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If you are looking to get a custom Facebook landing page, I recommend finding a great designer (that won’t cost you a fortune on oDesk – the freelance marketplace.

This is a guest post by Michael Vreeken. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here. FaceBook is a huge promotional opportunity – everybody knows that, but most people neglect it. Probably because they are not familiar with the FaceBook marketing techniques that I want to share with you today.

FaceBook Page Basics:

It’s pretty obvious that all FaceBook marketing is build around your FaceBook page, and the FaceBook page is promoting your blog in it’s turn. So how can you drive people from FaceBook to your blog? Let’s take a look at the Britney Spears page as an example: #1 Custom landing page – the first thing you see upon visiting the page. Its main purpose is to convert your visitors into fans of your page, so there should be a clear call-to-action. Additionally you can provide a direct link to your blog, twitter or any place in the web. Check the StandoutBlogger FaceBook landing page as it follows all the best practices. #2 The Wall – this is where you post links, pictures and videos. Wall updates is an ultimate tool to drive traffic to your blog. But remember that the wall itself is useless – people rarely visit pages, they are just checking their own newsfeed for updates. Facebookers are mainly checking the Top News section for updates, so your aim here is to make your update prominent among others. Only updates with lots of “likes” and comments appear in Top News. #3 Links – FaceBook page has some additional places for your website link. The most common ones are the info tab and the text box under the page avatar: Recap: Status updates is an essential traffic source. Once people interact with them – their friends will know about that in their own newsfeed. Good updates can easily go viral and drive lots of traffic.

Gaining Fans:

It’s really hard to make people interact with your status update as they are very lazy. From time to time you can ask your friends to “like” your update in order to boost its positions, but this will start irritating them real soon. The only solution is to grow your fan base and have your updates appear in Top News naturally. The more fans you have – the bigger chance someone will interact with your update. But where to gain those fans? Here are some tips that should help you: #1 Use your friends – first thing you need to do is ask all your friends to join your page. Moreover, once your page has 25 fans – you can make a vanity URL for it. #2 Put your FaceBook URL everywhere – tweet about it, use it in signatures, mention it in your blog posts. The principles are pretty much the same as if you were promoting your website URL. #3 Make an attractive landing page – Mostly when people visit someones page they see a boring wall, which rarely encourages them to become fans of your page. I’ve previously made two great showcases with the coolest FaceBook pages available: 50 Most Prominent Custom Facebook Pages and 40 Highly Effective FaceBook Business Pages – still think that not having a custom page is OK? #4 Use FaceBook Badges & Plugins – Some of them help your visitors to instantly become fans of your FaceBook page. Others are good in promoting your posts around FaceBook. The 2 essential plugins for your blog are: FaceBook Like Button and Like Box #5 Mention your page around FaceBook – FaceBook gives you an opportunity to mention a person or a page, just like twitter. Put @ and start typing your page name to see a drop-down with the choices. Use this technique to spread the word about your page on FaceBook. #6 Make an attractive avatar – avatar is what people associate your page with. A tiny bit of creativity can really make difference: 5 Creative Ways to Hack Your Profile Photo, Making the Most of Your Facebook Profile Picture. #7 Build Partnerships with other pages – each page on FaceBook has “Add to my Page’s Favorites” options. This adds a logo of the page into a “Favorite Pages” box of your page. Exchange links with the pages in your niche to gain some fans from partners.

Conclusions & Resources:

Promoting your blog on FaceBook is a hard and sluggish process. You need to work a lot till the first results, and the most of your efforts should be aimed towards the next few things:

• Creating awesome landing page with a straight call to action;
• Using every opportunity to promote your FaceBook page link and thus gain more fans;
• Posting really interesting valuable updates, that will collect a lot of “likes” and comments and go viral around FaceBook.

This was rather a basic guide to FaceBook Marketing, but if you are interested and eager to follow the white rabbit even deeper into the hole – here are some recourses that are really valuable: Allfacebook, Insidefacebook – powerful recourses with pretty much everything you need to know about FaceBook; Socialmediaexaminer – awesome blog with lots of tips and tricks on FaceBook and Twitter, which I really respect and visit frequently; Customfacebookpage, Facebookshowcase – Showcases with cool FaceBook pages to inspire you a bit; FaceBook Templates – premium templates for FaceBook pages for those who are not really good in web design, but willing to have an attractive page.