How to Create Your Facebook Business Page: The Simple and Easy Way

Facebook is exploding! There are over 450 million Facebook users right now!

One great and simple way to begin to dive into the world of Facebook is to create a Facebook Page for your Business. As you might have noticed a few things have changed in Facebook recently, the privacy policy, buttons, tabs and so much more!

And with these changes comes massive confusion, buttons move, “Fan me” is now “Like me” and Fan Pages are now called “Pages”, is it clear yet?

No matter what business you are in – I highly recommend you create a Business Page in Facebook. Why? Simple – you might not need it now – but you will in the future. And with the “gold rush” that is on to create custom URL’s for your Facebook Business Page – all of the good domains will be lost.

So, create you Facebook Business Page, Claim your custom URL (you have to have 25 “likes” to do this) and then you can sit back and figure out what to do next.

Let’s get started:

1) Login into Facebook: www.facebook.com

Since this is a Business Page – make sure to have the most senior person in your company (the Owner/ CEO)– login and attach the Facebook Business Page to their personal account.

Tip: Do NOT!!! Let anyone else create your Facebook Business Page – if you do – they “own” your page – and nope – you can’t get it back! (At least until Facebook creates an online customer service portal – which I don’t see happening in the next few years). Note: You can file a “claim” with Facebook if your Business Page is set-up with a person that leaves or no longer works with your company. But the response time on these is pretty much super slow.

Tip: You can and should create an “Administrator” for your Facebook Page. That way the “Social Media Person” you have on staff can manage the page (post, edit, comment, etc..) but not “own” it. This is super simple and you can have several Admin’s on your Business Page – so make sure to sign up multiple people on the page – just in case.

Note: While you are in Facebook, I would love it if you would “Like” of our Facebook Business Page: www.Facebook.com/MMBiz. It’s a great way to keep up on all that Market My Biz Online is up to, plus it’s a great way to get your Golden 25 Like’s and your Custom Domain.

2) Now that you are logged into Facebook – with the account that you want to forever and ever “OWN” this Facebook Business Page:

Go to: http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages

Click on the Green Button: “Create A Page”

3) Select what you want the page for:

A: Local Business

If you are a local business and have one or several locations this is your check box. (Example: Restaurant Chain of 3 stores) Why? Because Facebook is creating a Local Business Directory – and this is how they are collecting the data. If in doubt this is your best selection.

Note: Once you choose Local Business – there is a drop down that appears. If you fit “perfectly” into the categories listed – change to one of them (Example: Real Estate) if your best category for your business is not listed, just leave it as Local Business.

B: Brand, product, or organization

If you are a true “brand” or single product (Ex: Tide) or a Non-Profit – this is your choice.

Note: If you are a Non-profit: You might want to consider creating a Community page as well. (Ex: Breast Cancer Survivors, or Down Syndrome Families in Austin).

C: Artist, band, or public figure

This is for Bands, Artists and public figures. (Example: Britney Spears, Tiger Woods and Pearl Jam).

4) Page Name:

This will be the “title” of your page – it is very important. Why? Because is has a strong Search Engine Optimization value and it is what folks will see when they get to your page – and get messages from you.

Stop and think about how you want to be found and known. If you have a super strong local or regional brand (or want to create one) then the title of your page should be your brand. (Example: Starbucks)

If you are an independent business or don’t “own” the legal rights to your company name – think of great keywords you can use in your title. (Example: Austin Fitness Trainer, Austin Insurance Solutions)

5) Check the Box

I’m the official representative of this person, business, band or product and have permission to create this Page. Review the Facebook Terms

I do suggest glancing over the Facebook Terms – they have some things in there you might want to make sure you follow.

Some of the Facebook Terms:

• You will not offer any contest, giveaway, or sweepstakes (“promotion”) on Facebook without our prior written consent. If we consent, you take full responsibility for the promotion, and will follow our Promotions Guidelines and all applicable laws.
• You will not use Facebook to do anything unlawful, misleading, malicious, or discriminatory.
• You will not use Facebook if you are a convicted sex offender.
• You will keep your contact information accurate and up-to-date.
• You will not share your password, (or in the case of developers, your secret key), let anyone else access your account, or do anything else that might jeopardize the security of your account.

