In 2008, when my book was
published, I started this blog to promote the book. I also wanted to help small
businesses understand the importance of marketing ideas by providing examples,
good and bad, to help them learn how to make their business conspicuous.
Now, a mere year or so
later, I decided to promote my book more aggressively. I became a member of Linkedin,
though I was not sure of the actual business benefits. (My slogan for Linkedin
was, and still is, “Many have joined. Few know why.”) I joined some of the groups,
issued status reports and posted discussions, but never noticed any major
impact.
So I decided to take the
next steps, which were Twitter and Facebook. I wanted to use Facebook to
promote my book and use Twitter to link Facebook with my blog, as a sort of continuous,
hopefully interesting, loop.
Then I read Jay Ehret’s October 2 blog where he quoted a report that said 5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity on Twitter. 94% of users have less than 100 followers. And 75% of Twitter users joined in 2009. So I decided to postpone Twitter and start with Facebook. (Though I bet there are some similar discouraging reports.)
Of course, nothing is as simple as it seems, with the possible exception of a toothpick. Since I wanted to promote my book, I opted not for a Facebook profile but a Facebook page, which is designed for an organization, product or public personality. The page, which I titled “All You Need Is A Good Idea,” was easy to set up, but not easy to figure out or customize. There are help pages, but if you have a specific question I could not find a way to ask it. And it is very different from a profile. In fact, if I get a Facebook page fan, I cannot friend them without having a Facebook profile, which I do not have.
Also, I have no idea how to entice people to come to my page and become fans. (Aside from clicking on the Facebook link on this page.) The only thing Facebook suggests is to take out pay per click ads to get more fans, which certainly seems to support their avowed mission to make the world more open and connected.
And I am not particularly happy with their putting a Facebook ad for their products on my Facebook page. But there is no way I have found of figuring out how to prevent this.
Also, if you look over at the lower left side of this post, there are names of fans, and videos from my Facebook page. I want neither of these things cluttering up my blog, but have no idea how to eliminate them…nor have I discovered any method to contact a Facebook person to ask these questions.
So on a scale of one to ten, I guess I give my Facebook experience a six.
Any thoughts on how I can make it an eight?
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