December 13,  2012 by Mary Killelea

I am a huge fan of Amy Porterfield, she and I connected on Facebook
awhile back. We both love Facebook Marketing.
I am thrilled to help her promote her new
product that really breaks Facebook Marketing down into easy to follow steps!

Please watch her video!

In order to thrive in growing your business using online
marketing strategies you need a few KEY things:

1. The right tools
2. Traffic
3. Conversions

It’s simple when you know exactly what to do.

Luckily for you, right now there is one resource
you can to leverage to achieve these 3 things.

That resource is……… Facebook!

With close to 1 Billion members on Facebook
there is no question this is the best place online
to get more leads, traffic, and sales.

Are you making the most out of it right now
or letting your competitors take the leads from you?

Seriously you gotta see this video

You’ll learn exactly what you need
to do to create more fans on Facebook and how to
turn them into Super Fans!
Cheers to a prosperous 2012!

December 5, 2011 by Mary Killelea

No matter what type of company you own, Facebook is a fantastic venue to market your business on. Facebook has over 800 million active users and according to http://www.socialbakers.com the average person spends about 55 minutes a day engaged on Facebook. Facebook allows every person to have a free profile but they make it clear that personal pages are for personal use only and they do NOT want you to promote your businesses through your profile. Facebook has created business pages for this purpose, making them equipped with business reporting tools, custom tabs, apps, and other business specific assets.

Why Market on Facebook? What you have to understand about Facebook is for many people, it’s become their virtual world.. that’s where they hang out with friends, family and engage with businesses. People’s expectations of businesses has changed over the past 5 years, now people want to engage with a business and expect for that business to be accessible and transparent thru social media, like Facebook, and Twitter. For this article we are focusing on Facebook.

People buy from companies they know and trust. Facebook provides businesses this ideal setting to extend your brand by creating a Facebook business page and tools to allow you to engage with customers on a one to one basis.

Facebook is a great place for small businesses because it levels the playing field no matter what size your company is you have the same resources to market side by side the big companies. You can find most of the top fortune 500 companies engaging with their fans (customers) on Facebook and take the time to watch and learn from them. Face it if the top companies in the country are utilizing Facebook to build relationships and establish repoire with their exiting and potential customers shouldn’t you as a small business.

Facebook business marketing is free and if you consider each person on average has 130 friends and when a person likes your page, you can market to them thru daily posts and when they like or comment on your posts, those interactions are shared with their friends now your message, brand, services and products have very high chance of being viewed by other liked minded friends who too can become fans and customers of yours.

As you can see the viral marketing effect of Facebook can be enormous but one essential thing to realize when marketing on Facebook, your efforts need to be sincere, your goals needs to be altruistic and your company needs to be transparent. Your marketing strategy should be focused on what solid, beneficial content can you share that will build repoire with your customers and start a dialogue, how can you connect with them in ways that your competition isn’t, what makes your business different. There is a great rule of thumb to follow it’s the 90/10 rule which means 90 percent of the time you are adding value and finding creative ways to connect with fans in an authentic way, 10 percent of the posts should be sales oriented.

One really important thing to recognize is that you want everyone that visits your Facebook business page to “Like” the page. This is achieved in a various ways but one of the most successful ways is to create a reveal tab that they land on by designating this in your settings. This reveal tab will be your first impression so it’s very important to make it a good one. You want to ask them to “Like” your page and offer them some type of incentive, the incentive or payoff is revealed to them once they have clicked the “Like” button. Most people will typically check out a companies business page and in less than 5 seconds decide whether or not they want to click “Like” and give you permission to market to them thru their news feed. “Liking” a business page is the equivalent of a person giving you an endorsement and allowing you to update them with news, information, tips and offerings similar to signing up for a newsletter.

As mentioned above having a business page is free. But when it comes to setting up a custom landing page with a reveal offer there are companies like ours that will design your custom Facebook business reveal tab for you if you are not tech savvy or there are tools out there that you can purchase and some that are even for free that allow you to set up the business custom tab yourself. It’s important to understand that you should optimize your business page with keywords that help identify your products or services as well as your company name so when people do searches for businesses on Facebook either by company name or keywords your company will come up. This can be achieved by thoroughly going through your set up steps and filling out all the information in the about us section and knowing that adding photos of your products and services is beneficial as well as who your page lists as their favorites can be strategic.

One of the best ways to get fans is by posting out as your page on other business pages. This is a powerful marketing strategy you can practice. This is achieved by identifying 5-6 other business pages that you think your potential customers visit, hang out or interact with. When you are on your business page you select “use Facebook as my business page” and then visit their pages see what the conversations are and interact and posts feedback and comments where appropriate. You will be amazed at how many companies will like your page just because they saw you engaging with them and others will visit your page because they saw you posting something interesting and want to learn more about you.