6) Create the Page

Click the Blue Button: Create Official Page

Congrats! You have your Facebook Business Page!

7) Next Steps: Customize, Get “Likes” Create a Custom Domain

Now that you have your page, you need to customize it, add pictures and information, video and more. Getting the page is just the beginning!

Good news: We are having a Facebook Bootcamp for Business on May 20 and 21^st – to help you learn how to make the customizations to your Facebook Business Page. Facebook has it’s own coding language (FBML), rules, structure and so much more. We will simplify this for you – take you step by step through the process and get you up and looking great in no time!

RSVP for this exciting webinar today: May 20^th and May 21^st, 2010

Create your Custom Domain for your Facebook Business Page.

I created an entire Blog post on just this topic.. so much great information!

PS: I would love it if you would “Like” of our Facebook Business Page: www.Facebook.com/MMBiz. It’s a great way to keep up on all that Market My Biz Online is up to, plus it’s a great way to get your Golden 25 Like’s and your Custom Domain.

How to Market on Search Engines: Search Engine Marketing 101

Are you confused yet? SEM, SEO, PPC, Google Places, Google Maps? Before you start working on getting your site on the Search Engines you need to learn the basics. And that starts with understanding the most important page out there your keyword SERP.

What is your keyword SERP? Well SERP = Search Engine Results Page. So your Keyword Search Engine Results Page is the page that shows up for the keyword you want.

Clear as mud? This video is designed to help you understand the key points of Search Engine Marketing. It always seems to be one of the most confusing things for folks to understand.

And frankly… I am not surprised…. the industry is constantly changing the names, titles and “slang” for each area.

There are 4 key components of Search Engine Marketing:

1. Keyword SERP (see info above)
2. Pay Per Click (also known as PPC), Also known as “Google Adwords”
3. Google Map, Google Places, Google Business Listing Center
4. Organic/ Natural SEO

3 Easy Steps to your Custom Facebook Fan Page URL

So you finally have your companies Facebook Fan page up and working! Congrats!

Here comes the fun part – getting Fans and getting a custom URL for your Company Fan Page.

The custom URL will not only make it much easier to share with others, but it is just prettier!

What you get from Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=6325*4#&re

(not so pretty… )

What it can change to in these 3 easy steps:
http://www.facebook.com/MMBiz

Things to keep in mind about this change:
1) Once you change.. you can’t go back. So think deep and hard about what you want the name of your Facebook Fan Page (also known as public page) to be.

2) Some are taken: So hit your favorite search engine and give them a try – www.facebook.com/the-name-you-want

3) You need Fan’s to make the change – in fact you need 25 Fan’s before Facebook will let you get a custom URL. So email your favorite friends, family and neighbors to become a fan.. so you can get the custom URL.

The 3 Easy Steps to Getting Your Custom Facebook Fan Page:
1) Login to Facebook.com – with the account that is the administrator for the Fan page.

2) Go to this page: http://www.facebook.com/username/

3) Select if you want to change your Fan Page (aka your Business page) or your Personal Page URL – you can do both. Just pay attention which one you choose – so you don’t accidentally name your personal page your business name!

Done.. yes.. that is it.. you are done!

Questions or Comments?

I’d really love to hear if you have any questions or ideas you want to share? Any topics you’d like me to cover? If so, please post them as a comment. PS: Don’t forget to sign-up for the Strategy Secrets Newsletter to keep in the loop on all the scoop! ==>

Thanks!

Protected: GBiz

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Why Your Domain and Website Hosting Can Not Be the Same Company

As business owners begin to dive into the wild world of the web, they quickly are caught up in a slew of advice, technology, terms, tools and well meaning advice from every relative, staff member and individual younger than them. This can sometimes cause a problem in understanding what is important and what is just not.

