Are you wondering if it’s worth your time?

Well, I think I can help you out.

Soon after joining Facebook in 2005, I started a non-profit organization and I’ve been building audiences using this platform ever since. I can’t imagine not using Facebook to get traffic.

It’s Time to Get Started

I’m here to help you get your business started on Facebook. The first post in this series will focus on the fact that you MUST be on Facebook as an online business.

I don’t mean to say that you should forget about everything that Sterling and Jay have taught you. No, don’t trade your blog in for a Facebook page. Don’t trade your email list in for Facebook ‘likes.’   That is the last thing you should do!

Rather, Facebook is a powerful traffic generation tool that has the potential to blow other traffic sources out of the water!

In fact, since December, I’ve managed to build an email list of… let me check the current total… 2,788 email subscribers primarily using traffic from Facebook!

How is this possible? Isn’t Facebook just a bunch of teenage kids playing Farmville all day? What use is that?

Well, I’m not saying that you MUST be on Facebook just because it’s popular to say right now. I’ve been saying it and doing it for years! I say it because it’s true. You too can get traffic on Facebook for your business.

The United States of Facebook

Imagine if Facebook were a country. That’s right, what if you took all of the people on Facebook and made them into a country?

I know it’s crazy, but if you did this it would be the 3rd largest country in the world! That’s right, China, then India, then Facebook, then the USA.

The ‘United States of Facebook’ has 500 million users, that’s about 200 million more people than the entire population of the United States!

Not only is Facebook really, really big, but check out these stats:

1. 48% of 18-34 year-old users check their profile when they wake up!
2. 28% check it before even getting out of bed!
3. 72% of US internet users are now on Facebook

With smart phones becoming more widely used, you’re going to see all of these percentages increase over the next few years.

How would you like your brand to be the first thing that people see in the morning?

Yep, that’s gold.

But what’s even more important is that more than 7 out of 10 internet users are on Facebook… That’s HUGE! It means that you should be able to find an ample number of people in your niche right on Facebook.

Could it be conceivable that there exists a niche that is not on Facebook? Yes.

If such a niche does exist, the customers that you want to reach are probably not even on the internet!

But What About Twitter, You Say?

“But everyone is always talking about how great Twitter is! Why waste my time with Facebook?”

Hold your horses! I’ll talk about Twitter v.s. Facebook in another post, but for now, let’s just take a moment to realize that Facebook is 5 times larger than Twitter!

Don’t let let all the Twitter talk seduce you into thinking that Facebook isn’t worth your time. It is.

Get Your Face-Time With Potential Leads

In business, one of the best things you can do is have more face-time with potential customers.

More face-time means more chances to build the relationship. It means more chances to bring them into the community, gain trust and eventually obtain a loyal customer. Very important stuff, right?

Well, Facebook allows you to get pretty amazing amounts of face-time with your customers. That’s because people spend more time on Facebook than any other website.

Your customers are checking it in the morning with their coffee. They are checking it on their android while waiting in line at the supermarket. They are checking it on their iPad as they watch TV on the couch. In other words, there are huge opportunities to get some Facebook face-time.

Face-time is what you turn into traffic. Traffic is what you turn into leads. Leads are what you turn into money.

The Power of Facebook: Use it Wisely

There are ways to use Facebook for your business that will help it grow. There are ways to use Facebook that will do nothing but waste your time.

The important thing here is to be sure you have the fundamentals of internet business down.

Why is that?

As I mentioned, the real power of Facebook is the traffic. Your online business can get serious, targeted traffic from this powerful platform if you do things right.

Unless you have the basics of internet business down, you won’t be able to convert that traffic to anything useful.

So, that’s your first step to success on Facebook.

(By the way, a great place to do that is in the Internet Business Mastery Academy. I’m a member, you should join too.)

Image Credit: west.m

—–

J.P. Deddens is a successful online and social entrepreneur. He learned entrepreneurship, marketing and copywriting while building a successful non-profit starting from nothing. When he’s not saving the world, he’s teaching others how to get traffic from Facebook.