Facebook advertising is another incredible resource that businesses have today, like Google’s pay per click or adwords this is setup very similarly but the advantage that Facebook offers is that you have the ability to market to specific segments of people based on their likes and interests. When each person signs up and builds a profile on Facebook, they fill out a series of questions and over time people add interests and activities to their profiles as a means of enriching their virtual world presence. Facebook so brilliantly tracks all this data giving advertisers a huge advantage allowing them the ability to target VERY specific demographics making an ad campaign a great investment.

As a business owner Facebook can be daunting because there are tactics that are beneficial and tactics to avoid. In writing this article I hope I have shared the importance of getting into the game, and utilizing Facebook to market your business, convinced you it’s an amazing tool that can help grow your business, that there are differences between having a business page and profile page and what the value is in having a person “Like” your page.

Working Web Solutions has been in business for 10 years offering Web Design, SEO and Facebook Business Marketing, our motto is Your Success Is Our Success “Like” our business page on Facebook at www.facebook.com/webdesignandseo and visit us online at www.workingwebsolutions.com to watch a video about Facebook business marketing.

Below is a list of additional resources that I hope you find helpful.

Facebook Business Marketing www.facebook.com/business
Advertising Guidelines: www.facebook.comads_guidelines.php
Guide to Facebook Ads: www.facebook.com/adsmarketing
Advertising Help Center: www.facebook.com/adshelp
Create a Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/pages/create.php
Facebook Page Promotional Guidelines:www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php
Creating a custom Facebook Fan Page http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84bEDBVmdsM&NR=1
Software to create a custom Facebook Fan Page http://www.fanpageengine.com
Software to create a custom Facebook Fan Page http://get10000fans.com/
Wildfire iFrames app (Contests etc.) http://www.wildfire.com

September 21, 2011 by Mary Killelea

Increase your bottom line and sell your products and services on Facebook thru shopping cart applications.

Fan Page — Yes it is possible and it’s a growing trend! A Facebook Store front  is a fan page that is just like your website store, offering the similar functions and operational procedure. Still being a Facebook page, it allows to integrate some features more tightly (“likes”, comments etc).

Below I have listed four different ecommerce applications for Facebook that  I have found. I have not used personally nor do I endorse one over the other  I am just sharing with you the ones I’ve found out their online .I do hope after reading a bit about each you have a better idea of which one  you may choose in the future for your ecommerce needs.The first two applications that I have listed below allow users to directly shop within the walls of Facebook which if you ask me has great value. People tend not to want to be directed outside of Facebook if this was their entry  point.

Infused Commerce is very cool. With this application you an quickly create a branded Facebook store, grow fans with revenue generating events, track your store’s and promotions’ performance, release promotions with their support assistance, deploy your Facebook store as a widget on any website or blog, and assured security and available custom integration.Once you sign-up you can login to create and deploy your Facebook store all within minutes. You can set your colors and logo, add your products to the store, set your payment and shipping options, and install the shop on Facebook from their administrative interface.

View a live demo of this application in action. These guys look to have the best support that I’ve found so far. They actually   provide a phone number in case you want to talk to someone directly http://infusedcommerce.zendesk.com/home

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Shop Igniter is another great ecommerce application that is available if you  want to set up a store within Facebook. Their selling points include Social  Merchandising, Social Marketing and Social Metrics. They distinguish themselves from others by offering retailers and brands the ability to quantify their most influential customers, products and promotions. Which in today’s social world can help retailers significantly. 

As written in Website Magazine “This product promises to give retailers and brands insights into who their most influential customers are (and how to create rewards for them), what their most viral products are (and adjust their stores and collections to reflect that) and test and optimize the virality of their promotions.” Read their full review.

I have signed up to get a demo to truly understand how these are executed but from what I can see the concepts and offerings all seem to be in place and all encompassing. Unfortunately no pricing is available online. To find out what the available pricing options are request a demo.

May 12, 2011 by Mary Killelea 

Ever wonder how your posts get seen by others? EDGE RANK is Facebook’s formula for ranking — This is CRITICAL to understand for your Facebook Business Marketing Success

Facebook launched back in 2004 which seems like a life time ago and it is in the internet world. In a recent article I was reading from Tech Crunch Edge Rank the secret sauce that makes facebook’s News Feeds Tick  they said Zuckerberg put the compents of FB’s Like buttons, instant chat and auto login capabilities into context: Zuckerberg says “we are building a Web where the default is social.”

Here’s a little explaination about each of these features that makes FB so social.