Take some of my most “hated” advice. Web designers hate it, Techy Geek relatives hate it, and the office networking guy usually hates it as well. In fact they work pretty hard to convince you my advice is bad, evil and severely mis-understood.

What is that advice you ask? It’s this: Do not host your website and your domain (www.nameofyourco.com) with the same company or with anyone you work with, are related to or with your designer or It guy.

Before I give my explanation… let’s make sure you understand a few details. To do that properly… let’s go back a few years and talk about your cell phone. In the late 90′s when you got a cell phone the phone company you signed up with (Verizon, Southwestern Bell, etc..) gave you your cell phone number (512-123-1234). Better yet, if you ever decided to leave their company and go to another – they KEPT your number! That’s right – they KEPT your number. You had no choice in the matter. I clearly remember agonizing over this decision, I wanted to dump Southwestern Bell badly!  I had recently moved and the service was horrible in Washington, DC and with the crazy roaming rules (something that is now long gone) I was paying out the nose on top of it all.

I waited it out until I could not take it anymore. I finally signed up with Sprint and said goodbye to my first ever cell phone number. This was a big issue for me because at the time I worked as a Consultant and I lived by my cell phone. I had no office phone, I was 100% travel. Now I had to go through the company to get new cards (painful), contact all my current and old clients (double painful) and hope my buddies and friends would find me again. Remember Google, Facebook and LinkedIn did not exist at this time, so if you lost someones number you went to Yahoo or AOL and dug through the white pages to try and find them again and their cell phone number was never listed.

Luckily now it is super easy to “port” your phone number between different cell phone carriers. Your Domain name (www.NameOfCompany.com) is like the phone number in this scenario and your cell phone carrier is like your website hosting company. The phone number (aka Domain name) is important to you and your business and you want to keep control over it at all times. The same is true for your website hosting company – you want to maintain control over that account – because having your website go down or having your Domain name get locked will devastate most businesses. If your domain name gets locked it takes down your website and your ability to send out emails. Can you keep your business going without email?

Here is a story about my buddy Steve who had his domain account locked. He has a small consulting company in Virgina. He was using Go Daddy as his domain provider (where he purchased his domain (www.NameofCompany.com)) and as his web hosting company, its easier to write one check. He hired a local IT company to maintain his companies email servers.  Well the IT company did not keep up with the latest patches one day (it happens all the time – these boxes get attacked 20,000+ times a day) and a spammer hacked into the email server. The spammer set up shop, created a new email account and went to town emailing millions of pieces of spam via this new account. Next thing Steve knows is his email is down, the website is down. He calls his IT company – there is nothing they can do – his domain provider (Go Daddy) has locked his domain name (www.NameofCompany.com) down for spam complaints. Because he has his website hosted with Go Daddy as well, he is locked out of his website.

In Steve’s situation, he created a new domain name (with another company) and had to get a new website built (remember they locked him out of his account – so he could not even get the website files). In a few months, Go Daddy did un-lock the domain and the web server. However, the damage was done.

How do you prevent this from happening to you? Never work with Go Daddy? No. Go Daddy is a great company and should not be blamed. All of the domain providers will do what Go Daddy did. It’s the only way to stop spam and the legal implications connected to spam. It was made worse for Steve because he had his domain and website with the same company.

The Lesson:

1) Do NOT host your domain (www.NameofCompany.com) and your website (the content) with the same company. Keep them separate. For Example: Go Daddy is my domain provider for all of my domains and I use Bluehost to host my websites.

2) Do NOT allow your IT guy, web designer, family member or neighbor host your website. You can host your website for $60 to $95 per year. Why? you may ask… well check my next post for the scoop on why you need to host your website with a separate 3rd party.

-Jane

What is the Search Engine Keywords Selection Process

Search engines are the vehicles that drive potential customers to your websites. But in order for visitors to reach their destination – your website – you need to provide them with specific and effective signs that will direct them right to your site. You do this by creating carefully chosen keywords.

