How to Utilize Facebook for Your Website

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 at 2:50 pm

Building a solid, attractive, and user-friendly website is one important step to entering the internet realm of business, however, what happens if no one ever comes to your website? Undoubtedly, your website will receive a few clicks here and there, probably mostly from yourself and your friends. However, to have a truly successful website, individuals need two things: traffic and capitalization. This “how to” article will describe the best strategies to implement using the social marketing tool Facebook to drive more traffic to your website.

Facebook currently is the fifth most visited website in the entire Internet with 36 million users in the United States alone and as of last May, attracted almost 124 million unique visits to the site. Keeping in mind this site is only four years old; Facebook is one of the most popular and fastest growing beehives of individual internet activity. It is up to other online websites to piggyback this success and ultimately, turn these Facebook users into visitors to your site as well. The theory seems simple, however, as with any social gathering spot, there is complications, rules, and etiquette one must follow, even online.

Step One: Create Your Personal and Company Profile

Given that Facebook is a social media platform for individuals, hiding behind an organization or company is inadvisable. In fact, putting a face to your company or business has never been easier through adding photos to your Facebook profile and photo albums applications, but more on this later. Anyone can join the Facebook community with a valid email. Once this process is complete, individuals and companies must set up their personal profiles. Initially, Facebook was intended strictly for college-aged individuals to interact with one another via the web, and the current feel and design of the site still reflects this, however, a recent trend of companies creating “individual profiles” as the face of their entire organization is occurring. This should be the base of your Facebook operations as a company, and in addition, individual webmasters should create personal profiles that tout their affiliation to the company and company profile.

Step Two: Fleshing Out Company and Personal Profile

Fill in both profiles with the available information. At the top of the web page when you enter Facebook, there is a “Profile(edit)” hyperlink, which allows users to choose from a variety of categories to express themselves and what they are all about via Facebook. Keeping these things in mind, your marketing strategy should seamlessly fit into these profile boxes, which will appear to all person who view your profile. Other information to fill out in the profile includes photos, profile picture, videos, and of course, links. The pictures and profile picture are vital in giving a site the complete look that established credibility and rapport that social media users crave. An incomplete profile is not attractive, and as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. There are a number of linking opportunities throughout the Facebook profile alone. First, the “Profile(edit)” area has a box dedicated solely to “websites:”, which is where one can easily market their domain name. Other areas include through commenting on other users profiles, throughout the “about me” section, and within the “work/employment” section found when browsing through “Profile (edit)”.

Step Three: Other Areas to Saturate Your Marketing

Interests Groups, Events, Pages, and Friends are four categories Facebook users are familiar with in this internet community. “Groups” are when individuals join a “group” page and proudly display their allegiance to this group in their personal profile under the “Groups” category. Individual users can create “Groups” and flesh out the group profile in a manner very similar to the individual profile. By having a Facebook user join your group, all his or her friends will be notified of their newfound group affiliation, and if enough curiosity is garnered, they will at the very least inspect your group page and potentially join the group as well. Thus, the viral marketing aspect of the “Groups” section is very high and potentially very contagious.

“Events” are similar to “Groups” in that an individual user creates an “Event” and invites all their Facebook friends to join the event. The event is usually a physical gathering of some form, however, online events are also common as well. “Events” are a great way for an online marketer with sufficient Facebook friends to alert consumers or website users of new developments, ideas, or marketing endeavors occurring in the future. In addition, “Events” pages allow invitees to publicly announce their intentions to accept, decline, or remain unsure about the attendance at the event.
“Pages” is relatively new in the Facebook world; however, they are nonetheless just as effective. Basically, “pages” are profiles for established entities and fall into categories such as websites, politicians, musicians, artists, corporations, retailers, and student organizations. There is an ever-expanding list of categories, so, pigeonholing into one is not a big deal currently. The main thing, along with the two aforementioned areas, is to attract “friends” to these groups, events, and pages.

“Friends” are your personal Facebook associations within the site. Generally, each profile shows a list of all your friends and keeps a running tally of how many friends each individual profile has. For an online marketer or website owner, the more friends you have the better. It is possible to get friends through a variety of methods, however, there is some strategy involved in all this just like in real life.
Step Four: Making Friends on Facebook

When attracting attention to your website or company, making friends, whether online or in person, is vital. Keeping this in mind, Facebook is no different, but also offers superb ulterior benefits as well. Every time a person becomes your friend on Facebook, all of their friends on Facebook are alerted to this newly forged association as well. Mutual friends then can also become friends of you as well if they choose, which in turn, could lead to a viral marketing snowball effect that will cause your profile to garner many, many friend requests. The only way to get friends is to be a friend, so, making friends in Facebook is as simple as finding them and requesting them as a friend.

Step Five: Taking Your Facebook Friends Back to Your Place

Once your become “friends” with an individual on Facebook, they will be able to view your profile, review your groups, events, pages, and other friends, and in turn, explore your websites as well. Creating a profile that will drive these new friends to your website is of vital importance, and this is done in a variety of methods that suit each individual company or website. Continuing to request more friends, accept friend requests, create groups, sponsor events, and add to your profile will cause your name to continually appear in your “friends” Facebook mini-feed which is essentially an RSS feed to all their Facebook friends activity. This will in turn keep your website’s presence in Facebook and garner more traffic to your website.