Using Facebook to Promote a Local Blog
by Matt on Aug 16, 2010 in Guest Posts, Promotion
[Ed. note: While I've written briefly on Facebook as a marketing tool in the past, I don't have any specific experience using Facebook ads. I've asked Geordie Romer to write up some of his thoughts on using Facebook ads and Facebook's other promotional opportunities for local bloggers.]
(This is a guest post from Geordie Romer, a real estate agent in Leavenworth WA. You can find his writing on his Leavenworth Real Estate blog and, if you “like,” you can join his fans on Facebook.)
Matt asked if I would write a guest post about how I use Facebook in my business. I don’t profess to be a Facebook expert and certainly not a guru. I’m just small business owner trying to find my way in the world. (I’m a real estate agent in a vacation destination with a population of about 7,000.)
With that caveat in mind:
1. Create a page.
Lots of other folks have written great guides on the how and the why of creating a separate page for your business or blog. If you are a real pro, you should have a dedicated “landing page” or welcome tab instead of sending everyone to your wall. I’ll admit to not being there quite yet.
There are a lot of great articles about creating a fan page. Smashing Magazine published one of the most comprehensive.
2. PPC fan ads
If I had known I was going to write a blog post about my experiment, I would have taken better notes. Luckily, Facebook does a pretty good job of keeping records for me on my “Insights” page.
On June 7th, we had 30 total “likes” or fans. A month later, we had 40. Apparently we were doing something right since we had organic growth.
On July 11th, I started my experiment with Facebook ads. I had done some advertising earlier with Facebook, but not much for the fan page. I set my budget for $3.00 a day and up to $1 per click.
Though I’d love to have thousands of fans, I’d rather have past clients, future clients, and readers of my blog. I set my Facebook ads to reach a very specific demographic.
- Over 30 years old
- Lives in Washington State
- Who are not already fans…
- But… who have friends who ARE fans
I think this last criterion is critical. Friends of friends are a great target audience. You don’t need to target income, education, ZIP codes or religion. We all tend to like people who like the same things we like.
Facebook doesn’t give you much room to work with when creating an ad, but here’s what worked for us.
My partner Allyson and I have stronger “personal brands” than our website. We took advantage of our personal name recognition in these ads.
So, is it working?
I have been pleased with the steady growth that advertising has helped with. As of August 9, we’re up to 103 fans. (And only 35 of those fans are Facebook friends of mine.)
(click for larger version)
We have had 168 clicks, but we’re only paying $0.51 per average click for a total of $86. Let’s assume that 10 of these new fans are organic and not PPC generated. The average fan only cost $1.62.
I was curious what $100 would buy me. I’ve been happy to see very measurable results.
Other Tools
1.) It’s now possible to have Facebook “Like” buttons for blog posts. If a reader likes a particular article and decides to “like” it, the link can appear on their Facebook wall and is shared with their friends. For WordPress users, here is a free plug-in from the folks at Homequest.
2.) Since email is so ubiquitous, it seems silly not to have a link to your fanpage from your email signature. I use an image provided by Facebook – it seems so much cooler to click on a button than a url.
3.) It makes sense that you might tell your blog readers about your Facebook page too. Certainly a post inviting them to join you on Facebook isn’t a bad idea. Facebook has created “badges” for you to place on your blog which link back to your fan page. They show how many fans you have and also a snippet of your most recent activity.
I use one that fits nicely in my sidebar without being too distracting.
How are you using Facebook with your hyperlocal blog? Are you driving traffic to your blog from Facebook or are you turning loyal readers into Facebook fans?
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We also added the widget that lets you show which posts from the blog are most popular on Facebook – it is a nice way to see what people are sharing from the site on Facebook.
Great article Geordie.
I have always wanted to read about the success real estate agents have had using facebook ads.
There are many articles out there about why Facebook ads are more effective and cheaper than Google ads. They really allow you to set specific demographics for those that you want to view your ads. And since Facebook, as opposed to Google, has information such as age, location, birthday, interests…you can really attract interests from only those demographics you are interested in attracting.
Informative post. I also used Facebook in the early days of launching my website, just to get some momentum going. I may have spent a total of $20 on Facebook advertising. That small amount was just the kick-start I needed start adding fans.
One thing that has been a challenge with my Facebook fan page is that some of my fans prefer to comment on blog posts on Facebook instead of on my website. From my perspective, I would much rather have them join my site (my blog is actually a Ning network) and engage within the community I have created. For this reason, I do not interact as often with my Facebook fans because I don’t necessarily want to encourage the behavior. It people want to join the discussion, I want them to go to the website to do so.
Still, Facebook is a useful tool for people who don’t want to follow the site updates via RSS updates or Twitter so it does serve a purpose.
I hadn’t thought about adding a FB image & link to my email signature. I just changed my signature. Thanks!
Becca- I’d prefer everyone engage with my business on my blog too, but RSS has such low adoption compared to FB. Some of my readers come from FB, some from RSS, some from an email feed (Feedburner), some from Twitter. Unfortunately, you have to meet readers where they feel comfortable. I would rather have them comment on FB than not at all.
Becca & Geordie- I’ve heard that there are now website plug-ins that can link website and facebook comments. I’ve not tried it, but you might look into it.