Sunday, May 3, 2009

8 Step Guide to Using Facebook to Generate Links & Business

Let’s first talk about what Facebook is, and what it isn’t. Facebook is an easy way to stay connected with friends, family, business associates, and even famous people or companies that you consider important. There is literally something for everyone on Facebook.

Facebook is not a way to advertise to a certain demographic of users and convince them to buy what you’ve got. Sorry, all you Facebook advertisers, but not many people are going to buy a car or sign up for a credit card offer through any type of advertising on Facebook. People aren’t there to buy. They are there to get away from life’s little stresses and connect with friends.

So after having said all that, how can it be possible to make money from Facebook? (unless you’re a widget developer and have a wide user base, this next part is for you)

Remember how I talked about the fact that people on Facebook want to connect with other people (what we will call networking) and relax a little bit? Well we are going to use that to our advantage. There is no secret widget or App that you’re going to install. All this will take is your time. And if you can’t spend the time, pay someone else to do what I’m about to tell you. Ready? Here we go.

Step 1. Add all the people you know and have ever met as your friend on Facebook.

Step 2. Update your profile with real photos of yourself (nothing from your last drinking party or late night criminal activity).

Step 3. Search for at least 10 groups to join that are relevant to your business (I don’t care how niche your business is, there is at least 1 group for it) If you have to choose between groups, go after the ones that are active, and have at least 50 members.

Step 4. Contribute useful information to these groups. Answer and ask questions. Get into conversations with people.

Step 5. Add as many of the people in the group as your friend as you’ve had at least a tiny conversation with through the group.

Step 6. Find out which of your friends that you’ve just gotten from these groups have a website or blog about your industry. They usually put a link to their blog or site in their ‘Info’ tab on their profile.

Step 7. Ask your new friends if they would allow you to contribute some content to their site or blog, in return for a link back to your site.

Step 8. Write this content, and send one unique article to each person that accepts your offer.

Those are the eight steps to get you started down the path to success with Facebook. Like all the best things in life, it will take time to really develop Facebook into a useful and profitable channel for building links, but the more you put into it, the more you will get out of it.

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