8 Tips To Get Free Traffic From Facebook

8 Tips To Get Free Traffic From Facebook

I just got through listening to Chris Farrell’s webinar part 1 on how to get free traffic from Facebook. If you do not know Chris Farrell he is a Brit living in L.A. who has a real talent for methodically explaining internet marketing techniques to beginners.

I have been underusing Facebook mainly with a scatter shot approach without a solid Facebook marketing plan. I decided to listen to the webinar because I really needed to learn some Facebook marketing basics.

Chris explains in a very slow and deliberate manner which is great for beginners. I am more of a give me the meat straight and fast type of guy. So I have summarized the main points of what I learned in his webinar here.

I was really surprised to see Chris’s Google Analytic stats showing that he gets 60% of his traffic from Facebook. His membership site has a healthy 5000 Alexa which means there are only about 5000 other websites on the planet with more traffic. That is serious traffic.

This site is at about 35,000. He is kicking my butt so I will definitely listen to him when it comes to traffic generation.

1. You need a fanpage because all of your activity on Facebook is going to be done from your fanpage not from your main Facebook main account. If you do not know how to make a fanpage :- How to build a Facebook fan page

The fan page, like everything in social media, can be built and done in a matter of minutes. That is, if you are not planning on having anyone look at it, connect to it, or like it. If you are, in fact, trying to give personality to your brand and connect with your customers, your Facebook fan page will take you substantially longer to create and will need to be maintained regularly.

* UPDATE – Before you build your page, you’ll want to know about the new changes to Facebook fan pages that will launch in January of 2010. They will have a direct impact on any company with a fan page.

Here’s how to get started.

A. Facebook appears to have hidden the “create a fan page” link on your home page. (If anyone knows where that is, feel free to let me know). So instead, you can go to an existing fan page, any fan page, and scroll down. On the left hand column at the bottom, it says “create a page for my business”. That’s the one you want.

B. You then have to select what kind of business you are, sign that you are authorized to be representing that business, and then create the page.

C. First things first, you’ll want to get your basic info on there. Click “edit the page” and scroll down to the information section. Click on the pencil and hit “edit”. They don’t give you a whole lot of room to be creative with this basic info. You’ll just enter info such as: website, address, and hours you are open. Nothing exciting.

D. Now you need a profile image. Yes, you can use your logo, but if your logo is a little boring and/or corporate, I’d recommend against it. Instead, I’d choose an image that represents your company, product or service. It’ll make the page a little more user friendly.

E. Add apps. Apps are the best way you can show your company’s personality. I’d start with the extended info app, as this allows you to create categories ie : favorite food, favorite TV shows, interests, travel, etc and then fill out your answers. What’s neat about this is that you can customize your categories to fit your business and your goals. If you are a tech company perhaps you’d use: favorite tech inventions of all time. If you are an apartment complex, maybe you make the category, best local places to eat. It’s up to you, but feel free to get creative and/or funny. People like funny.

There are many many other apps you can use, although depending on the type of business you are, there are some that may not be available. A couple that I really like are: the “You Tube Box” where you can showcase your favorite You Tube videos, the “Favorite Pages” where you can show other Facebook fan pages that you like, and “Networked Blogs“, where you can feed in your latest blog posts into your fan page.

F. Check your publishing settings. Some people may disagree with me on this, but I don’t think you should send an update to all of your fans every time you do anything on Facebook. True, that’s a good way to get your name repeatedly in front of them, but it’s also a good way to annoy them and, possibly, have them un-fan you. Again, look at your goals for the page and choose the updates that you think are most relevant to your fans. Do your fans care if you made an update to your extended info app. Probably not. What about a new event? Yes, maybe.

G. Add photos. I wouldn’t recommend doing a whole bunch of product shots, or building shots, or logos. If you want to have one “about us album” go for it. But since this is Facebook and it’s all about people and interacting, I’d recommend your pictures be people too. Whip out the camera at an event, take pictures of your employees, or pictures with your clients. Best of all, if you are able to have an event that your fans would come to, take pictures of your fans and then tag them. It will give your fan page added value.

H. Once you’ve gotten all this set up, go ahead and hit “publish” (it’ll be at the very top). Keep in mind that for the page to be effective, publishing it doesn’t mean your done. You are going to want to make status updates, upkeep event info, add new images when they become available, start discussion threads, respond to people who comment on your wall, suggest your fan page to your friends, and plenty more. It’s all fun though. I promise.

