CHAPTER 8

Facebook Turns Me On!

“I don’t promote boxing. I promote people. Boxing is a catalyst to bring people together.”

—Don King

Okay, so now that you’ve got your WordPress blog up and running, it’s time to show you how to use your content, and the content your King Consumers will generate, to spread your dandelion seeds all over the web. You already know, I’m not going to mess around with who has the most Likes or the greatest number of comments. If it doesn’t generate income, neither one of us has time for it. Facebook stands alone in the social commerce world for a good number of reasons we’ll be exploring. But in a sense, Facebook itself is not a new concept.

In my opinion, Facebook is just a glorified update to that old site of the 1990s, America Online (AOL). It is very similar to what AOL was in the past, because Facebook is a walled community where people have gathered for the purpose of communicating, sharing insights, information, and friendship. We could even call Facebook an AOL 2.0 and be close to the truth. Whatever you personally might think about Facebook itself, you must embrace its importance in our social commerce strategy and learn to harness its incredible power. Facebook can boast more than 1 billion people served, and every last one of them decided to willingly join the site’s closed community. It only stands to reason that you’re very likely to find a good many of your current customers there, and their networks all represent potential future King Consumers just waiting to discover what you’re doing with their “friends.”

We’re going to pull Facebook out of the general social commerce mix to use very specifically, but at the same time, many of the techniques and tips you’ll learn about here can be applied on other sites to promote your social commerce efforts. I want you to keep that tucked away in the back of your mind while we move forward. Treating Facebook as a separate entity makes sense when you consider what the site can do. It’s now way more than a social network.

Facebook is a platform, a tool so powerful that companies use it as a business starter. Consider Zynga. You haven’t heard of that company? Well, maybe not, but the folks at Zynga launched a little game on Facebook called FarmVille. Oh, okay, now I’ve got your attention. The people behind Zynga used gaming on the Facebook platform to occupy the minds of millions of people with a silly farming game! Or look at Pinterest. It would not even be on people’s lips if the folks at Pinterest did not integrate their social sharing tool with Facebook from the start. You get my point. Facebook is an ecosystem that cannot be ignored. We’ll use this huge ecosystem to create and manage your very own small ecosystems—populated by your proven customers and their as-yet-untapped Facebook networks. And those smaller ecosystems? Well, they’ll be completely controlled by you. So let’s get to it.

FACEBOOK’S PLACE IN YOUR SOCIAL COMMERCE PLAN

Let’s start by taking a look at Facebook’s role in your social commerce plan. It has a special place in the dandelion puff you plan to use to spread your brand and your business. As you’ll see, it has quite a lot of power to keep your newly planted seedlings growing among, maybe, the most important group of King Consumers you know: your current customers. You’ll also find that Facebook’s power will allow you to tap more than one of our Five Fingers (see Chapter 4). We’ve definitely got the sales funnel covered here and wait till you see what you can do with customer relationship management (CRM) and user generated content (UGC)! We’ve just begun to spread those dandelion seeds, and already the potential opportunities can make you dizzy. Let’s first look at the anemic way most businesses now use Facebook.

I’ll take a guess: You have a Facebook page for your business. You asked your Facebook friends to Like your page, and they have. From time to time you post something there about a new product or promotion. But there’s probably not a lot happening there for you. If you decide to do nothing but push, push, push, and send out one marketing message after another, you can hang it up right now. Your followers will tune you out and completely ignore you. Oh, your actual friends may be too polite to tell you that you’re a total pain in the ass, but they’re still not going to pay any attention to you. You really don’t need them to actually like you. You just need them to like what you sell at the price you sell it for.

The IBM Institute for Business Value released a study at the end of 2012 that demonstrates an interesting disconnect between what companies think people want from them on social media and what people actually do want. The results were more than a little shocking, as you see in Figure 8-1. IBM learned businesses use social media to reach their customers because they believe those customers want to “learn about the products” (73 percent) and gather “general information” (71 percent). When IBM asked the same question of consumers, the findings show exactly how wrong most businesspeople are about the subject. The top two answers from the consumers—who had actually decided to go to social media sites, so they know why they did—were “discounts” (61 percent) and “purchases” (55 percent).

