Blogging News

There are lots of social networking websites that you can participate in today like MySpace and Bebo, and they all have their pluses and minuses. The best way to choose a community to participate in is to evaluate the people who have already joined. To me, Facebook is certainly one of the best internet meeting places for networking, both socially and professionally. I also use Linked In and Myspace. Of all the social networks, Facebook is the best place when it comes to all around marketing and networking.

I have been using Facebook for the past two years, and it is a first-class tool for marketing to add to your marketing arsenal. Here are 10 tips to use on Facebook to introduce new people to your business for FREE!

1. Make an Attractive Profile: This is absolutely the FIRST thing that you must do to get noticed on Facebook . Think of your Facebook profile as part of your branding. A powerful profile will include a professional picture of you. Don’t use the one of you dressed as Santa Claus, unless that’s what your selling. Make sure your new Facebook profile is complete. Your profile should include your contact information, your website address (this is really important), education, work experience and your personal interests. A complete profile is the only way to go.

2. Add Friends: This is what sets Facebook apart – the ability meet new people, build relationships and sustain them. The more relationships you develop, the more satisfying your marketing efforts will be. You can use Facebook’s own tools to search for friends that already belong to Facebook. Once you add your friends, you can search for kindred spirits. Make their acquaintance, become their friend, build a relationship. One great thing on Facebook is that you can see friends of your friends. This will help you build a extensive network in no time.

3. Join Facebook Groups: You can join groups within Facebook that are similar to what you do. There are groups for consultants, councilors, and instructors. Almost every conceivable type of professional service provider has some kind of group on Facebook. I belong to several Facebook groups and have made hundreds of new contacts this way.

4. Create your Own Group: Can’t find a group that really fits your style? Create your own! You can add members, publish articles, begin some great discussions, and probably start quite a few important new relationships. And even if you find great group to belong to, start your own. This gives you the platform to be the trendsetter!

5. Syndicate your Blog Using RSS: You can syndicate your own blog on your Facebook profile page. This in essence means that every time you make a post, it will automatically show up on your profile page. More Exposure leads to More Readers leads to More Leads creates More Business. And the bonus is the back links to your site. I syndicate headlines from my 3 blogs on Facebook.

6. Comment on Other Peoples Profiles: Are you a follower or devotee of someone’s work? Reach out to them on Facebook! Many of my friends check their Facebook messages more constantly than their email. They are also more likely to respond to Facebook messages. Don’t feel quite right sending out a message to someone you don’t know? Don’t worry! Leave them a “just saying hi!” or “I love your work!” message on their wall. All profiles come with “virtual walls” where business associates can leave a comment. The more comments you leave on your friend’s profiles the more exposure you get!

7. List your Events: Speaking somewhere or Hosting a Teleseminar? Add an events page and invite everyone you know. You can even see who RSVPed and get feedback from your attendees. Marketing doesn’t get any simpler (or more inexpensive!) than this.

8. Send Virtual Gifts: Want to show your appreciation for someone? Send them a virtual gift. You can choose from a teddy bear to an egg that hatches a surprise gift over 4 days (plus tons of others). With all the Facebook applications for gift giving available, what are you waiting for. This is a clever way to build and nurture new relationships!

9. Use Some Cool Apps: Facebook has literally dozens of applications that were built just for the site. Quizzes, games, challenges and more. When you use an application, you get to invite your friends to use these cool mini applications (Apps). So just like number 8 above, this allows you another way to stay connected to your friends on Facebook. Again, this helps you maintain and nurture new relationships.

10. Create a Community: Perhaps Facebook’s greatest benefit is that it allows you to build a community. It provides you a group of people who are perpetually connected to you, and these friends are open to hearing what you have to say. Write on people’s walls, have conversation, and introduce them to each other. Start building your brand and leveraging Facebook for business building!

Facebook is a fantastic place to introduce yourself to lots of new people who may also become customers and/or clients. Just keep one thing in mind: don’t get too carried away and spend all your time there. Facebook is a tool, part of your online marketing plan. Use the tips above, use them wisely and have a little fun at the same time.



