Facebook fan pages have long been a great lead generator for business but I feel now more than ever, it’s becoming a necessity. Facebook has overtaken Google as the most visited website, they have over 500,000,000 users and they are growing every day. (reference Facebook Statistics). What this means is that your clients and your potential clients are embracing Facebook, which is changing their whole perception on how they interact with products and services on the Internet. You can’t take that ad that worked in the yellow pages or for direct mail, slap it on a website, and start counting your sales. Relationship marketing is here.

A fan page with Facebook is much more interactive, informative, and much less in your face than traditional media. It’s permission marketing at its best because it also utilizes relationships to increase your exposure and allow others to suggest the page to their friends. You have the potential to grow your fans and the reach of your product or service exponentially. You must provide good information, however, and not be seen as trying to sell people. If you’re trying to sell with marketing pitches, you will not get anywhere. If you provide good tips, good information, and ask good questions, you will have an interactive Facebook fan page that will make your company more money.

Setting up a fan page is easy. You can go to any fan page like the Detroit SEO & Web Design fan page, scroll down all the way on the left sidebar, click on “Create a page for my business”. You can pick out a name and create your page but I wouldn’t be so hasty. There are a lot of considerations, however, before creating your page.

Fan Page Name

Your fan page should be easily recognizable by your clients or potential client interested in your product and it should also include good keywords. Be careful with keywords, however. If you are too general (i.e. “Real Estate”), Facebook can make your page a community page and you lose all control. Also, if you stuff too many keywords into your page name, it’s going to look like spam and no one will click on it.

Fan Page URL

Once you receive 25 fans, you can select a custom URL for your fan page (like www.Facebook.com/DetroitSEOWebDesign) by going to http://facebook.com/username, clicking on “Set a username for your Pages”, selecting the page, and typing in your custom URL to see if it’s available. I would also warn you to not be too general in this selection either. You want to make it relevant to your users or someone that is searching for your product or service. Setting the name is great for SEO but it doesn’t help if you’re too general. A bad page URL is “RealEstateInvesting”; a good page URL is “DetroitForeclosures”. Be specific!

Fan Page Welcome Tab

There is a great opportunity on your fan page to target a message specifically for visitors that don’t “Like” your page yet. You can set the home page for people that aren’t a fan of your page yet to the Welcome page. On the welcome page you can give them a quick introduction to your company, let them know why they should be a fan of your page, and how they can become a fan.

What to put on my fan page?

You don’t want to overwhelm your fans but you also don’t want to drop out of site with your fans. I suggest adding 1 good comment or piece of information each day. Make it non-sales, something related to your business, and informative. You can also ask open ended questions like “What’s your best marketing medium?” or something that’s divisive like “I think that soccer is the best sport in the world.” to spur some replies and discussion.

Overall there is no easier way to get going in relationship marketing to a huge audience than with a Facebook Fan Page. You can get your page setup pretty easily but I definitely recommend utilizing a professional for help with your page name selection and for designing your Welcome tab and other secondary tabs.

Jared Pomranky

Related posts:

1. Facebook Fan Page Design
2. Current Facebook Fan Page Changes Affecting You
3. Detroit Business SEO

We’ve had a lot of good posts here on Net Profit Marketing’s blog but sometimes these great posts fall off the first page. Starting with this posts, a couple of times a year we’re going to do a “Best of” blog that highlights some posts that you really need to read. This one focuses on posts that are especially important for small businesses as most of our clients are small businesses.

Read through the posts and let us know what you think. As always, we look forward to your comments.

What is the Purpose of Your Website?
If you don’t know the purpose of your website, your visitors probably don’t either. You need to have a very clear purpose to your website and a very clear direction on what you want your visitors to do. It has to be more clear than just providing information.

What is SEO?
You’ve heard about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) but you’re not quite sure what it is or how it works. This post will take you through the basics of SEO and what it can do for you. This is where you get on the first page of Google.

Why You Need Google Analytics & Webmaster Tools
Do you know how many people visited your site last month, what search engine or website referred them, what keywords they searched for to find your website, and what page they arrived on? Do you know what Google thinks about your website? Google Analytics & Webmaster Tools can answer all of this for you.

Get More Traffic From Local Search Results
Would you like more traffic to your website from local search results? People are searching for your product every day online and Google Places (formerly Google Local Business Center) makes it easy for you to get more local search results.

Let me know what you think of the posts and of us posting the best of every 6 months or so.

