So many businesses are stuck in the dark ages. They still think that marketing is all about direct mail or email newsletters; there is still a place for those methods, but it’s definitely not the be all and end all of marketing. In fact, these methods are becoming less and less important.

Businesses should treat Facebook Marketing as just another email newsletter platform. You may have used an email program like aweber or MailChimp in your business before… treat Facebook as much the same.

A Facebook Page has people ‘Like’ it. Once they like it, they then become a part of your list. Their feed is an RSS feed of everything you post (and everyone else’s posts), so essentially it’s just replacing emails.

Businesses have to realise that you shouldn’t be trying to take people off the platform; you should instead be engaging them on the same platform. If they ‘Like’ your page it just means that they are subscribing to your feed and want to be communicated with that way. Speak to them on their terms!

Now your aim is to get people to like your page and start sending them stuff…!

Find out more about Social Media with Lead Generation here.

There is an updated version of this post here.

Having a well-designed, attractive Business Page on Facebook is now a must – and not too hard to do.

Facebook last year released FBML – Facebook Markup Language. This [stupidly] was expected to replace HTML – the common code used online.

Facebook however has since allowed for users to create pages with HTML and very recently did away with FBML altogether.

To create a Facebook Business Page, simply search applications for “FBML “(or “Welcome Page”). Then the easiest way to populate the page with the content you like is to go into the page and insert an image. To do this you should upload an image to your domain and use the code:

<img src=http://www.domain.com/image.jpg” />

You can also easily use HTML, if you know it.

We would recommend using these guys: www.shortstack.com – brilliant software that makes it so easy.

There is an updated version of this post here.

Find out more about Social Media with Lead Generation here.

In terms of social media marketing, every time you Tweet you are essentially creating a new web page or post on a blog. Each one is its own (hopefully optimized) piece of content. And guess what? They all interlink closely.

Every Tweet on your profile is interlinked to the others, through your profile page. As more people engage with you and Retweet you, the more inbound links you are essentially getting.

This form of optimization is really no different to that of a website. And guess what? It works well for other social media platforms too.

Find out more about Social Media Marketing with Lead Generation here.

You must have a solid personal brand before engaging on social media. If you are going to engage, wherever you go, your profile follows. Think about it.

I Tweet my blog post; my Profile is clickable. I comment on a friend’s Facebook page; my profile is clickable. I comment on a blog post of a friend; and through most modern systems, my profile is clickable.

Now let’s add a level of complexity to the equation. You’re probably part of a business wondering how to boost your online profile. Well, the dominant online profile you should be concerned about is Social Media and your business’ social media profile.

Social media is still yet to allow for businesses to have a dominant profile – apart from Facebook to an extent. Even on Facebook I still find it very odd to see that a company likes something or comments on something – it’s just not human.

So to bring back the human element and cover what Social Media does not, we need to post in our own personal profiles. Therefore, how can you have an incomplete or ‘social profile’ to post on behalf of a business.

You must brand your identity as a business owner or manager and even have your assistants build a strong personal brand. That way they can act on behalf of your business online.

Here’s more on B2B Lead Generation with Social Media