Thank you for subscribing to Internet Business Mastery feed. For instant access to your free audio gift and a risk-free trial of our proven step-by-step program for starting your own profitable internet business, please visit http://www.freeaudiogift.com.

Facebook is the ‘water cooler’ of the internet, the place people gather to socialize and connect. Companies have the opportunity to join in the conversation, making their brand or product personal to their network.

Once you have engaged your network with either a Facebook ad or an invite to your fan page, you can choose to direct them to your website or to keep them on your fan page.

I suggest keeping them on your fan page for several reasons.

Keep them at the water cooler.

Think of it this way, if you were chatting with some coworkers and they begin to tell you a great story, would you stop them and ask them to continue the conversation in the conference room? Of course, you wouldn’t.

Remember, the point of social media is to be social. The longer you engage your network in genuine conversation, the stronger connection they feel to your brand.

Consistent Format

Facebook offers over 900 million* objects for user interaction including, games, fan pages, blogs, photo albums, etc. This is what draws the Facebook community to spend over 700 billion* minutes on Facebook every month!

With all of that interaction, people become comfortable with the Facebook format. Just look at how upset everyone is when they change around tabs! By keeping people on your fan page, you are keeping them comfortable and familiar with your brand.

A new user on your website will waste time looking for information and may give up before they find it. Facebook fan pages eliminate that risk.

Facebook Fan Pages: The Breakdown

The consistent format of Facebook allows users to fully engage in your message because they aren’t scanning an unfamiliar layout.

Questions a user may ask if they come to your website

• Where is your contact information and location?
• What’s new with the company, is there an easy link to a blog?
• Do my friends like this brand?
• What is the company/product about?

The left column of Facebook fan pages answers the questions above and more. All you have to do is fill out the Facebook profile! Everyone already knows where to look to find the information.

Custom Tabs

Fan page tabs navigate between pages of content without changing the overall navigation of the page. Your profile information remains in the left column and all tabs remain visible. Customize these tabs to fit your brand.

Customized tabs are great for:

• New marking promotions such as a give-away or contest
• Notes or blog posts
• Photo albums
• Polls
• Videos
• Tutorials
• New Product Marketing

Get creative; if your content is consistent with your branding image, you will attract loyalty.

Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity

The average user spends about 380 minutes per month on Facebook. (Reference

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/may-2011-top-u-s-web-brands/

These users are interacting with their personal social network and other companies, brands, or products that peak their interest.

The Internet is constantly evolving and the latest change is that people don’t want to surf around to multiple, unknown sites. What was once, www.yourwebsite.com, is now www.facebook.com/yourfanpage.

Instead of seeing Facebook as a monopoly on the internet, sucking all the attention from other sites; see it as the hub of the internet. Use it to your advantage.

Of the estimated 380 minutes a month, each user spends on Facebook, how many are spent on your product?

Facebook SEO

Not only is Facebook searchable by Google and any other search engine, (as long as the profile is public) Facebook also offers an internal search engine.

Your profile name and content is searchable using SEO principles. By using the same SEO principles you use for your website, you can maximize your visibility on Facebook.

When people search for your brand on facebook they will be shown a link to your fan page.

Image example: http://ow.ly/5HiGP

Facebook offers a level playing field for businesses and products that are willing to engage with their customers. Effective marketing doesn’t have to cost a fortune any more. All you need is some social media know-how and the potential is limitless!

*http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

—–

Eric Vogel is a social media consultant. His company Vogel Social Media connects businesses with their target market, increases brand awareness, and creates customer loyalty using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, You Tube, WordPress and Aweber. You can find more info at www.vogelsocialmedia.com

Thank you for subscribing to Internet Business Mastery feed. For instant access to your free audio gift and a risk-free trial of our proven step-by-step program for starting your own profitable internet business, please visit http://www.freeaudiogift.com.

In this episode of Internet Business Mastery, we talk with social media master, Don Crowther, who teaches you how to finally make money with social media.

CLICK HERE to get immediate access to your 30 Day, no risk, trial membership to Internet Business Mastery Academy, where you will get full access to ALL of our courses, tools, and resources for creating your own internet business and escaping the 9-to-5.