Jared Pomranky

Related posts:

1. Why You Need Google Analytics & Webmaster Tools
2. SEO Client Becomes a Google Favorite Place!
3. What is SEO?

We’re happy to announce that one of our clients, Display Group (a Detroit Corporate and Special Events Rental Company), has become a Google Favorite Place! What does this mean? It means that they are part of less than 1% of businesses in the U.S. to receive this distinction. That’s out of over 28,000,000 businesses! Businesses were selected for the popularity of their listing including how many times someone clicked on the listing and searched for it. You can view Display Group’s Google Places listing and view the Google Favorite Places FAQ.

While we would love to take all of the credit for Display Group’s success on Google Places, we have to admit that their great products and service to clients is the main reason they are a favorite place. We just helped people find them.

If you’re not on Google Places yet or you want to get more leads from it, read Google Places and Local Search Traffic.

Jared

Related posts:

1. Best Posts for Small Businesses
2. Get More Traffic From Local Search Results

Update 4/10/2010 – Added information on Aweber reports and autoresponders

Update: You can use an Aweber Single Opt-in List

Aweber Email Marketing Review

Aweber is an email list marketing company that helps you capture leads and email addresses for contacts in lists that you can then send messages and newsletters to. It’s permission eMarketing at it’s best. People tell you they want information from you by signing up then you send it to them. They can opt-out of your list at any time. The following is my Aweber review.

I previously blogged about the differences between single opt-in and double opt-in and concluded that double opt-in list marketing has many advantages over single opt-in list marketing. Aweber is the leading list marketing company that requires all users to double opt-in. This means that they provide their information to sign-up for your newsletter. They then receive an automatic email asking them to click a link to confirm their subscription. This does two things. First it insures that you have people on your list that want to be on your list and second it prevents spam subscriptions.

Aweber Double Opt-In

I previously had a single opt-in list that had low open rates (10%-15%), many email addresses bouncing (not getting delivered) and I would consistently be marked as spam. Once I switched to Aweber and had my double opt-in list, my open rates increased to 45%-55%, I have very few emails bouncing, and I am rarely marked as spam. This increases my effectiveness in marketing to my list, which increases my profit. A little known fact is that Aweber can be used as a single opt-in list by changing a setting in the list settings menu. I would recommend a double opt-in list but you could always use single opt-in if you feel strongly about it.

Aweber Templates & Wizards

I know many of you may be thinking that this is all a little overwhelming and that leads me into a great feature of Aweber, easy setup. Aweber has a wizard when you first sign-up that guides you through setting up your first list. There is the list name and description setup, confirmation email customization, then your welcome email. Aweber includes many templates to use for this welcome email or you can easily setup a custom design. You are then taken to the web form wizard to create a web form sign-up to go on your website.

Web Form Wizard

The web form wizard has recently been updated and I have to say I really like it. It’s easy to design a form that matches your website and all you have to do is drop in one line of javascript to put it on your web page. It’s all a drag and drop interface so if you want to add Name, Phone Number, and Email address, you just have to drag them to your form!

Blog Broadcast RSS

While there are great reports and other features that help my business, the best feature is called Blog Broadcast RSS. Your newsletter can be configured so that each time you blog or post something on your website, it can easily be sent out to your list using your newsletter template. This automation via RSS from your blog is an absolute time saver for small businesses.

Aweber Reports

I had to add this in as I am working with a client who has iContact. All I needed to do was to get a list of subscribers who didn’t open the last email. It took me 45 minutes of research and another 10 minutes of exporting contacts, adding a custom field, importing back in, creating a new segment, then exporting everything back out. Convoluted! Aweber has the best reporting features, segmentation based on multiple fields and statistics for users including searches and exporting by multiple fields and statistics. Exporting a list of users that didn’t open my last email would take me 2 minutes. This statistical analysis and ease of use with Aweber is invaluable.

Aweber Autoresponders

Autoresponder services are very valuable. Basically an autoresponder is sent out automatically when someone signs up for your list. You can make it as easy as sending out a quick follow-up welcome email when someone subscribes to your list to a full blown marketing campaign that sends emails out at predetermined intervals. This is a great marketing tool so you can make sure that all new subscribers to your list get the same emails with the same base knowledge.

While there are many options out there, I highly recommend Aweber for your small business list marketing. You may be tempted by slightly lower prices but nothing beats Awebers deliverability, open rates, form wizard, and ease of use. Try Aweber’s email marketing.

Jared Pomranky

Related posts:

1. Single Opt-in vs Double Opt-in Email Marketing
2. Aweber Single Opt-In and List Migration
3. iContact Email Marketing Review

The first question that should be asked when looking at an email marketing company for a newsletter or an autoresponder is “should I go with a double opt-in or single opt-in list?” Single opt-in lists allow people to sign up on your website or get added to your list by uploading their e-mail address and they are added. Double opt-in lists require the person to confirm their addition to the e-mail list by clicking on a link in an e-mail.

