Bob's Home Business Blog

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.

Bob Withers

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Facebook has become a social media phenomenon online and the potential offered by this website for your home based Internet business is too intriguing to ignore. Because of the increasing popularity of this web based social media mogul, facebook fan pages have become all the rage among Internet marketers as a way to promote themselves, their business and their brand.

According to the “My Computer Made Simple” blog fan pages are: “Special public profiles meant to promote a brand, a product, an artist, a web site or an organization.” After building one of these web pages your attention should now be focused on building your fan base. Here are 5 techniques you can use to attract your target market to your facebook fan page:

1. The first tactic may be the most obvious because it involves inviting your friends and your current customers to subscribe to your website. Your friends may introduce their contacts to your web page which could result in several new prospects for your home business.

2. The next step in building your list of facebook fanatics is to introduce your email list to your public profile. Similar to your squeeze page strategy you can invite your list to sign up to your page in exchange for a free gift to serve as an incentive for their participation.

The main objective of your fan page is to create a viral effect therefore your email list may encourage people in their network to check out your facebook page thereby creating the desired outcome.

3. As with your blog or business website you must update your fan page with interesting content on a regular basis. You want your fans coming back to your page to check out your new information as often as possible because, as we all know, the more often a prospect is exposed to your offer the greater the probability they will become paying customers.

4. Another strategy you can employ to help add subscribers to your facebook page is to become a fan of other entrepreneurs websites who have a large following and make it a point to interact with them and some of their members on a regular basis. If they find value in your content they may sign up and become fans of your web page and eventually become clients.

5. Finally, don’t forget about your fans. When you’ve created a sizeable following you now have the opportunity to establish relationships with your members. You can do this by making regular offers of free quality merchandise to your subscribers as well as following up with welcome and thank you messages in order to make them feel appreciated.

Remember, relationship building is an essential step before someone agrees to become a paying customer because they are more likely to do business with you if they feel as though they know you and trust you and your Internet enterprise.

Facebook has 400 million members and continues to grow as we speak; so the potential for you and your home based business is unparalleled in the social media arena online.

Bob Withers

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Facebook has become the website of choice online today. With over 600 million users and growing day-by-day this Internet juggernaut provides a tremendous marketing opportunity for all types of business ventures worldwide. From the smallest home based business to the largest multi-national corporation Facebook offers an unprecedented potential for reaching a massive audience in one online location.

Although the advantages offered by this Internet entity are well documented there’s also a downside associated with utilizing this web based vehicle for your Internet marketing strategy. This editorial will explore 4 such potentially destructive results for your business as a result of using this social media giant as part of your Internet advertising plan.

1. First and foremost the potential of having your website hacked or broken into and of having all of your personal and business information stolen is a very real concern. Because of the large numbers of people who log-on to this web page on a daily basis the task of preventing hackers from accessing your data is impossible.

If someone were to use your Facebook page to steal personal information and or business documents Facebook may shut your business page down while they investigate the situation. This is a big risk to take while they try to determine who was responsible for this intrusion because time is money and this would pose the potential for a big set back for your enterprise.

2. Any advertising campaign you create for Facebook has to be geared specifically toward its users because often times traditional offline marketing doesn’t translate well to their patrons. Many companies found this to be the case when they initially began using this social media website because these people seem to be much more relaxed and informal they don’t respond well to the more traditional offline, formal approach to marketing.

If you’re more accustomed to advertising on radio, TV or in the print media you would have to change your strategy and make it a more relaxed and laid back policy in order to succeed with these online prospects.

3. Another problem, more for larger corporations than smaller ventures, is having a Facebook business page through which you give employees access to sensitive company documents.

This opens up another potentially disastrous situation because these employees can very easily share this information with people on the outside of the company therefore undermining the organization’s security. This may put the business at risk because the competition could easily access sensitive data which may undermine the company’s standing in the business community.

4. Because of Facebook’s growing popularity and the massive market it represents the competition from rival businesses will be nothing short of intense. For this reason you should be prepared to target a niche market which isn’t in the advertising lime light or which is being virtually ignored by other organizations on the web.

In order to succeed with your Internet marketing campaign using this social media phenomenon it may be necessary to reinvent your home business by moving from niche to niche while profiting the most from each while you can before moving on to the next opportunity.

With Facebook approaching, or perhaps having achieved, the status as the most popular website in Internet history it would be folly to ignore this online marketing opportunity for your home based business. Even though there are negative aspects these are far outweighed by the positive attributes of this social media mogul.

Bob Withers

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