out of bed. The 35+ demographic is growing rapidly, now with over 30% of the entire Facebook user base.”
As you can see Facebook alone provides a tremendous Internet marketing opportunity for your online home based business. However, if you combine the traffic from this social media giant with twitter’s visitors and include some of the top social book marking sites on the web such as Digg you now have the makings of an Internet juggernaut of potential prospects for your website.
Let’s take a closer look at Facebook and explore how you can use it to your entrepreneurial advantage. Of course when you look at the social media online the first thing that comes to mind as a business owner is that more traffic equals more profit for your Internet venture. So your focus now becomes how to divert as many of their visitors as you can to your website so you can present them your product offer.
The most obvious way to do this is to create Facebook fan pages related to your home business. The main objective of using these web pages is to establish a positive identity for you and your Internet enterprise while letting your prospective customers know more about you as a person.
You should first of all create a profile that grabs people’s attention and include a picture of yourself to help create the relationships needed to be successful with this medium. Your Facebook page should be oriented towards your online home business rather than the run of the mill personal website which mainly concentrates on communicating with friends rather than establishing business relationships.
You should include some background information about yourself via a personal profile while telling people what your business is about. Don’t forget to include the all important back links to your website while tying it all together with your value statement or your mission for your online venture.
Now that you have everything set up you can now start marketing your Internet business by posting information on your wall for your visitors. Whether you’re launching a new product, you’re starting a new Internet marketing campaign or you’re introducing a new freebie for your prospective customers the best way to let your Facebook prospects know about it is by posting it on your wall.
The best approach to marketing your enterprise using Facebook is to establish a relationship with your visitors without continually bombarding them with promotional offers. If you take the latter approach you’ll find that you’ll lose more customers than you’ll gain thereby defeating the purpose of your business page.
You can accomplish this by uploading product information directly from your business website to your fan page including any special promotions, discounts or giveaways to try to entice people to visit your website via Facebook. You could create a weekly or monthly contest with a prize for the winner directly from your Facebook page while tying it to your website where contestants will have to visit to see if they’ve won.
This is a great way to increase your return traffic by encouraging people to participate and come back to discover the final results. You can also create a forum or chat room on your fan page and invite people to communicate with each other and to offer any suggestions or tips they may have about your product line and your business.
You could offer a prize for the best tip of the week which would give your visitors another reason to keep coming back. Remember the more often someone visits your website the more likely they are to become a paying customer.
Remember to use your Facebook home business page as an Internet marketing tool designed to bring people together as a community while not having to worry about being bombarded with promotions for your products or services. This will help establish the relationships you will need to ensure the long term success of your Internet enterprise via Facebook and its horde of daily visitors.