Single opt-in lists are more open to spam and people getting blacklisted from major ISPs for sending out spam. They do, however, generally allow you to have a larger list as people don’t have to opt-in to it. Open and click through percentages for single opt-in lists are usually lower (i.e. 15%-25%)

Double opt-in lists generally start smaller and you will have people that sign up on your web page and never opt-in. They do, however, have much greater open rates and click through percentages. Open rates are as high as 50%-60%, which means more people are actually receiving your e-mail and are opening it (i.e. not getting caught in spam or are actually interested in reading it).

When you look at open rates, you have to consider deliverability. This is the rate at which the e-mails actually make it into the recipients e-mail inbox. If the e-mail gets marked as spam by the email server and doesn’t even make it to the inbox, they don’t have a chance to open it. Also, if the e-mail makes it through but then gets marked as spam and sits in the spam folder, it has a lower chance of getting opened. There are many ways to optimize your e-mail message for deliverability but the best way, and often overlooked, is the reputation of the email list service. You can have the most optimized least spammy e-mail ever but if you’re sending it through a less than reputable company, it will still get marked as spam.

There is a lot that goes into the reputation of an e-mail list company. Email delivery companies work with major ISPs (Internet Service Providers) like AOL, Comcast, etc. to add e-mails coming from their servers to a “white list”. When email from a provider is added to this white list, the chances of the ISP filtering out the e-mail as spam before it even gets to the recipients email inbox is much lower. Yes, if you didn’t know before, there are e-mails sent to your e-mail address that you never see in your inbox or junk mail because they are filtered out by the ISP as spam.

The biggest contributer to the reputation of an e-mail delivery company, however, is the people and e-mail addresses that are sending the e-mails! When someone sends out an e-mail to their list, everyone on that list that has a spam filter through a service, has a choice to mark the e-mail as spam or not. Get too many people marking your e-mail address as someone that sends spam and it will increase your chances of getting marked as spam in the future. When a company gets too many people getting marked as spammers, what happens? There starts a bias from the ISPs to question whether any e-mail coming from the service provider is spam or not.

Now, back to single opt-in and double opt-in. You have a significantly less chance of getting marked as spam if you have a double opt-in list because people have clicked on a link in their e-mail stating that they want to receive your information after they signed up on your website. This gives you a good reputation and will make it less likely for you to get marked as a spammer. Now, what if you take an e-mail company that only allows double opt-in lists? That would make the reputation of the company much better than a company that allows single opt-in.

There are many good e-mail marketing services that are available. I have found the best deliverability in my experience to be Aweber Communications because of the points I’ve stated above and that’s who I continue to use. By default Aweber is a double opt-in list provider but you can use single opt-in with Aweber if you change the setting when first setting Aweber up.

Read our Aweber Review

If you’re really adamant in getting a single opt-in list email marketing provider, you can try out iContact, which I’ve seen a lot of people have success with. I’ve found it to be good with small businesses that have lists of existing clients they want to upload. They are also an excellent choice and get good deliverability for being mainly single opt-in.

Jared Pomranky

Related posts:

1. Aweber Review: How is Your Email Marketing?
2. Aweber Single Opt-In and List Migration
3. iContact Email Marketing Review

There’s no question in today’s market. Small businesses need to have a strong online presence to thrive. In down economic times it’s the companies willing to innovate and embrace Internet marketing and social media that will thrive. How are your customers finding you? If you’re customers are like the majority of customers out there, they look first to search engines like Google. Give it a try and see where you’re listed for major keywords related to your business.

Many small business owners I know are already burning the candle at both ends, which leaves them with no time to figure out how to get their website ranking better in search engines, how to get started with social media for their business, how to get content to write a blog let alone even get a blog created, and how to manage all the leads once you get them all in. I’m here to tell you that you don’t need to do any of this yourself.

All of the websites and blogs can be created with almost none of your time invested. You can also get blog posts and articles written from short bullet point lists and topics provided by you. This content, which can also be used for your website, is written by professionals that create content for a living and allow you to put your name as the author. These are called ghost writers, which we have on staff, and they make providing fresh and professional content for your websites easy!

Better yet, there are also great online and technical solutions for small business that save you time and automate processes like lead management. You can not only automate and standardize your processes but you can also do this for your employees. When this happens, you get more successful and productive employees.

There are many ways to get people coming to your site but that does little good if you don’t convert them into a lead. Keep in mind with any Internet marketing solution you look at that simply driving traffic to your site and not looking at how they will be converted to a lead will not help. You need a full solution that focuses on results and your bottom line.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Jared Pomranky

Related posts:

1. Business Web Design
2. Blog Design/Development
3. Facebook Fan Page Design