How to Use Facebook to Promote Your Blog

In this guest post, Steve Schwartz, a professional LSAT tutor, discusses how he has used Facebook to promote his Ace the LSAT blog and create a community of readers.
Your blog’s readers probably have Facebook profiles already, and making your own Facebook profile is easy enough. Aside from allowing you to create a profile and connect with your friends from elementary school, Facebook has several features that can connect your blog readers and help you find new ones.

Create a Facebook Group

Your readers have a common interest – your blog’s subject. My readers are preparing for the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT). Maybe yours are interested in knitting, running, or making money online. Just as they have subscribed to your blog, they will join your Facebook group.
At the beginning of December 2008, I created the 2009 LSAT Study / Discussion Facebook Group. Someone else had created a 2008 LSAT Group, and I wanted to be the person to create the 2009 group, so I started early. When someone is searching Facebook for an LSAT group to join this year, they’ll see my group has over 100 members, but someone else’s group on the same topic only has 3, guess which group they’ll join.
Note: I didn’t make the group about my blog directly – I made it broader. Why? So people searching on Facebook for LSAT-related groups would feel welcome to join. If they thought it was limited to my blog’s readers, the prospective member might not even visit the group page, which means he/she would never see the link to my blog.
So I created a group and placed a prominent link to my blog on the top, but it only had one member – me. Not very impressive, right? I didn’t want my readers to think my group and blog were unpopular, so I immediately invited all of my Facebook friends to join the group. Some of my Facebook friends were already planning to take the LSAT, so inviting them to join my new Facebook group had two additional benefits:
1. It informed them of my blog if they didn’t know about it already.
2. Facebook’s news feed told all their friends, making the group a viral marketing mechanism for the blog..

How Readers Use the Facebook Group

Of course, the Facebook group is more than a viral marketing mechanism too. It helps your readers to connect with each other in a way comments don’t. While comments are generally responses to your postings, Facebook’s discussion boards allow direct interaction between readers. My readers have used the Facebook group to find LSAT study partners and form study groups by posting messages on the discussion board and the Wall. How did I tell my readers about the Facebook Group? I posted a link to it on the side of my blog, and I made a brief blog post about it for those who hadn’t noticed the link.

Marketing Your Facebook Group, and Your Blog, in Other Facebook Groups

Search Facebook for groups on your topic and related ones. In each of these groups, you can post a message on the group Wall or discussion board, or you can use the Post a Link feature to notify the group’s members of your group and your blog. Warning: don’t do all three in the same group at the same time – it’s overkill and may get you banned from the group. By promoting your Facebook group at first, instead of promoting your blog, you decrease the likelihood that the group administrator will remove your message.
After doing all of this, Facebook became one of my biggest sources of traffic, and I don’t even have to do much to keep the Facebook traffic coming. In order to get more readers, you need to have a presence where they are. For me and for many bloggers these days, our present and future readers spend their time in social networking sites.
What about you? Have you used Facebook or other social networking sites to promote your blog? Have you found it to be effective?

How To Promote Your Blog Using Facebook Pages

One of the more effective ways of promoting your blog is to use a site everyone either loves or hates – Facebook. The social networking site allows you to create a page to promote your blog or business – and it’s completely free.  

By having a Facebook page for your blog, you can set up your RSS feed so your new posts appear on your fan page. Facebook members can then become a “fan” of your posts and comment on your posts inside Facebook.
In short, you can:

• create a mini community of loyal blog readers inside Facebook.
• encourage them to click through to your blog and sign up for the proper RSS feed.

So, are you interested in getting your page set up?   If so, here’s how to get it set up quickly.

1.  Sign up on Facebook

First you have to have a free Facebook account.   If not then go here and set one up.

2.  Click zee link

Then click on this link to get your fan page going.   Here is the page that will then appear :

If you are creating a page for a blog / website, you will need to choose “Brand, Product or Organization”.   Then from the drop-down list, select “website”.
Enter the name of your site (or whatever you want your page to be called) in “Name Of Other Business”, tick “I am authorized to create this page” (assuming of course you ARE authorized), enter your name under “Electronic Signature” and then click “Create Page”.

3.  Customize Your Page

Your page will now be set up and you will be taken straight there.
Here are some of the things you can do to customize your page :

Customize your image :

The first thing your page obviously needs is an image.  For blogs, the obvious image to first consider is your logo.
To upload an image, just point your mouse to the image area and a menu will pop up with various options.
You can either upload a photo, take a picture with your webcam or choose from a Facebook album.

 

Customize your site information :

In the “Info” tab, you can type detailed information about your site such as the URL, the “overview” (so this would be a good place to enter any tagline or motto that your site has.   MakeUseOf’s is “Cool Websites, Software and Internet Tips”).
You can also enter information such as when you started the site  and if you have any “products” you’d like to talk about.
In short, use this section to blab away about your site.

Set up your blog RSS feed to show your new posts in Facebook

This is, I think, one of the most important aspects of a blog fan page.   If you are unable to show your new posts, how can you possibly persuade people to come to your site and sign up for the RSS feed?

• First, click on the “notes” tab at the top of the page.


• Select “Import A Blog” in the Notes Setting section. You can only import from 1 RSS feed at a time. Simply “Stop Importing” if you want to change the RSS feed.


• Enter the RSS URL in the box provided. Check the box next to the statement that you actually own the content. You cannot import RSS feeds from websites that are not your own or that you do not have permission to reproduce.


• Click the “Start Importing” button. Facebook will import the content of the RSS feed for you to preview. If everything looks OK, then go ahead and press the “Continue” button. Your RSS feed will now be automatically imported into your “Notes” section.
• After that, everytime you publish a post on your blog, a summary of the post along with a link will appear on your Facebook page.

4. Publicise Your Page

Now that your Facebook page is all set up, all that remains to be done is to publicise it to your readers so they can “fan” you.  Some methods to get the word out there include :

• Writing a blog post about your new Facebook page (don’t forget to link to it).
• Putting a prominent link at the top of your blog or in the sidebar.  Just grab a Facebook logo from Google Images and then link it to your page.
• Sending out an email to all your Facebook friends and telling them about your new fan page.  If they were interested enough to become Facebook friends with you, I’m sure they will be interested in your blog too.

Do you have a Facebook fan page for your blog?  If so, how successful is it in getting new RSS subscribers for your site?