You will have access to the internet business courses, a Grill the Guru interviews, Success Book Summaries, Cubicle Escape Interviews, Checklists, Cheat Sheets, and new video step-by-step tutorials in the Million Dollar Rolodex.

NEW COMMENT LINE:

Toll Free: 877-877-7507

Items mentioned in the episode:

• [RESOURCE] Get Don’s free social media training here:  Free Social Media Videos!

Join us on Twitter!

• Twitter

Video:

• Interview with Social Media Master, Don Crowther

Download the MP3

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If I were to list ten key mentoring moments in my entrepreneurial journey to where I am today, one of them would be sitting at that Glazer/Kennedy Inner Circle event.

Earlier this month the paradigm shift that I experienced back then came full-circle. I was asked by Bill Glazer to do both the opening and closing presentations at the Glazer/Kennedy Social Media Money Magnet event in Baltimore.

I always really enjoy speaking live, but this time there was an energy that was extra fulfilling. It was thrilling to be standing on the stage of my mentors with the opportunity to offer the kind of paradigm shifts that I’d experienced many years ago at a GKIC event.

My ending presentation was titled, Social Media Money Magnets: 27 Specific Ways to Make Money with Social Media.

You can watch an video excerpt here which includes three of my social media money magnets.

Thank you for subscribing to Internet Business Mastery feed. For instant access to your free audio gift and a risk-free trial of our proven step-by-step program for starting your own profitable internet business, please visit http://www.freeaudiogift.com.

In this episode of Internet Business Mastery we talk about how you can make your sales and marketing process 100 times easier. We reveal how to get your target market to buy and the #1 reason why businesses fall flat with their sales and calls to action. We provide a new way to look at lead-generation, marketing and sales. We also talk about why Relationship Marketing is even more important than the attention age of marketing.

In addition we give a specific definition of Web 2.0. There are numerous definitions, some of which make Web 2.0 look overrated. We talk about our view of Web 2.0 and what meaning it really hold for online marketers.

Also, Sterling and Jay talk about what they discovered after their three-day strategy meeting for 2008.

Items mentioned in this episode:

• The data backup solution we use

• Think Big and Kick Ass by Donald Trump

• Sex Money Kiss by Gene Simmons

Thank you for subscribing to Internet Business Mastery feed. For instant access to your free audio gift and a risk-free trial of our proven step-by-step program for starting your own profitable internet business, please visit http://www.freeaudiogift.com.

In the past we have talked about Information Marketing 2.0 and taking advantage of the huge changes that have taken place on the web. We are now in the Social Media Age or the Web 2.0 Era. There are some simple things you can do to make sure your site isn’t stuck in Web 1.0.

In this episode of Internet Business Mastery, we go over five of the things your site must have in the Web 2.0 era. Then in the quick tip we show you how you can launch the ideal Web 2.0 site in a matter of hours.

Items mentioned in this episode:

• Our suggested WordPress hosting with one-click installation
• Jay’s Twitter page
• Sterling’s Twitter page
• WordPress.org

Thank you for subscribing to Internet Business Mastery feed. For instant access to your free audio gift and a risk-free trial of our proven step-by-step program for starting your own profitable internet business, please visit http://www.freeaudiogift.com.

We have some great news. This week we recorded a bonus audio program that includes over 90 minutes of new content. It goes over the a basic blueprint for a successful Web 2.0 business. We cover all the classic time-tested internet business models and discuss how to leverage social media and web 2.0 strategies to make the classic models even more powerful.

In this episode of Internet Business Mastery we play a preview of this bonus audio program. The compete audio and transcripts are only available to our email list subscribers.

If you’re already on the email list, you should have already started receiving the 7-part email series. Otherwise, all you need to do is sign up for our email list on the right side of our site.

Besides, being on the email list is just a good idea! Not only will you get the complete 7-part audio series you’ll also get articles and content not available on the podcast.

In this episode we also share a tool that we’re using to collaborate on and create our course.

Links and resources mentioned in this episode:

GetMyWebinarTool.com
Squidoo: Home Business for Moms
Review Internet Business Mastery in iTunes

Thank you for subscribing to Internet Business Mastery feed. For instant access to your free audio gift and a risk-free trial of our proven step-by-step program for starting your own profitable internet business, please visit http://www.freeaudiogift.com.