Social plugins enable you to provide engaging social experiences to your users with just a line of HTML. Because the plugins are served by Facebook, the content is personalized to the viewer whether or not they have signed into your site

The Graph API is the core of Facebook Platform, enabling you to read and write data to Facebook. It provides a simple and consistent view of the social graph, uniformly representing objects (e.g., people, photos, events, and pages) and the connections between them (e.g., friendships, likes, and photo tags)

Facebook authentication enables your application to interact with the Graph API on behalf of Facebook users, and it provides a powerful single-sign on mechanism across web, mobile, and desktop apps.

Insights enable you to access key metrics and statistics about your Page, Application or domain.

Collectively these interactions make up everyone’s EdgeRank

News Feed only displays a subset of the stories generated by your friends — if it displayed everything, it would be overwhelming. SO this is where Facebook Business Marketing comes into play. Yes there is or should be a strategy to your posts.  Successful Facebook Business Marketers are always trying to make sure their posts (objects) are engaging and interactive so they can get good EDGE RANK.

The Edge Rank is pretty simple to understand in theory. Every item ( text post, photo, video or link ) that shows up in your News Feed is considered an Object. If you have an Object in the News Feed which in simple terms is a status update, whenever another user interacts with that Object they’re creating what Facebook calls an Edge, which includes actions like tags and comments.

Each Edge has three components important to Facebook’s algorithm:

• First, there’s an affinity score between the viewing user and the item’s creator — if you send your friend a lot of Facebook messages and check their profile often, then you’ll have a higher affinity score for that user than you would, say, an old acquaintance you haven’t spoken to in years.
• Second, there’s a weight given to each type of Edge. A comment probably has more importance than a Like, for example.
• When the post was written is a factor as well. The older an Edge is, the less important it becomes.

Multiply these factors for each Edge then add the Edge scores up and you have an Object’s EdgeRank. And the higher that is, the more likely your Object is to appear in the user’s feed. It’s worth pointing out that the act of creating an Object is also considered an Edge, which is what allows Objects to show up in your friends’ feeds before anyone has interacted with them.

It has been talked about that the two tabbed viewing of your Top News and Most Recent is a little confussing for most users.  Many people still use both tabs, with over 50% of users clicking over to the ‘most recent’ tab on a regular basis.

It has been said also that posts that come in from third party automated systems don’t weigh as much but if that is the only way you can manage to post then I would recommend you continue for now.

This is such an imporant post because this is the basis for your success on facebook as a marketing vehicle. This is why posts need to be engaging, and you need to have a strategy around how and when your business is interacting on facebook. Done right you can have a successful Edge Rank.  Unfortuantely most business owners don’t realize this.

Here are our recommended steps for facebook business marketing:

1. create a welcome tab for your fan page that offers an incentive and true value to people to become a fan of yours on FB. It’s your first impression make it a good one. Here are some examples of custom fan page designs.

2. create a customizable profile banner for your fan page

3. optimize your fan page there is a lot of areas on your fan page that are key areas of real estate and you should not waste that marketing opportunity.

4. develop a marketing strategy that includes identifing your facebook team contributors and strategist, unified  messaging &  purpose and determine a consistent engagement protocal while being flexible and responsive to your fans.

If you want to learn more or have Working Web Solutions work with you on any of these goals.
Please contact us at 503-997-6935 we’d love to share what we’ve learned and been able to do for other clients.  Facebook Business Marketing can be really rewarding.

March 14, 2011 By Mary Killelea

After reading a recent article by Nick Cobb from the Freelance Copywriter it inspired me to write this article. As he says when sites like Facebook and Twitter arrived on the scene not so long ago, they were viewed as a flash in the pants only being utilized by young kids and techno geeks. Social media marketing is now mainstream with fortune 500 companies investing thousands of marketing dollars on social media as part of their marketing mix. It’s undeniable of the potential FB, Twitter and other social media tools can have on your business growth.

Forward-thinking businesses that are utilizing these sites as promotional tools for their products and services see the value. This really is how social media marketing was born. An industry literally created for the purpose of maximizing these tools for your business.

As a result of this realization, the manner in which businesses communicate and interact with their customers has been completely transformed. And if you’re not utilizing FB and other social media tools as part of your business marketing mix you are missing out on a very valuable form of communication and brand building.

By signing up to these sites, you’ll be able to give your business greater exposure online, and post information about your products and services, offer discounts, share industry news, new product info and engage with your customers.

The goal is to post useful and high quality content that provides value for the reader, then more and more people will “follow” you (in Twitter’s case) or become a “friend” (on Facebook), which will help you to build positive, long-term relationships with customers who might not have previously found you. Studies show fans are more to buy your products or services than non fans.. so reach out and try and attract new fans!

