3 Good Reasons Why Your Business Should Have a Facebook Fan Page

Posted by Jackie Ewing on January 19, 2010

You’ve heard enough about Facebook by now to know that you probably should be doing something about using it in your business.  But like many others, you are probably also wondering WHY and HOW?!

This article will address the WHY part of that question.

In a nutshell, if you add a Facebook Fan Page to your overall marketing strategy (and Yes, you should have one of these!!) you will supplement your efforts at driving traffic to your website or phone.

Here are 3 really good reasons why your business should have a Facebook Fan Page and why it is imperative that you do it NOW as opposed to “just as soon as I can find the time”.

1. Excellent Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
2. Very effective communication tool
3. It’s FREE!!

Let’s take a look at these in more detail so you can see how they apply to YOUR business.

Excellent Search Engine Optimization:

If you have a website for your business then you surely are aware of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how much time and energy is spent on this.  The idea is if your website is optimized with the right keywords and meta data, the search engines will find your website, like what they find and then place you high in their rankings of other websites similar to yours.  Good SEO will place your site high in the organic (non-paid for) listings when folks search for your product or service.  A Facebook Fan Page will supplement all of your other SEO efforts.

You can add content daily and change it out at will. The static pages of your site once indexed, remain that way because they typically don’t change much. Search engines like new and updated relevant content and will index it well if they see it happening on a regular basis.  Posts to your Facebook Fan Page can be done daily, even hourly if your audience is receptive enough.

You can add unlimited photos and videos to your Facebook Fan Page. Tag and describe these with your top keywords and you give the search engines many more reasons to visit and index your site.

Very Effective Communication Tool:

Of the 350 million users that are on Facebook almost daily, do you think any of your customers are among them? Absolutely!  So use Facebook to converse with them in their style.  Of course, first you need to get them to come to your Fan Page and become a fan.  You can do that many ways – email signatures, newsletters, mail invitations.  Just find the customers that choose Facebook as their favored communication tool and interact with them regularly. Take a llok at Coca Cola’s Fan Page to see how they interact with their fans and you’ll see how powerful a communication tool this really is!

It’s FREE:

This the greatest reason why your business should have a Facebook Fan Page – it’s completely Free to use! You can double or triple your SEO efforts at no cost to you, but some well-planned time. The speed that good fan pages are showing up all over the search engines is phenomenal! If you don’t take advantage of this, you will most certainly be left behind.

How to Block Those Annoying Game Apps on Facebook

Posted by Jackie Ewing on January 11, 2010

I’ve seen one-too-many comments from frustrated Facebook friends on the raging Mafia Wars or Farmville or sheep-throwing or other such nonsense to ignore it any longer.

Block Mafia Wars

I consider myself one of the lucky few who have never engaged with anyone on these and so have remained relatively free of requests. I did make it my business to find out how to block unwanted applications when I received a ton of requests to join Mafia Wars from friends that I knew were just not the type – and sure enough, it was a scam.

So, to permanently block one or more unwanted applications from your facebook you have two choices

1. Next time you receive a request from one of these apps, look for the “block application” link and click on it
2. Go to the app itself and block it there

To do the 2nd option, follow these steps:

• Click on the Facebook Applications link in the bottom left-hand corner of your screen
• type “mafia wars” in the search box and hit enter
• You’ll get a list of apps with that name; the most popular one is the one you want to block which is usually top of the list. look at the number of active users if you are unsure which to choose
• click on the link to the app
• right under where it says “Go To Application” it also has the option to Block Application
• Click on “Block Application”
• You’ll get a pop-up screen asking if you want to block the application, click on the big blue Block Mafia Wars button
• Final pop-up will confirm that this app is now blocked for you
  

  How to Block Farmville

If you want to block more apps just repeat the above steps for each of them.

Hope that helps alleviate the frustration with unwanted apps. Let me know how it worked out for you. All comments are welcome!