6 Quick Tips to Drive Traffic From Facebook

Let’s start this off with this… it is a process, not a one time event. Facebook traffic will take some consistent effort on your part ~ but it can happen in just a few minutes a day.

Here’s the steps to take if you’re going to consistently use Facebook to drive traffic back to your site.

1. Set up a fanpage.

Yes, you’re going to want to set up a fanpage, because if you’re going to be talking “business” you don’t necessarily want it cluttering up your profile page.

You also want to be able to connect with people who are looking for the information you have to share.

Fanpages are also open to search engines, where your profile pages are not. So… the content you post on your fanpage can be found and indexed by search engines to send you even more traffic.

Here’s some great instructions on how to set up a facebook fanpage if you need some help. Don’t get fancy. Don’t set up opt in boxes, and lock people out until they give you something… it’s not about that. Just set up a page where you can connect with the community you’re building around the topic you’re writing about.

2. Publish new and excellent content regularly on your blog.

Yes, this has everything to do with getting traffic from facebook. The more regularly you create content and publish it to your facebook page the more you’ll have people connecting, and following you back to your blog.

3. Post new blog posts to your fanpage wall.

Each time you publish a new post on your blog MANUALLY go to facebook and post a link to your fanpage wall. There are services like networkedblogs that will do it automatically for you, however, it’s been my experience (and the experience of a lot of other people) that those automated posts will NOT make it into your friends newsfeeds… so take a minute and do it yourself.

Make sure you add an image to your blog post ~ when you post the link to your fanpage it will pull in the image from your post. This will make the post much more noticeable in someone’s timeline, and if you have a great image it will draw attention and the clicks.

4. Connect with others as your page.

Like other fanpages that are related or relevant to your topic. BUT before you do, make sure you’re using facebook as your fanpage and not yourself. It’s really simple to switch over. Just go to the top of any page on Facebook, and look for the little arrow in the top right hand corner. Click it and you’ll see all your fanpages. Just click on the fanpage you want to use facebook as and it will switch you over.

The benefit of doing this is when you add to a conversation on another page instead of linking to your profile it will link to your page. If people want to get to know you better (because you’ve made a valuable contribution to the conversation) they’ll click through to your page where they can connect (and like you).

When you first get started you’ll want to switch to using Facebook as your fanpage and go out into the facebook world and “like” other pages AS your fanpage. Here’s some tips for choosing fanpages to like…

1. Find BUSY fanpages with a lot of “likes”.

2. Find fanpages that have a lot of conversation going on… people are commenting on posts, and the posts have a lot of likes.

You want to do this because when you comment on a post EVERYONE who has already commented on the post will get a notification that YOU have commented as well… it gets your name in front of a lot of people. So there is a benefit HERE to NOT being the first person to comment (unlike when you’re blog commenting and you want to be first so everyone sees you right at the top).

3. Find fanpages that are really aligned with the topic YOUR fanpage discusses. That way the fans of these pages will also be interested in the things you share.

Once you’ve liked some pages it’s pretty easy to connect with people, and comment and interact with the page. Go to the top right hand corner of the page you’re on (which will be your fanpage since you just switched to using it as your page) and you’ll see the word “home”. When you click that it will bring up the newsfeed for your fanpage. From here you can simply comment/like things that are in your newsfeed, just like you would if you were on your personal profile.

This is an important step because it gets your name and your fanpage in the community, and can help attract people to you.

Facebook is a social community. You have to give and be part of it before you can expect results.

5. Connect in relevant groups. 

While you can’t join groups as a fanpage you can switch back to your personal profile and join groups relevant to your niche. Again, you have to be social. You need to not only post links to your blog posts, but provide other value to the group. Answer questions, welcome new members, ask questions to create conversation. All of these things will help you become well known and liked in these groups which will also help you get more clicks and drive traffic to your site.

6. Join sharing groups on facebook.

These groups are set up to help get more “likes” and comments on your posts. When you join the group you agree to go to a few of the posted blog posts and comment or share the post with your network, and others will do the same for the blog posts you add to the group as well. This is a great way to get more eyes on your posts, and more likes and tweets. This builds your social proof, and with Google really starting to look at social sharing as a way to rank content it’s a great way to help your google ranking as well. Here’s a couple of these groups I belong to. Empowered Tribe and Blog Mastermind Comment Tribe You will have to ask to join these groups, and if you don’t play by the rules you’ll get kicked out, but they are a great way to build new relationships with other bloggers ~ which can also lead to some guest blogging gigs as well.

All in all if you want to get more traffic from facebook you have to get out there and participate. It’s not  as simple as just posting your link on your wall and then going and doing something else. You’ve got to find people who are interested in what you’re doing, you’ve got to connect with them and be part of the community. The cool thing is though… that when someone likes your post, or they comment it goes up on their wall, and their friends can see it. Your facebook friends become a venue for word of mouth connecting and that’s the best kind of promotion you can find. You reach their entire network, and just from connecting with one person your can reach thousands, or even millions.

So tell me… do you have your own fanpage yet? I’d love to see it! Feel free to leave a link to your fanpage in the comments section, and let’s connect on facebook if we haven’t already.