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Figure 8-1

The Power to Share Whatever They Want and Be Connected

According to our friend Mark Zuckerberg, that’s why he first wanted to create Facebook: “Our mission is to make the world more open and connected. We do this by giving people the power to share whatever they want and be connected to whoever they want, no matter where they are.” Okay, let’s take a moment to just let that sink in here: the power to share what you want, when you want, and wherever you are. That makes the clay that is Facebook completely malleable. You can shape it and form it to fit any business model at all, and I do mean any. This sort of power comes with a lot of responsibility, and I’m here to make sure you use the power responsibly. If the best you’ve come up with so far is a Facebook strategy consisting of pressing the Face-book button on all your product pages and blasting your wall and your friends’ walls with all the crap you sell, stop it now! You are abusing the power by using a truly powerful system so poorly. You can do better.

A Home for Your King Consumers

Facebook is a place for your existing customers to interact with you and with one another. The site is perfect for inviting your Kings into your parlor, sharing special treats with them, and making them feel royally connected to you and all that you have to offer them as they bask in the appreciation you so clearly have for them. Focus on treating your Kings royally, and you’ll not only get them to stick around and shop, but you’ll also push them deeper into the sales funnel (see Chapter 4), making your business their go-to destination whenever they want whatever you sell. As if that’s not enough, you’ll also craft a public window on Facebook through which everyone who does not belong to your Kings’ networks can see. Now they’ll know there’s something special going on around your Facebook presence. You’ll get to keep your existing customers happy and satisfied. At the same time, you’ll entice new customers with glimpses of what can be possible if they join the elite group of people who currently shop with you. Intrigued? Good, I thought you might be!

EVER-CHANGING CONTENT FOR THE EVER-CHANGING FACE OF FACEBOOK

What would you say is the best part Facebook? Okay, I’ll tell you. It’s not stagnant. It doesn’t stay the same. The results change all the time and everything fluctuates. What’s the biggest problem with Facebook? Okay, I’ll tell you again. It’s not stagnant. It doesn’t stay the same. It changes all the time. If you are to succeed on Facebook, you’re going to have to let the research you’ve done on your King Consumers and the listening you’ve been doing to their conversations and postings guide you to posting frequently and intelligently on Facebook and delve deeper into the interests your King Consumers have shared.

Facebook interaction is brisk. Don’t like what is in your thread on Facebook? Wait thirty seconds! It will change. So the frequency of a platform like Facebook is going to be different from the frequency of your blog posts. I think you should use Facebook daily. If that’s not possible, then post three to five times weekly at the very least. Also be sure to take into account that Facebook is very visual and mobile, and big picture thoughts, graphs, charts, and photography are all the rage. Keep what you post simple and shareable. A good Facebook strategy for content production is a mix of visual content and videos. Keep it 80 percent fun, but also make sure there are some calls to take action, because you want to bring those prospective consumers and your proven purchasers closer to and deeper into the sales funnel.

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The Pace Is Fast, So Keep It Coming

Posts to Facebook business pages get stale fast, and the nature of Facebook users is that they need to see regular activity to stay engaged. That’s why you see people checking Facebook throughout the day with their smartphones! Remember, we do not need to make up all our own posts. We can easily find great and relevant subject matter from other posters on Facebook and repost or “Share” it on our own walls. It actually helps to cement your place in the community when you share what your network is talking about. So use both original and reposted stuff. Just keep it coming.

The Many Faces You Can Have on Facebook

You can think two dimensionally about your blog. You find it, create it, post it, and then do it again. But you’re going to have to think multidimensionally about Facebook if you want to drill down to really meaningful interactions with your King Consumers.

Let’s say, for example, that you sell pet supplies. You have a Facebook page for your general business where you post all types of information and links. You may follow the Humane Society of the United States. You may follow your local animal shelter. Your page is alive with general information about the health and well-being of your customers’ pets. Consider, in addition to this page, having a separate page for your cat lovers and one for your dog lovers. You can have as many Facebook pages as you want, so let’s say you put one up to serve bird owners, another one for small “pocket” pets, one for ferrets, and another for reptiles and aquarium pets. Did somebody say content in context? Yeah, I think we’ve got it!

