Colin Klinkert Dot Com

At the time I write this blog post, Facebook has over 350 million active users. 50% of them log on in any given day and the site now counts more than 700,000 business pages. As an internet marketer or home business owner, this should sound like a great opportunity for you to strengthen the relationships with your existing customers and even maybe generate new leads. Out of 350 million active users, you’d be unlucky not to find any of your customers already on there.

A few weeks ago I published a blog post on how to set up a Google profile for yourself. This time I will show you how to create a Facebook page for your business. It’s dead simple but I also give a few tips… Creating a fan page only takes a few minutes so don’t miss out on this opportunity.

Having said that, I tend to use Facebook for personal use rather than business use. However, Facebook has made it so easy for businesses to create a page that I eventually decided to jump in. Feel free to check out my page now. I will be giving away some cool products for those who join and participate in the community.

To create a Facebook page for your business, log into your personal account and go to the page creation interface. If you don’t have a Facebook profile yet, you will then need to create one. You first have to choose a category: an area, a brand, product or organization, or an artist, band or public figure. Select the category that best fits your business and move to the next step. Enter the name you want to give to the page and tick the box if you don’t want the page to become public at this time. If you do so you will of course be able to make it public at a later time. Then click “Create Page”. Too easy!

You will then land on your newly created business page. You can start customizing it. You may add a picture for example, and edit the information. Click “Edit Information” and fill in the fields: when the business was founded, what the website address is, a short company overview, etc. Make sure you complete the profile comprehensively so it really looks professional. Browse around and check out all the features that you can use for your business page.

Now a few tips… Having a Facebook page for your business is a good thing… if you manage to make it successful. Well I just created mine but I already have a few ideas on how to get what we will call “fans”. For starters, make sure your page is complete (with a picture, basic information, detailed information, etc.). You may add a link to the page to your blog (check out the buttons on the right), email signature or anywhere you feel like. You may even tweet about it.

To attract fans you will also need to make your page engaging enough, so people actually want to join the community. Make sure you regularly add new content (news, videos, upcoming events, etc.) to your feed. To engage visitors you may even organize contests or reward those who participate (with freebies for instance). These are only a few techniques on growing your fan list. Feel free to share your own!

Last week we organized a Twitter experiment to learn more on the traffic sent by Twitter to the blog. At this time of the year, the traffic the blog receives is very low and it was thus the perfect time for us to launch this experiment. We created a blog post and tweeted the link @ColinKlinkert a total 6 times over a period of 48 hours (at different times in order to reach most time zones at day time at least once). We also wanted to study the traffic in terms of conversion: Would visitors take action by commenting the post (as we asked them) and get a chance to win $50? Let’s find out!

Overall traffic (over a week)

- 22 total visits on Thursday
- 38 total visits on Friday
- 35 total visits on Saturday

While the overall traffic to the blog is fairly low at this time of the year, we can notice a slight increase during the time of the experiment. This chart has a limited interest for the experiment but at least we can see if there is a significant traffic increase or not. Now let’s move on to the traffic that interests us the most: the Twitter traffic.

Twitter traffic (over a week)

Here we can see that over the week Twitter generated 41 visits to the blog but only 25 between Thursday and Saturday. During that period of time, the blog post we created for the experiment received 26 visits. This can be considered as fairly low for a Twitter account with a list of over 26,300 followers, don’t you think?

Twitter generated traffic to the blog post but not as much as we could have expected. Even though this experiment is not comprehensive enough to draw solid conclusions, we can suggest a few reasons for which the Twitter traffic hasn’t exploded during the period of the experiment and despite the 26,300+ followers @ColinKlinkert.

First, as suggested by several industry experts and confirmed by research firms, Twitter has a lot of members but most of them are inactive (or not active enough to have an impact on the traffic). Secondly, the way the list of followers was built (with tools to be automatically followed by other users) is probably not the most appropriate list building method in terms of conversion. Thirdly, the way we tweeted the links (with call-to-action and link to the blog post) also played a role in the experiment. It is however difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of the calls-to-action.

Out of 26 visits, 4 visitors commented the blog post in time and 2 after the experiment was over. This is a 15 to 23% conversion rate, which isn’t bad but cannot be considered as satisfactory either… Anyhow, the experiment was successful in the way that we were able to study the traffic sent by Twitter to our blog. Have you ever done any similar experiment? If so, please share your own thoughts with us!

In April last year I organized a Twitter experiment that saw a lucky visitor win $25 cash. This time, I want to go a little further and am ready to give away a total of up to $150! If like me you often wonder how powerful Twitter really is, how much targeted traffic it can send to your site or blog, then take part into this experiment!

Win $50 by simply commenting this post!

To get in, all you need to do is to comment this post answering the following question:

What will make you want to subscribe to my RSS feed
and follow me @ColinKlinkert?

Hints: It could be:
- a type of content you would like to see;
- a topic you would like to learn about, etc.

If we get 50 comments, I give away $50. If we get 100 comments, I give away $100 ($50 each). If we get 200 comments, I give away $150 ($50 each). It is as simple as that. The more comments we get, the more chances you have to win $50 cash! No more questions asked.

We will tweet this post 6 times over the next 48 hours. Like for the previous experiment, Twitter will be the main source of traffic so we can see how many people post a comment and retweet our initial tweets. If you aren’t interested in the cash, you may still participate to help us with this experiment.

You are of course encouraged to retweet my tweets, increasing your chances to win cash.

>>> Click here to retweet <<<

Post a comment now and get a chance to win $50!

The winners will be chosen at the end of the experiment. Please use a real email when commenting, so if you win you will get my reply to your comment on how to get your money!

Good luck to all of you!

P.S. – Why not subscribe to my mailing list in the top left too… You get a cool free e-book and also updates on future competitions & industry-leading information! You can opt out at any time.

You’ve certainly heard of Mike Filsaime’s TweetGlide already. It was launched a few months ago and has rapidly become one of the most used Twitter apps in the internet marketing and home business industry. Well, soon after launch we got Mike and his team to add ViralUrl to the list of URL shorteners that the application provides.

For those who don’t know what TweetGlide is, here is a short introduction: Designed in a similar fashion to the popular TweetDeck, TweetGlide is a Twitter desktop app that makes tweeting even easier and brings more advanced features (like sponsored tweets) to make the most of this very powerful social networking and micro blogging platform. TweetGlide is currently available on PC, Mac and soon on iPhone.

To shorten your links on TweetGlide with ViralUrl, you simply have to select ViralUrl in the drop-down menu on the TweetGlide dashboard, enter your ViralUrl username and password and… that’s it! The links you tweet will automatically be shortened with ViralUrl. If you can’t find ViralUrl in the list, you may want to update your version of TweetGlide.

This is truly a great addition as it will help you build your downline with no effort from your part. As a reminder, your ViralUrl affiliate link shows up on the landing page of every shortened link you may create with the system. You also get a greater chance to earn commissions but that’s just another of the advantages of using ViralUrl with TweetGlide.

If you aren’t using any of these tools yet, you may join ViralUrl and download TweetGlide now. Both tools are free to use so make sure you give them a try before you realize what you’re missing out on!