Think of the right keywords as the Open Sesame! of the Internet. Find the exactly right words or phrases, and presto! hoards of traffic will be pulling up to your front door. But if your keywords are too general or too
over-used, the possibility of visitors actually making it all the way to your site – or of seeing any real profits
from the visitors that do arrive – decreases dramatically.

Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy. If they are not chosen with great precision, no
matter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be, the right people may never get the chance to find out about it. So your first step in plotting your strategy is to gather and evaluate keywords and phrases.

You probably think you already know EXACTLY the right words for your search phrases. Unfortunately, if you haven’t followed certain specific steps, you are probably WRONG. It’s hard to be objective when you are right in the center of your business network, which is the reason that you may not be able to choose the most efficient keywords from the inside. You need to be able to think like your customers. And since you are a business owner and not the consumer, your best bet is to go directly to the source.

Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list of potential search words and phrases yourself, ask for words from as many potential customers as you can. You will most likely find out that your understanding of your business and your customers’ understanding is significantly different.

The consumer is an invaluable resource. You will find the words you accumulate from them are words and phrases you probably never would have considered from deep inside the trenches of your business.
Only after you have gathered as many words and phrases from outside resources should you add your own keyword to the list. Once you have this list in hand, you are ready for the next step: evaluation.

The aim of evaluation is to narrow down your list to a small number of words and phrases that will direct the
highest number of quality visitors to your website. By “quality visitors” I mean those consumers who are most
likely to make a purchase rather than just cruise around your site and take off for greener pastures. In evaluating
the effectiveness of keywords, bear in mind three elements: popularity, specificity, and motivation.

Popularity is the easiest to evaluate because it is an objective quality. The more popular your keyword is, the
more likely the chances are that it will be typed into a search engine which will then bring up your URL.

You can now purchase software that will rate the popularity of keywords and phrases by giving words a number rating
based on real search engine activity. Software such as WordTracker will even suggest variations of your words and
phrases. The higher the number this software assigns to a given keyword, the more traffic you can logically expect to
be directed to your site. The only fallacy with this concept is the more popular the keyword is, the greater the
search engine position you will need to obtain. If you are down at the bottom of the search results, the consumer will
probably never scroll down to find you.

Popularity isn’t enough to declare a keyword a good choice. You must move on to the next criteria, which is
specificity. The more specific your keyword is, the greater the likelihood that the consumer who is ready to purchase
your goods or services will find you.

Let’s look at a hypothetical example. Imagine that you have obtained popularity rankings for the keyword “automobile companies.” However, you company specializes in bodywork only. The keyword “automobile body shops” would rank lower on the popularity scale than “automobile companies,” but it would nevertheless serve you much better. Instead of getting a slew of people interested in everything from buying a car to changing their oil filters, you will get only those consumers with trashed front ends or crumpled fenders being directed to your site. In other words, consumers ready to buy your services are the ones who will immediately find you. Not only that, but the greater the specificity of your keyword is, the less competition you will face.

The third factor is consumer motivation. Once again, this requires putting yourself inside the mind of the customer rather than the seller to figure out what motivation prompts a person looking for a service or product to type in a particular word or phrase. Let’s look at another example, such as a consumer who is searching for a job as an IT manager in a new city. If you have to choose between “Seattle job listings” and “Seattle IT recruiters” which do you think will benefit the consumer more? If you were looking for this type of specific job, which keyword would you type in? The second one, of course! Using the second keyword targets people who have decided on their career, have the necessary experience, and are ready to enlist you as their recruiter, rather than someone just out of school who is casually trying to figure out what to do with his or her life in between beer parties. You want to find people who are ready to act or make a purchase, and this requires subtle tinkering of your keywords until your find the most specific and directly targeted phrases to bring the most motivated traffic to you site.