Now you have pages to attract every kind of pet owner you sell products to. The interaction on your micro-niche Facebook page for reptiles will be so specific, you can really charm those snake lovers with exactly the information they need. You’ll also be privy to far more intense and detailed conversations and interactions about the subject of owning reptiles. That will help you zero in on what reptile owners are concerned about and what they need to properly take care of their pets. You can see the potential in this type of fragmented customer interaction, I’m sure. You’re still dealing with all the potential pet owners in the entire world, but you’ve made a cozy spot under a heat lamp for the reptile owners who have shopped or will shop with you. That’s a place they’ll return to, and frequently, not only because you post interesting things there, but because they’ve found the community you’ve grown that includes lots of other people who love living with snakes. I absolutely did this with my bandana-folding videos; I created separate bandana sites and Facebook pages specifically for folding bandanas.

All your products represent areas you can market. The coolest thing about this is that when you get it right, the community will take over. Ultimately you can push people from your main community into your smaller-community pages and vice versa. It’s hard to get people interested in your business pages, but if you create groups and pages relevant to very specific parts of your inventory, people will go there to gather and converse. And you can become very engaged with your current customer base in these smaller ecosystems you’ve created, making it that much easier to get them to pay attention to your Facebook page. The more they engage with you and you engage with them, the more their friends and followers will see what you’re doing. Your customers then become essential cheerleaders for your business.

So, don’t look at Facebook in such a linear fashion. I hear it all the time: “Oh, we have to go get people to Like our page, and if they Like us, then some of those people will buy from us.” Yeah, that’s true, but that produces a very low rate of return. The real rate of return involves getting your current customers engaged with you in these small ecosystems (groups/pages/events) you’ve created. Here they can engage not only with you but also with each other—and then you’ve got it made. You control the ecosystems. You can see exactly who is engaged with you and how they are engaging. Now you can direct your marketing at your actual customers so discreetly and specifically, that they’ll return to your Facebook ecosystem not only when they need another commodity, but also because you’ve allowed them to join a vibrant online community just as devoted to and crazy about their pets as your King Consumers are.

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Facebook Gives. You Take Away.

Once you have your ecosystems in place, you can use Facebook Insights to see the analytics that represent your Kings. We’ll take a look at this and other tools in a bit, but in the meantime, be aware that Facebook can be a source of huge amounts of information about your Kings, such as demographics about the average age of your Kings and what parts of the country they’re from. You can see who is engaged with you. They only see this cool Facebook presence you’ve created, but you’re using their visits to learn more about your business and your customers with each passing week.

General Content Strategies

So let’s begin by giving your customers what they want. We need to make sure your strategy is completely focused on commerce, not media. In view of all this posting you’re going to do, we don’t want to lose track of why we’ve all gathered here, and that’s to make money. So, sure, repost and let your ecosystems go wild, but be sure you still control that ecosystem by calling on your King Consumers to do specific things. They’ll feel rewarded, but even better, so will you.

The 80/20 Rule definitely applies to your Facebook content. Your content should be split between 80 percent fun stuff, light information, and interaction and 20 percent direct calls to action or sales. If you mix it up like this, people will interact with you for both the fun and excitement, and they will buy for the thrills. Trust me. If, for every ten posts you make, one or two of them is a direct call to action, your Kings will engage directly with you.

There is an old adage that says “you have not because you ask not.” The reason most folks never sell anything via Face-book is simply because they never ask. Of course you won’t be overbearing about it—80 percent of the time you’re mixing it up with fun and interesting stuff—but your Kings are here on your Facebook pages interacting with you. They know you sell things, so you don’t have to pretend you don’t. Offer your loyal followers discounts and specials. Be sure to give them what they crave regularly. Like Don Corleone said in The Godfather, “Make them an offer they can’t refuse.”

This means you stop making offers to your customers for general stuff like the chance to win an iPad for Liking your page. That’s a lot of money to spend, and the truth is we don’t really get customers engaged that way. It’s much better to give your customers—who have already proven their interest in your business by sharing your Facebook presence—discounts on the products you sell. Now you get to offer, say, a 5 percent discount on their next order for Liking your page on Facebook. Bang! There they go, deeper into that sales funnel for up-selling and cross-selling. That call to action gets them to Like you, sure, but even better, it gets them to come back again and spend their money, along with their discount, of course. As my sister, Ro, likes to say, “Deuces!” We just accomplished two goals in one: We gave the customers what they wanted and they in turn did the same for us. Win-win! Ka-ching, ka-ching!

