5 Steps to Making Facebook Useful

Ok, you are wasting time on Facebook already, mostly complaining about the new format change, or grumbling about how you've "...got to get away from the keyboard!". Amen to that Sister! But how about taking making your Facebook time productive?

Here's the first 5 steps to spreading the word about your business on Facebook.

1) Create a Facebook Page. A Page is like a profile for a business. It's free and everything you post on it goes to the wall of your page's fans. If you've ever "become a fan" of something on Facebook, it's just like you've become that page's friend.

2) Put some stuff up on your page. Pictures, videos, notes, anything useful that people like to see and share. The trick is putting up stuff that people will share with their friends. Add business contact information to your Info. tab and add applications that are useful to your fans. It's like you have a free website! How cool is THAT?!?

3) Invite your friends to become fans of your page. Post your Facebook Page on your status updates, invite people to check out the new place you made. Yoga Nexus posts great yoga poses and health tips. (Shameless Plug ahead) 2hats Consulting posts business advice.

4) Create a live event for all your friends and fans to come see your work and meet each other. One of my clients, Avra Organic Spa, has had fabulous success throwing parties, clothing swaps and workshops. It gets Avra's fans away from their computer and out meeting the Avra folks in person.

5) Track the page traffic. On the left menu, underneath the [more] button is an item called [View Insights] that shows you how many visitors you've had, and where they came from. Very handy.

David Meerman Scott Talks Inbound Marketing

"Focus on the persona of your buyers rather than your product."

Think like a publisher...what will your buyers want to believe about you or your company? Don't talk about the product itself, nobody cares about your product. Bring the skills of a journalist to the task of discussing the interests of your buyers in the language they use.

1. Nobody cares about your product
2. No coercion is required
3. Lose control
4. Put down virtual roots
5. Create triggers that encourage people to share
6. Point the world to your doorstep

David supports creating a bunch of different marketing efforts. Find what works and focus on that: free ebooks with lots of colors and creative commons licensing, funny videos, blogging and online news releases. He's a big fan of Hubspot.

Google's New Browser Lights a Fire

I haven't played with Google's new web browser, Chrome, yet but John Brandon from Web 2.0 has. I'm intrigued, yet skeptical, about his thoughts on Google's claim for Web dominance. I suspect they just want to make the rest of the horses (IE, Firefox, Opera & Safari) run faster.

Chrome is a first glimpse at Google 2.0, an effort to make cloud computing ubiquitous and the desktop a thing of the past. For anyone who has wondered whether Google will release an operating system, the short answer is: yes, they just did.

And here's the proof. When you install Chrome, it asks you if you want to use Google as the search engine. You might think, well - of course! But what Google is saying with that question is: we intend to own the Web, and when we do, we don't want to get sued for monopolistic practices. Wow. [more]