Let me know if you think I’m missing anything and check back in next week. I’ll be sharing with you some pages that I think are doing it right.

2. You are going to be getting traffic to your fanpage and then directing some of this traffic to your other external sites that you ultimately want to promote.

3. Step number 1 after you set up your fanpage is to put some valuable content on your new fanpage. Chris says your page should make your page “sticky.” This simply means you should make a page that people want to view for awhile. They should find it valuable and informative.

You can find interesting videos, blog posts, forum posts creating by other people and/or your own original content and place it on your fanpage. There is no sense in driving traffic to a page without any interesting content. Of course, all your content should be focused on your niche. You want to post content that will interest your fans. Keep focused.

You do not want a bunch of affiliate links and spam on your page. Delete other people’s posts like this on your page (politely, remember we are all still learning here) and fill your page with interesting content. You want to build a relationship first before starting your pitch fest.

4. The 50/50 rule. Now is when you are going to start your Facebook promotion. You need to spend about 30 minutes each day or more on your Facebook promotion activities. 50% of your time should be spent on adding valuable content to your page. The other 50% should be spent going to other people’s pages and making comments. When you visit other people’s page just make comments, respond and share. Do not post promotional links of any kind. The goal is to get people to interact with you and to click your Facebook link and like your Facebook fanpage. If you start promoting right away this will turn people away from you not towards your page.

You should be doing all your Facebook activities as your fanpage. This way your fanpage link shows up whenever you comment or post and people will click on it and be taken to your fanpage. If you have great content on your page they will be more likely to become your fans as well.

Then when you post content on your own fanpages it will be seen on the news feeds of all your fans.

5. Always encourage interaction. Chris emphasizes this over and over. Do not just post a video. Ask people to comment. Ask people what they think. Ask them to share the content if they like it. Ask them to tell you what is wrong with it. Always ask a question every time you post anything on Facebook. This will increase interactivity and give you a higher “Edge Rank.”

6. Get your posts to the top of your fan’s newsfeeds with higher Edge Rank. Edge Rank is what Facebook uses to judge how important your posts are relative to your fans. Not every post you make will appear on your fans newsfeeds. Facebook picks and chooses. Edge Rank is the formula which determines how high your comments will rank on particular news feeds of your fans. Edge Rank consists of 3 elements.

a. Affinity Score- This score is based on how many times you and your fan have interacted. The more you have interacted the higher Edge Rank you have with that user and the higher your posts will appear on their newsfeed.

b. Weight- People can like comment or share your content. Sharing has the most “weight” with Facebook. Liking has the least “weight.” The more a particular user shares your content the higher priority your content will have on his particular newsfeed.

c. Time Decay- The more recent comments are the most important.

The bottom line is that you want to encourage everyone to interact with your posts. Ask them to share and comment liberally. The more interaction you have the higher your content ranks.

7. Notes. With Facebook you can post html notes with links back to your external websites. Remember we said we will be driving traffic to our fanpage in order to get fans and some of this traffic we will send away from Facebook to our external websites. Notes is a way to send traffic to your website. You can create simple notes with html links that will be posted to your wall. These notes can have links to your external websites. When you post a note of your page most of your fans will see the note on their feed and will have an opportunity to follow the links to your external website.

8. Tagging. This is notes with a kicker. When you create a note on Facebook you have the opportunity to tag the note to any page that you have already liked. This means that not only will this note be seen on your fanpage newsfeed and on the newsfeed of your fans but the note will appear on the newsfeed of those pages which you have tagged and on the newsfeed of the fans of the pages you have tagged.

This means that if I tag 5 other fanpages, each with 1000 fans page my note will appear on not only on my fan’s fanpages but on all 5000 newsfeeds of all the other pages I tagged and their fan’s newsfeeds.

You have to be careful with this one. It is considered uncool by many to tag someone with a note without asking their permission first. Chris actually has tagging partners. They all agree more or less to tag each others posts. Who would have thought of all this!? A tagging cartel?

This should get you started. It certainly has been an eye opener for me. I really underestimated how much traffic I could generate from Facebook.

The best way to approach this form of marketing is to think long term and start building relationships a little bit every day.

I would appreciate it if you would share this on Facebook! Your comments are appreciated here as well.

Thank You:-
Ashok Khetani