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Facebook Ads: Money Well Spent

Facebook offers users paid advertising. This is another area we could potentially spend a lot of time exploring. We could spend an entire book on paid advertising and pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Actually I am sure there are already several entire books on this subject. Pay-per-click advertising requires some in-depth understanding about how to track and measure the performance and analytics of the ads you’re placing. If you’re eager to give them a try, the Facebook platform allows you to dabble in PPC with a very user friendly interface.

Facebook ads are effective when you want to get laser-targeted visitors to your pages. They allow you to break down the advertising to reach specific demographics, and Facebook makes this feature very easy to use—maybe too easy. The money you’ll spend is still the same whether they work or not. You will have to spend money to get eyeballs. But, if you really want to try PPC advertising, the Facebook ads system is a good place to do that. Just don’t be surprised when you get the bill.

Business Versus Personal

People often ask me what they should put on their business profile versus what their personal Facebook profile. Here is my general rule: You should keep your business profiles business and keep your personal profiles real. What I mean is that your business allows you to chat with your customers, but just make sure you keep it in the business lane. You need not tell them what you are eating for lunch or that you’ve got to drop the kids off at soccer practice. Save that for the personal profile. Keep them engaged with you and your staff as the “people who work here and are eager to help you.”

On your personal page, you can post all of those things your customers don’t necessarily need to see, and you can still keep it real when it comes to your business, which is a very important part of your life, so you need not totally avoid a mention of it here or there. But do not get carried away with your marketing stuff on your personal page or people will begin to tune you out. Keep it personal. Keep it real. You will do just fine. And if you have an out-of-this-world sale going on, it won’t hurt to mention it to your online buddies every once in a blue moon.

I like to keep my followers updated about which city I might be in like, “Hey, I am speaking in Cleveland this weekend. Hit me up if you want to do coffee or a drink.” That would be me, looking to network or hang out with friends or followers while in a city. Now someone may ask where I am speaking, and then I will say come to this so-and-so conference. But I would not begin the conversation with, “Hey, register to hear me speak at the Cleveland Convention Center show and blah, blah, blah …” You can see that’s just too much obvious marketing.

Do That, But Please, Don’t Do This

As you already well know, there are things you can do on social media that can’t be undone. You’re well-educated enough to know not to do the more boneheaded things you may have seen other people doing. For example, I really don’t need to tell you that you will never, ever, not ever, and I mean never, engage in a public dispute on Facebook with a specific King Consumer who is proving to be a royal pain. But there are a whole lot of other, much less boneheaded, things you could innocently do, thinking they represent good strategy, when really, they are against Facebook rules. I’m here to save you from yourself. To stay current on the ever-evolving changes to Facebook policy, be sure to bookmark the Facebook Pages Guideline page at: http://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php

You want to use your Facebook business page to offer your loyal customers special Facebook-only deals or offers. This is a great way to get current fans to share your page, because people love to share special deals and offers with their friends—remember how dependent these Kings are on the recommendations of their friends. If you want to add an extra level of interaction, tie it into your status updates. For example, “Come enjoy our tax-free weekend from July 25–27. Keep an eye on our Fan Page for updates and the special code word you will need to take advantage.” It’s a basic example, but you get the idea. Invite your fans to take an action or to keep coming back to your fan page in exchange for a deal. Either way, keep them in the loop about ways to save, ways to use the products they are purchasing, and ways to share the good news about you with all of their friends. The more you “love them” the more they will love you back and spread that love. In addition to all the love you are giving your current customers, visitors to your Facebook page are seeing the cool-ass community they are not yet a part of. Oh my, the psychology of that …

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They Visit and Interact, Because They Like What You Do

My friend Melanie Maybe (you’ll learn a lot more about her soon) operates an e-commerce business specializing in alternative fashions and accessories. She created such a cool Facebook page that her King Consumers routinely check in just to see what she’s saying or doing in fashion these days. Melanie is now a fashion tastemaker. (Figure 8-2 shows a glimpse of her taste and Facebook image.) That’s the kind of rapport you want to build with your Kings, too. Once they keep checking in with you because they like the destination you’ve made for them on Facebook, you can do all kinds of interesting things with them.