At the bottom of each post you will notice a series of links. At the time of writing this post, it looks something like this:

Each of these links bookmarks/shares the current post in the respective service. We’ve talked on the podcast before about how these services can be interesting ways to attract traffic. Each of them is essentially a large search engine using user-generated input to filter content and help people find relevant content.

To automatically add these links to each post I’ve used a modified version of the Sociable plugin for WordPress. Free plugins like this are just one of the MANY reasons I love WordPress.

The main change I made was to add text links. Usually the plugin just creates a row of icons (there are dozens to choose from). But I find that confusing for the user. The text links help make the purpose clearer.

For those who are wondering how to do this little hack (and who don’t mind digging into code a bit), here’s how you do it. Open sociable.php. Change line 481 from this:

$html .= “\” />”;

to this:

$html .= “\” /> $sitename”;

I also made a few other aesthetic changes in the CSS to make it look the way we wanted. Anyone else using the plugin? Have you had any interesting results or done something creative with it?

Thank you for subscribing to Internet Business Mastery feed. For instant access to your free audio gift and a risk-free trial of our proven step-by-step program for starting your own profitable internet business, please visit http://www.freeaudiogift.com.

In this episode we discuss how to thrive as an online information marketer in the new internet landscape. We introduce what we call Information Marketing 2.0…taking information marketing to the next level.

Right now we’re going through biggest shake up on the web since the start of the internet in the mid 90s. It’s drastically changing the way we market and create content online. The great thing is that this shake up brings a lot of opportunities for those who get the right info and act on it.

If you want to thrive in the new internet landscape it’s imperative to keep up. In this episode we talk about how to find and leverage the information you’ll need. Internet Business Mastery will be your guide to information marketing 2.0….your official source for the new face of information marketing.

On the next episode we’ll talk about the 7 Pillars of Information Marketing 2.0.

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Each month I also have hundreds of people who optin to my email newsletter on podcasting. Again, these people are all coming from “attraction methods.” This is also called pull marketing.

What is Pull Marketing

Pull marketing is about engaging your prospects/clients/customers in a meaningful way that attracts them towards you. Interruption marketing no longer works. People have more power than ever to filter you out. They’ve learned to look right past banner ads. They skip commercials with TIVO. They click to another site in a matter of seconds if they don’t see what they’re looking for.

If you don’t want to be ignored, pull marketing MUST be part of your strategy.

How I Use Pull Marketing

I pull clients, site visitors and email subscribers towards me by creating “must have” content and getting it in front of those who need it. Four examples of content I do this with are:

1. Podcasting Underground (my podcast)
2. My podcasting and social media tips blog
3. My tutorial on how to podcast
4. My book

How People Find My Content

In order for my “attraction” content to be found, it needs to appear wherever my ideal prospect is looking for that kind of information. Here are four ways I do this:

1. Optimize the content to rank for commonly searched terms in Google (take a look at this search for “how to podcast” and you will see my tutorial at the top)
2. Optimize my blog posts in such a way that they are found in social media searches such as Technorati
3. List my podcast in popular portals such as iTunes and optimize it to get maximum exposure
4. Ping popular blog/podcast listing services whenever I post new content

And that is just to name a few.

The Bottom Line

Provide quality content and interactive experiences that attract your ideal prospects. Make it easy for your ideal prospect to find your content to attract him, engage him and pull him into your sales funnel.

This is not to say that you should get rid of all forms of “push marketing”. The proper balance of the two will ensure that you’re not ignored in the current marketing landscape.

How have you used pull marketing in your business?

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Jason discusses:

• Why he chose podcasting as his latest internet marketing niche
• Why writing a book has been great for his internet business despite the low profit margins that come from book sales relative to other information products
• Whether other infopreneurs should consider writing a book

Thank you for subscribing to Internet Business Mastery feed. For instant access to your free audio gift and a risk-free trial of our proven step-by-step program for starting your own profitable internet business, please visit http://www.freeaudiogift.com.