Facebook Friday #1: Promote Your Blog on Facebook

Posted by Dawn Baird, Partner on Dec 4, 2009 in series, social media, social networking, technology | 2 comments

This is a new series – Facebook Friday – beginning today, and prompted by lots of questions about how businesses and other organisations can use Facebook for promoting their products and services and whether a Facebook Fan Page can help direct traffic to your website.  It will be a mixture of How tos and some other related advice thrown in.  Please feel free to send questions you need answered via the Contact form, or via the comments.

If you blog and want to promote it on Facebook, then you need to read this!

Why add your blog posts to your Facebook Fan Page?

• Fans have voluntarily chosen to become connected with your Fan Page.  Therefore, they will be interested in news about your business.
  Keep them updated!
• Draw more readers to your blog.  The more places your blog appears online, the more readers you will have.
• One of the reasons to write a blog, is to redirect people to your website on a regular basis, where you can point them to additional information.

How to promote your blog on Facebook:

1. Navigate to your Facebook Fan Page.
2. Click Applications in the bottom left corner.
3. Click Browse More Applications.
4. Type Social RSS into the Search Applications box. )You could also try typing RSS into this box.  This will provide you with a more complete choice.)  Press Return.
5. Click Social RSS from the Search Results.
6. Click Add to My Page. (If you have multiple Fan Page, you will be prompted to choose which one from a list.  Click Add to Page.)  You will not see anything on your page.
7. Look for the plus symbol at the end of your Fan Page tabs.  Click to view additional tabs that may be added.
8. Click RSS/Blog to add this as a tab.  (This is the Social RSS application you have just added from Applications.)
9. Click Edit Settings at the top of this new screen.  You are beginning to create a layout and feeds to blog posts and other items.
10. Enter a Title and Feed.  The Title is whatever you want as a header for your blog.  Your organisation name would be fine.  The Feed is the RSS Feed URL that displays blog content in feed readers and other tools.  Ask your web developer if you are not sure.  In any instance, you should be able to get this URL by clicking on an RSS or Feed button on your blog and copying the URL (or by right clicking and choosing Save Link As).
11. Choose a Position to display the blog posts.  Top left is fine to begin with.
12. Click the Display Options tab and choose your preferences.  Each line corresponds to a line in the previous tab.
13. Click the Newsfeeds tab and select Yes, if you want to display new blog post alerts on your Fan Page’s wall.  This means every time you post a blog, it will appear in the RSS/Feed tab AND as a Status Update on your Fan Page.  The more automation, the better, in this instance.
14. Click Update after each action.
15. Add a Blog Description and Website link above.
16. Finally, the RSS/Blog tab can be moved to a more prominent position among the existing tabs by clicking and dragging.

What results can you expect?

• Increased visitors to your blog and website.  Between 5-10% of traffic to this site comes via Facebook.
• Increased Friends on your Profile, which is connected to your Fan Page.  If this is a professional profile, status updates and shared links can be used to complement the information supplied on your Fan Page.  And, people can see who the page creator is and start a dialogue if they wish.

But, how will people know I have a Facebook Fan Page?

Rather than being concerned about numbers, let your page build gradually, but use all contacts with customers to let them know.

• Add it to your email signature.
• Add it to your email marketing campaigns.
• Add it to your website Contact page.
• Add it to any other marketing tools and materials you use (both on and offline).
• Add it to Status Updates on your own Profile page (occasionally).
• Someone I know even added their Facebook Fan Page URL to a competition form.  It’s all about being creative!  Think where else it could appear.

Any queries, please add a comment.