“Almost from the start the Facebook page was a success,” Melanie told me. “Customers absolutely loved having the ability to see new stock, vote on things, give input, and get a response from us.” Today, Melanie and her staff still interact routinely on the Tragic Beautiful Facebook page. Recent questions from her Kings include requests for specific brands of boots and a request for advice about matching a new hair-dye color with hair already dyed bluish black. Now that her Kings consider Melanie a go-to resource for alternative fashion, they post questions to her Facebook page, asking if it’s possible to buy specific products from her site. That’s the kind of engagement with your Kings you hope to achieve, too.

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Figure 8-2

Oh, and by the way, Melanie recommended the hot pink or bright-red hair dye. Then she posted pictures of each color to answer her King’s question visually.

THE ROYAL TREATMENT FOR YOUR KING CONSUMERS

Every person on this earth wants to be treated like a VIP. I remember the last time I was in Las Vegas for a conference. The conference organizers rented a section of a club for an event. At the beginning of the event there were two lines: one for the VIPs and one for the regulars. Being a VIP is something everyone on that regular line wished to be. Even those who don’t care about stature still want the hassle-free (no waiting in line) access that VIPs enjoy.

Take this into account when you’re posting to your public-facing Facebook pages. Your King Consumers actually are your VIPs, and Facebook is the place to treat them royally. Everyone else who views your Facebook pages or your Kings’ Facebook pages gets to see the VIP treatment your current fans and customers are getting, but onlookers are not yet sharing in.

For example, suppose you sell shoes. You make a VIP list of customers who have already bought your shoes and you send those VIPs an e-mail, giving them first access to your new inventory before it hits the public site. You post about this on your general business Facebook page and invite your fans to join the VIP ranks. Now you’ve created an advantage for your VIPs and also shown this advantage, as well as your call to action, to your yet-to-be VIPs. These yet-to-be VIPs can’t actually have your reward of early access to inventory until they take an action and sign up for “insider” treatment.

Now you are doing a lot more than just engaging on Face-book, because now you’ve got permission to directly market to your VIPs and all the other fans who will become VIPs. Of course, these are going to be your best King Consumers and your happiest cheerleaders. I can hear the conversation on Facebook now … “Girl, you need to join the Shoe Market VIP list! They give us discounts and private inventory sales. Go Like their page!” … Deuces!

Everyone wants to walk the VIP red carpet. So, once you get customers in VIP status, treat them as such. It goes a long way. Look to the travel industry for masterful treatment of the VIP. I do a lot of traveling. I am a Gold Medallion member with Delta, and I am treated like it. Delta gives me complimentary upgrades to First Class, checked bags with no fee, and first-boarding on all flights. Delta even puts tags on my luggage so they will come off the carousel before those of the “common” fliers. Look at that list, and you tell me how much money you think all this special treatment costs Delta. That’s my point exactly. Delta treats me right, and in turn I am loyal to Delta. I keep flying with this airline so I can stay with its VIP status. And it costs the airline nothing, or next to nothing. Sure, I’m a Delta VIP, but that First Class seat was empty, or I wouldn’t have gotten it. Even better than my loyalty to Delta is that it actually got props in my book! Here I am writing about how great being a Delta Skymiles member is, and it is costing Delta nothing! Zero! I am giving them totally free advertising, and why? Because this method works for Delta, and it will work for you, too.

Facebook Groups

One of the best things about Facebook is the ability to create a community, or multiple communities, around your business, allowing your fans to congregate and interact in a central area. The fans who come to your page will populate this community. There they can share recommendations, memories, testimonials, photos, videos, news, and more. Having them all show up on your Facebook page also gives you a chance to instantly address complaints and customer service or other issues. That’s customer relationship management (CRM)—you know, the Second Finger—at its finest and most immediate. To really deepen this engagement with your Kings, I love Facebook Groups.

Facebook Groups are different from regular pages in the way they spark great conversations, not just comments and Likes. That’s because the Groups are set up like other web groups, and they have the feel of old-school message boards. Groups can be public or private, which allows us unique ways to use them for e-commerce. Create a private group for your best customers. It’s easy to set up a private members-only space where you simply offer information about private deals and links for your elite customers. If you make a Group private, and your customers are forced to ask you for membership, then you know you’ve got deeply engaged customers. They are committing to being in your sales funnel, and they are more than just circling around the top of it. They are asking you for closer engagement, and they are giving you permission to contact them and market to them. Why else would they do that unless they were interested in buying more products from you?

A Facebook Group Success Story

Just so I can leave the subject of Facebook Groups knowing you have seen success firsthand, here’s a little story about how I have used Groups on Facebook.