By: Lennie Appelquist

About the Author:

annaya rana asked:


Currently there are 3 main types of broadcast Internet messaging systems that you can use to deliver newsletters, e-zines and other informational materials to your customers.

I’m not going to cover here internal or intranet messaging systems, the main focus of this article is on the virtual world outside your local/corporate network.

The main Internet Broadcasting Systems are:

- Email broadcasts that are sent through sender’s ISP and received with the email client of your customer (such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Web Mail systems, etc.)

- RSS Feeds delivered through web-based RSS Aggregators.

- Completely customizable and personalized multi-media messages that are sent through RSS Channels and received with branded RSS Readers (such as Private Mail Reader and Feed Demon).

E-mail communications used to be a very efficient way to deliver information to your prospects and customers. This was working well until we got spammers – thousands of unethical people trashing your inboxes with annoying junk offers without any permission on your part. Nobody really wanted these products, ISP customers were irritated with email-boxes full of irrelevant content, to say the least.

Big and small ISP companies (Internet Service Providers) responded by developing anti-spam filters and society at large was forced to work out a set of anti-spam laws regulating the use of e-mails.

So legitimate internet marketers had to accommodate themselves to these unpleasant changes by implementing various forms of opt-in verifications. In other words, now the customers have to confirm in some way that they give you permission to send them e-mails.

And you inevitably loose a percentage of your customers who for some reasons doesn’t want to go through the opt-in process.

Unfortunately, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Anti-spam filters are now so tight, that they easily throw in the bulk folder even legitimate e-mails. How it could happen? Well, you may accidentally use some of the “bad words” – such as “free”, “buy”, “purchase”, etc (there are hundreds of “spam words” and the list grows every day). You know very well what happen to the bulk folder emails – they are as good as trash. Chances that recipient will ever read bulk emails are slim to none.

You also lose some of your readers when you try to enhance their experience by sending emails in html format (which would allow you to add colors, and pictures to your email, use different fonts, etc).

You might want to go even further and insert audio or video streams into your emails to give your readers the opportunity to better comprehend the featured topic.

You might want to do other neat things….

Well, don’t bother. Sorry to disappoint you, but your efforts will be in vain. Major ISPs consider html to be the format for commercial emails and as such it triggers spam filters almost automatically.

Some analytic companies estimate that you can easily fail to reach as much as 70% of your customers in the nearest future. According to Doubleclick, one of the e-mail delivery leaders, the average rate of opened e-mails in 4th Quarter of 2004 declined 11.4% from Q4 2003, and is now only 32.6%.

Very bright picture, isn’t it?

Luckily, there is a solution, and it comes in a form of RSS technology (Really Simple Syndication).

To put it simply, RSS Feeds are the streams of information presented in xml format. This syndication allows webmasters to find the feeds of interest written by other authors and easily place them on their own web sites (with author’s permission, of course). The Big Benefit is that this information is automatically updated every time when the particular RSS feed is updated.

In case of RSS aggregators, readers simply subscribe to the feeds and read them through web-based user interfaces (one of the popular RSS aggregators, for example, is My Yahoo – find the RSS Feeds of your choices, add them to your My Yahoo page – and you will receive the update on what is new on these feeds and will be able to read it in user-friendly format (you don’t have to learn xml). Each time you go to MY Yahoo you will be informed which of these feeds were updated in the last 3 days.

And finally, there is a third option – RSS Readers. It gives readers the ability not to worry about the information of their choice being blocked by ISP anti-spam filters. They can simply download RSS Feed Reader and enjoy the benefits of private media-rich environment from your computer!

You don’t have to go to any websites to get these data and you’re not forced to receive this information, you decide where and when to receive it. (Whereas with e-mails you’re facing the fact that anybody could send them to your mailing address).

There are a many good RSS readers out there. Some are free, other offer free trial. The most well-known is FeedDemon (has free trial), then goes SharpReader, NewsCrawler, Awasu, PMR etc.

Now it’s your turn to explore the benefits of RSS technology. Use RSS messaging system of your choice and stay ahead of your competitors!