Once you have chosen your keywords, your work is not done. You must continually evaluate performance across a variety of search engines, bearing in mind that times and trends change, as does popular lingo. You cannot rely on your log traffic analysis alone because it will not tell you how  many of your visitors actually made a purchase.

Luckily, some new tools have been invented to help you judge the effectiveness of your keywords in individual search engines. There is now software available that analyzes consumer behavior in relation to consumer traffic. This allows you to discern which keywords are bringing you the most valuable customers.

This is an essential concept: numbers alone do not make a good keyword; profits per visitor do. You need to find keywords that direct consumers to your site who actually buy your product, fill out your forms, or download your product. This is the most important factor in evaluating the efficacy of a keyword or phrase, and should be the sword you wield when discarding and replacing ineffective or inefficient keywords with keywords that bring in better profits.

Ongoing analysis of tested keywords is the formula for search engine success. This may sound like a lot of work – and it is! But the amount of informed effort you put into your keyword campaign is what will ultimately generate your business’ rewards.

What is PPC – Pay Per Click?

Advertising your services or products on the Internet is both extremely effective and extremely competitive. There
are several ways to go about attracting traffic to your website; Pay-Per-Click is one of the options you can choose
from, along with developing an SEO, or search engine optimization campaign. Both pay-per-click and SEO are
targeted to get your website placed as close to the top of search engine results as possible. One of the differences
is that it takes minutes to set up a pay-per-click campaign versus months for a good SEO campaign.

Pay-Per-Click is a simple type of paid advertising that all search engines, Google, MSN, Bing, Yahoo and several others. It requires a bid for a “per-click” basis, which translates to your company paying the bid amount every time the search engine directs a visitor to your site, and someone “click’s” on your ad. Thus the pay-per-click term.

Just to futher confuse things, you can also have ad’s that are pay-per-impression. Meaning when the site shows up in the results, you pay. There are lot’s of school’s of thoughts on which type of ad is best and it really just boils down to what you are trying to achieve with your ad and what keywords or industry you are in.

It’s All About Driving Traffic

There are 2 primary ways to drive traffic to your site using search engines.

1) Paid Search: Paid search is just what it says, all of the ways you can “pay” to get traffic, from search engines, via directories (citysearch.com, yellowpages.com, etc.), PPC ad’s, banners and more. The beauty of paid search is in it’s immediacy and the simplicity of the pay-per-click process. You just bid and you’re up and running. It doesn’t
demand any specific technical knowledge, though the more you know about search engines and keywords, the easier -
and more effective – the process will be.

So if you have a sale, a special or new product line you want to promote, in minutes you can be up and running, driving traffic to your site that is looking or seeking your great new product or service. Another beauty of PPC or paid search is the tracking process. You will know in less than 1 day how effective your ad is in driving traffic. If after a few days, your ad does not get a lot of click throughs, it is time to re-write and find a message that connects with your target audience.

2) Natural Search: This is when someone types in a keyword and your website just appears “naturally” at the top (first page) of the search engine results. One thing most folks don’t understand about Natural Search is that it can be just as costly and definitely more time consuming as paid search campaigns. This is compounded by the fact that their are multiple search engines out there, they all use their own method’s to determine where you rank on their site and on it goes. However, that does not mean you should not do all you can to get your natural search rankings up, it’s just more of an ongoing process and one that needs to be managed weekly, if not daily to really achieve success in popular keyword categories.

How is this different from Google Adwords?

Google Adwords is the program that Google has built to manage Pay-Per-Click campaigns. People forget that Google is not the only search engine on the planet, and while they do dominate in most markets, there is a lot of traffic coming from MSN, Bing and Yahoo. Each search engine company has their own Pay-Per-Click (PPC) system, comparable to Google’s Adwords. The good news is that  all of the search engine ad programs run pretty much the same, you get a set amount of words for your ad space, then a spot for your url.

As with all marketing campaigns, there are advantages and disadvantages. If you understand the process and monitor your pay-per-click campaign frequently, it can be very effective. The tricky part is learning the process and how to work it to your advantage.