A client with an online shoe business asked that we build a private group on Facebook for his very best Platinum customers. We built a private VIP Group to show off the new shoes in his inventory to its members before making them available to the public. The Group site was also used to host small, interactive events where customers could ask questions and get access through private links to pre-order hot in-demand products.

Creating and crafting unique experiences within Facebook Groups for your customers can really be a blast, and the fun can get your audience super engaged. As a matter of fact, the more fun your Kings are having, and the more special treatment you’re offering, the better the Group will be. This shoe company only does its group thing once or twice a month, but when it lets the VIPs know that a private showing is coming up, those folks come religiously. My client has trained this tribe to know that coming to his Group will yield them an experience and a savings that makes it worthwhile to show up. The result has been that several SKUs of shoes, the ones specifically held for these special events, have sold out routinely through the private showings alone. This client never even needed to post this inventory to his site. As these VIP sessions grew, the client eventually moved this whole interaction with his VIP Group onto his own platform. The shoe company grew it on Facebook, and now the owner has it for his own., That means far more control and an even greater personalized shopping experience for his King Consumers. All this has come from creating a free, private group on Facebook—spectacular!

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Your Kings’ Opinions Become Your New Inventory

My friend Melanie used her Facebook following to pretest and select inventory for her business, Tragic Beautiful. “We would preview designs and ranges [clothing lines] and gauge opinion,” she explained. “We would put albums full of images of shoes, and then order the ones that got the most attention. We used Facebook as an almost perfect indicator of buying trends. In return we offered our page fans discounts, special deals, and previews.”

Using Facebook this way actually gave Melanie an opportunity to ask which shoes her customers would prefer to buy before she ordered her stock. To her Kings, it seemed just like any other visit to her Facebook page, because Melanie routinely offers images and information about fashion trends. They had no idea that Melanie was actually doing exacting and valuable market research just by asking them to vote for the pictures they liked best!

YOUR FACEBOOK TOOL KIT

As you might have guessed, a platform as robust and powerful as Facebook has some tools you can use to make the platform perform a wide range of tasks you’ll need to complete. We’re not going to spend too much time or get too techy here with the nuts and bolts of how these tools work. This is a moving target, with new things being developed and offered all the time. Plus, we could spend the rest of the book exploring these tools, but then it wouldn’t be a book about social commerce anymore, would it? Instead, I’ll concentrate on a few “must-haves” and let you explore them on your own and when you’re ready.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the tools I like and why I like them.

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Stay Informed About What’s New for Businesses on Facebook

We’ll look at some Facebook tools, of course, but I want to also show you how to stay current with Facebook beyond the time you spend reading this book. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the Facebook for Business section of the site at https://www.facebook.com/business. You can stay up to date on the site’s latest tools and developments relevant to your business. I am not going to repeat the Help pages like so many other “experts” do. We’re businesspeople, and we’re going to get right back to business, which means strategy. I just wanted you to know where to gather all the best resources for staying informed on the platform.

 

1.  Facebook Insights: This tool provides Facebook page owners with metrics about content performance. By understanding and analyzing trends within user growth and demographics, consumption of content and creation of content, page owners and platform developers are better equipped to improve their businesses and create better experiences on Facebook.

2.  Simple Facebook Connect: Look guys, I’m all about ease of use and need for speed. This recommendation is not for the “official” Facebook version of the WordPress plug-in. Simple Facebook Connect is a secondary tool that I actually believe is better than the one you get through Facebook, and it’s described as “a framework and series of subsystems that let you add any sort of Facebook functionality you like to a WordPress blog [which] lets you have an integrated site without a lot of coding that still lets you customize it exactly the way you’d like.” You’ll find Simple Facebook Connect on the WordPress.org website.

3.  Buffer App: This is a supercool tool that allows you to post to your social profile and pages on Facebook, as well as Twitter and LinkedIn, all at the same time from the same dashboard. It will also track interaction analytics on your Facebook posts and even allow you to schedule future posts and post them over time to your social networks. I really dig Buffer App and use this one every day from my desktop and mobile devices for sharing good content. The free version will allow you to connect one profile for each of the social networks included. If you want more than one, you can pay a fee of $10 per month to have as many as twelve profiles on each network. There is no contract, and you can stop using the paid version and go back to the free one if you find you don’t need the extra profiles. You’ll find it at BufferApp.com.