Thru Facebook Custom Fan pages you can entice users to Like your page in a number of creative ways, you can offer videos, capture leads and offer ecommerce right on Facebook. Facebook Pages are being indexed in the search engines. The future of marketing is literally developing right in front of our eyes. This is a very EXCITING time, become a part of it …. there are no guarantees and it is somewhat unchartered territory, but for those that take a leap of faith and venture into the social marketing arena the rewards so out way the alternative.

http://www.facebook.com/webdesignandseo

August 17, 2010 by Mary Killelea

I am sorry it’s been so long since I have made an entry — business has been good and I’ve been busy with client projects!

But when I read about this I had to share it,

As you know Facebook is HUGE and the business pages are growing expontential in means of online marketing for companies. Now Facebook has made it even more valuable… with an effort to make business particpating in Facebook money there is a push for monetizing pages from within Facebook.  By utilizing shopping cart software built exclusively for Facebook, retailers can now sell products right on their Facebook pages - no need for users to ever exit Facebook.com.

These e-commerce platforms are still quite new, and users should be aware of the beta environment and possible bugs  and potential upgrades that they will have to prepare for when implementing. However, for those with large fan presences, these e-commerce platforms can be extremely beneficial. 

Greg Finn from Search land wrote a great article on this topic.  Read the article

April 21, 2o10 by Mary Killelea 

Facebook is near 500 million monthly unique visitors. The social network saw 484 million unique visitors worldwide in March, 2010, according to comScore’s latest estimate. That number is up 64 percent from a year ago, and up 22 million from just February, 2010. So basically it grew by about the size of Twitter’s entire U.S. audience in a single month.  Read more

If your company is not on Facebook you are missing out!!!  

April 20, 2010 by Mary Killelea 

Facebook is making a big change that will impact users once again. If you are a business with a fan page keep reading.

 The biggest change is that users no longer “Become a Fan” of a fan page. Instead they will now “Like” a page and people will no longer be listed as fans, but will be “People who Like This.” Facebook explains the change.

This is what Facebook has posted on fan pages: “Introducing the Like button — Starting today people will be able to connect with your Page by clicking “Like” rather than “Become a Fan.” We hope this action will feel much more lightweight, and that it will increase the number of connections made across the site. Learn more.

Why did “Become a Fan” change to “Like”?

To improve your experience and promote consistency across the site, we’ve changed the language for Pages from “Fan” to “Like.” We believe this change offers you a more light-weight and standard way to connect with people, things and topics in which you are interested.

What does it mean to “Like” a Page?

When you click “Like” on a Page, you are making a connection to that Page. The Page will be displayed in your profile, and in turn, you will be displayed on the Page as a person who likes that Page. The Page will also be able to post content into your News Feed.

Can I still “Like” a News Feed story about my friends Liking Pages?

No. When you see a Feed story about a friend Liking a Page, there will be no feedback links below that story. However, if you hover over the Page name, you will see a small preview of the Page and the number of other people who have also Liked that Page. You can then Like that Page to add it to your profile, or you can click through to the Page itself.

Is there a difference between “Liking” an item a friend posts and “Liking” a Page?

Yes. Liking a Page means you are connecting to that Page. When you connect to a Page, it will appear in your profile and you will appear on the Page as a person who likes that Page. The Page will also be able to post content into your News Feed.

On the other hand, when you click “Like” on a piece of content that a friend posts, you are simply letting your friend know that you like it without leaving a comment.

Read more on

Connecting profile interests to Pages

Profile connections

Community Pages

Privacy for connections

by Mary Killelea Dec 3, 2009  

With the incredible high user base, expect more Facebook changes to come…

Here is a excerpt from a recent letter to facebook users that Mark Zuckerberg the founder of Facebook wrote,

 ”Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we’ve concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy. Almost 50 percent of all Facebook users are members of regional networks, so this is an important issue for us. If we can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have even more control of their information.

The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

We’re adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In addition, we’ll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings. If you want to read more about this, we began discussing this plan back in July.

Since this update will remove regional networks and create some new settings, in the next couple of weeks we’ll ask you to review and update your privacy settings. You’ll see a message that will explain the changes and take you to a page where you can update your settings. When you’re finished, we’ll show you a confirmation page so you can make sure you chose the right settings for you. As always, once you’re done you’ll still be able to change your settings whenever you want.”

Read the complete letter here: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=190423927130

by Mary Killelea October 28, 2009

Just like having a website it doesn’t matter if you have the coolest website or fan page you can’t expect people to just find you without putting in some effort .. you have to MARKET your business online. So here are some great tips on how to increase traffic to your fan page.Now this should go without saying but for those just getting into it.. REMEMBER is it very important to communicate regularly with the people who are interested in your company. Engage with them, respond and acknowledge them when they take the time to make a comment or to say hi.   If you are real and show them respect they will be more likely to share your business with their friends.