Munir Ahmad Blog

Facebook does provide a place for you to represent your business, and that is Facebook Pages.

Here’s the #1 reason to have your own Facebook Page (as well as your own Profile):

More people can find out about your business because your Page gets indexed and is searchable inside and outside of Facebook.

Other reasons include:

• Because the number of Fans you can have is unlimited (whereas the Friend limit is 5,000).
• Activity on your Page helps increase what I call “viral visibility” on Facebook.
• You can establish your brand even further.

As a Summary:

1. Pages are public. Most of Facebook is behind a login, preventing search engines from indexing.  However, some Fan pages are not behind a login and thus search engines can index the page.  Hopefully, people will stumble on the result in SERPs, visit the Facebook page, and then get to your site via the link (see reason #2).
2. Pages include links. Because the pages are public, you can get some nice facebook.com link credit.  You can’t use an anchor text, but hey, it’s free.
3. Send “updates to fans”. One of the greatest features is that you can send “updates” to fans whenever you want.  It’s a nice way of building a database of interested users.  Send messages about new products, updated website, etc.
4. You control the page. Making the page before a Fan or a competitor is critical.  You want to be able to send the messages, edit or remove sections, and control the information to an extent.
5. News feed. When a someone joins a Fan page, it’s published in their News feed for all their to read (unless they have turned this off).  It makes someone joining your Fan page somewhat viral.
6. It’s free and easy. Making a Fan page takes just a few minutes – add some information, URL, and upload the logo and you’re done.  You can make your page here.

Ask any marketing expert and they’ll tell you “the money’s in the list”. Email is a powerful and easy way to build a list and communicate your marketing messages to leads and customers.

Here are the top 10 reasons to use email marketing:

1. Email marketing is virtually free. Email is truly unique in it’s ability to put your marketing message in front of thousands of potential customers at virtually no cost. This means that virtually 100% of revenue generated from email campaigns is pure profit.

2. Email is personal. Everyone’s favorite sound is the sound of his or her own name. Most email marketing solutions allow you to automatically customize email messages with personal data such as the subscriber’s name.

3. Valuable demographic data can be collected. When a lead subscribes to your email list, you can collect valuable data about your potential customers. This data allows you to better target your marketing messages to your list.

4. Email messages are sent instantaneously. With the touch of a button, your marketing message is sent to your list. There is no waiting for the post office to deliver the message to the customer’s mailbox.

5. Email is transparent. With email, virtually every marketing metric can be tracked with a high degree of precision. Among the metrics that can be tracked are delivery rates, open rates, click through rates, and conversion rates.

6. Email marketing is highly automated. Very little manpower is required to create an email campaign. Essentially, the only manual work required is the copy writing of email message itself. Other aspects such as delivery and tracking are done automatically.

7. Email messages do not necessarily require any design work. Unlike many other forms of marketing, email messages require little to no designing. In fact, it has been shown that plain text email messages with no HTML tend to be more effective. Plain text messages are much less likely to trigger spam filters and consequently have significantly higher delivery rates.

8. Rapid response time. Particularly if you sell products online, an email campaign can begin to generate a response almost immediately. Customers don’t have to leave their home and can make a purchase with the click of a button.

9. Email is the ultimate “word of mouth” marketing vehicle. If your email message is “viral” in nature, your customer can quickly and easily forward it to friends and family, spreading your message to new potential customers.

10. Email helps you build a relationship of trust with your customers. Email solves one of the greatest challenges in marketing: building a relationship with customers. Email allows you to keep in touch with customers, get their feedback, offer support, etc.

Email marketing is a powerful, inexpensive, and cost-effective marketing medium. Start using email today to build your online business.

What’s a meatball sundae you ask? Well, besides being the brand-spanking new book offering from bestselling marketing author Seth Godin, it’s also an analogy in which Seth uses to describe instances of when “boring” companies and brands use newly available and popular marketing strategies and tools to push their products and services.

American Express could have become PayPal, but they watched the opportunity go by. FedEx uses technology to make shipping easier for the customer; UPS uses technology to make shipping easier for UPS. Who’s winning? Google has broken the world into tiny bits. No one visits a Web site’s home page anymore; they go in the back door, to just the place Google sent them.

New Marketing, whose tools include things like MySpace, YouTube, Web sites, permission marketing, cable TV, and viral techniques, is reshaping our world. But many companies try to use the tools without first getting their organization and products in sync with them. The result: what Seth Godin calls a “meatball sundae”. A big, ineffective mess.

In his trademark style – clear, accessible, jargon-free – and full of real-life examples, Godin reviews how marketing used to work and explains how to use the New Marketing to become a better organization: faster, more flexible, and even more fun.

Meatball Sundae on Audible.com