4.  ShortStack: One of the best-kept cool secrets of success for many e-preneurs, ShortStack has tons of features to help you get the most from your Facebook pages. Among these you’ll find contests, polls, data collection, and analytics. Short-Stack offers a free version and paid versions for business that require more functionality. The most popular plan offers enough functionality for most. Go to ShortStack.com for more information.

5.  Pagemodo: This site offers some great tools to help you customize your Facebook page for your business. It will allow you to design your cover photo, launch page apps, and more. Pagemodo gives your business a clean and professional social presence in no time, and you’ll need no design or technical skills to use it. Using some of the predesigned themes can give your business a professional Facebook presence; engage your visitors with an attractive welcome page. Add photos, maps, and videos at the click of a button. Showcase your products, offer coupons, display your Twitter posts, and much more. You can get a cover page photo and one tab for free! Pricing plans for more tabs and functions are also available at Pagemodo.com.

SUMO LESSON

I met my friend Melanie of Tragic Beautiful (TragicBeautiful.com) in a poker game. She and I were both in Australia for the Professional eCommerce and eBay Sellers (PeSA) Internet Conference, when we found ourselves left among the last few players in a charity tournament. She began her business more than ten years ago as a part-time job that allowed her to pursue her passion, alternative clothing, cosmetics, and accessories. Like many other e-commerce merchants, Melanie ultimately built her business into her full-time job, and today she not only operates one of the largest online sellers of alternative fashions in Australia, but also frequently brings her own designs and creations to her website to list among the other designers. Melanie brought her business to Facebook early in the social commerce game, and she was happy to share some of her early success stories with us.

Melanie had attended a session at the conference that I lead about social commerce and using social media to promote your business. After my second trip to Australia and another conference, I got the following e-mail from Melanie.

Hi John, Melanie from Tragic Beautiful.

We have met a couple of times at Australian conferences—I played poker with you in Sydney at the casino event.

Really enjoyed your talk again. Very motivating and with a lot of practical advice for real things to do rather than vague marketing slogans.

Last year it took me six months but I set up a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/tragicbeautifulFB).

When my latest range of clothing came out, I had presold half the order through FB before it even hit my online stores!

Anyway, a big thank you for your presentation and a request to get the PowerPoint slides please. You can e-mail me at [email protected].

Thanks!

Mel

After catching up with Melanie, I discovered that although she seems to feel as though she waited six long months to step onto Facebook, it seemed to me she’d been working toward that all along. Sure, she may not have built her presence on Facebook right off the bat, but in the six months between the time she first heard my presentation and the time she was ready to go, she’d spent plenty of time doing exactly what I recommended in the first place. She was listening.

By listening to the conversations and exchanges among her Kings, she was building her background and learning a lot about what they were thinking, doing, and searching for. Once she started with her Facebook presence, she was well ahead of the pack.

Of course, along the way she was also learning other valuable tidbits. She found a lot of success with contests. Melanie and her staff hosted contests on her Facebook page, asking visitors to Like photos or enter competitions. “We obtained thousands of fans overnight due to a photo competition we had,” Melanie recalled. “The competitions were fun and even if people didn’t want to enter, they loved being able to comment on pictures and select their favorites.”

Melanie no longer hosts competitions on her Facebook page. She discontinued them when she realized that people were “buying” votes and rigging contest outcomes. If you noticed, I recommended you host your contests within the invitation-only VIP groups of your Facebook page. That helps you control the nature of the responses.

“I have also learned another very important lesson,” Melanie continued. “Never let fans submit anything to your page without it being vetted first.” This lesson came to Melanie the hard way. “Thanks to the woman who posted up a series of incredibly raunchy images of herself in a G-string and nothing else on the page, thanking us for great service!” Melanie exclaimed. “We don’t even sell G-strings.”

But, in spite of a few bumps in the road, Melanie has found Facebook to be a great place to gather among her Kings and share her passion for her products and business. She uses great images, compelling graphics, and frequently changing content to keep her Kings coming back. “By using vibrant, changing and engaging content on our page, we have been able to use our Facebook page as everything from customer support, market research, brand building, relationship building and, most importantly, sales conversions,” she said. Interesting. That’s every single one of our Five Fingers in one great and dynamic bundle!

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