GWT Blog – GlobalWorldTech

When Facebook turned all business pages to timeline design, most entrepreneurs were worried that the new design will limit their marketing and promotional options.

However, they have realized that the timeline offers all small businesses, entrepreneurs, authors and speakers with a business page that has several consumer engagement hot-spots to share invite opt-ins, specials, sales and even promote major events.

Here’s how you can use the new Facebook timeline features to boost engagement:

Cover photo

The big billboard on the top of a new Facebook timeline is the cover photo part. The image must have a maximum size of 852 x 315 pixels.

Although Facebook warns against including calls to action like "like my page", sales copy or a URL, there are other creative ways of illustrating your offering, the feel of your business or brand and to inspire as many people as possible to like your page.

This image should engage, inform and inspire people. Therefore think long and well about the kind of image you would wish to welcome people who land on your Facebook page.

Applications or Apps

The small boxes under the cover photo are known as apps. These are either custom designed apps or apps that can be installed through Facebook to hold any information of your interest using iframes.

These could be simple opt-in boxes or high quality designed sales pages. Any kind of digital marketing promotion that you may be running can be transferred to Facebook in this manner.

About

This often ignored hot spot is right next to your avatar photo. Begin the about part with a live link to a sales page or opt-in page, or a live link to your site. This is the next part people look at after the cover picture, to learn more about you and your business.

Ensure that you make it much easier for them to learn more you, your business, products or services and special offers. Remember to begin with the "http://" to make the link clickable and live.

Milestones

Milestone features have been incorporated by Facebook to allow you to display the special events in your business. Businesses may consider major sales or awards to be honor, an award and milestone.

Facebook puts a good deal of emphasis on milestone entries. Utilize them wisely without abusing them. If your company launches a new service and product, that is a great milestone and should be highlighted.

Pin To Top And Updates

Facebook permits you to pin a given post on top of your page for one week where it attains a spot in your timeline. Contests, special offers, events and announcements or any other important promotional event may be pinned on the top of the page to ensure that most people who land in your page view it first.

Updates also offer a great promotional opportunity. Posting a new update can elicit passionate response from your fans thereby enhancing the chances that these same fans will view the posts in the news stream in the following week. Dedicate at least a single update per week to an inspirational post or a call to action.
 

Facebook has become one of the most powerful marketing platforms on the Internet today. Not only does this huge site offer the most popular social networking system on the Internet, but they also offer businesses a streamlined and powerful way to directly interact with customers.

Using Facebook as a fast and easy sales funnel has become commonplace for many online professionals. If you are not sold on Facebook marketing yet, take a look at some of the reasons that other businesses are already moving their marketing resources into this active social space.

• Facebook Fan Gate Integration

One of the most effective and automatic ways you can grow your FaceBook fan base and also get users to interact with your Fan Page, is to implement a Fan Gate. These interact scripts require a visitor to “like” your page by becoming a fan before they get to proceed to your content.

If you are working on building a mailing list or need to find new ways to get users to “desire” what you have to offer, this is a perfect solution that will automatically help you build your online brand.

There are some free Facebook apps that will allow this feature, but if you want to have a professional online presence it may be a better idea to get help developing Facebook applications of your own that are not co-branded.

• Why Developing Facebook Applications Makes Sense

There are many companies that offer a streamlined service that will allow your company to take advantage of a customized FB application.

When you have a customized FB app developed for you, your company gets a high value and an unbeatable online marketing tool that you can leverage to acquire new clients and business connections for years to come.

The growth of social is still booming, if you want to get ahead of this growing wave, now is the time and a customized Facebook application is the way.

• Facebook Apps Are Mobile

It seems like everybody is scrambling to get their piece of the mobile pie right now. You can spend time making your main page scaled and accessible from mobile devices, but you will have automatic mobile integration when you create your own Facebook app.

The mobile market continues to grow and this is one of fastest ways to get your business in front of mobile web viewers and start to cash in on mobile marketing technologies.

• Compete With The Largest Companies On The Planet

If your business is brand new or it has been around for years, the Internet is the great equalizer. You can instantly start competing with the largest companies on the planet by developing Facebook applications that make people want to get involved with your company.

Apps can be a simple game, a free download, streaming media or just an iFrame view of your web page that is accessible inside the Facebook eco-system.

There is no right or wrong way to get involved with FB apps and they can be very versatile and can even be used to display your shopping cart to millions of Facebook users.

Now is the perfect time to start driving your business forward using the power of social media and interactive applications.

Need a facebook application developer? Contact us for more information.

© Global World Tech

Image: basketman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Google Trend in a comparison between Orkut and Facebook shows that Facebook has a leading edge when it comes to Social Networking Sites in India.

comScore, a Palo Alto based company, on their press release say:

Facebook.com posted, an especially strong month in July, growing 12 percent versus June, to capture the top spot in the category with 20.9 million visitors. Orkut ranked second with 19.9 million visitors (up 16 percent vs. year ago), followed by BharatStudent.com with 4.4 million visitors (up 3 percent). Twitter.com had the highest rate of growth among the top five social networking sites, increasing 239 percent to 3.3 million visitors. Yahoo! owned two of the top ten social networking sites: Yahoo! Pulse (3.5 million visitors) and Yahoo! Buzz (1.8 million visitors).

Though Twitter has the highest growth rate i.e. 239% but it’s still far behind from Facebook and Orkut. If these statistics are to be believed then Twitter will become Number 1 Social Networking Site in India much sooner than expected.