6. CREATE A GREAT PROFILE PICTURE:
You never get a second chance to make a first impression
Most Facebook users do not understand the true value of a great profile picture. Think about it for a second. Face-Book. It is ALL about your face, and you only get one chance to make a great first impression! When other Facebook users are browsing through friends of friends they will first look at your picture before anything else. You want to make it stand out from the rest with something original if possible, and make sure that it is very professional with good lighting and of course a great smile!
You might need to start out with a simple cell phone picture for now, but it should be your immediate goal to get a better picture as soon as possible. It’s as simple as dressing nice and asking a friend to take a few pictures of you for your profile. If you don’t mind investing a few bucks, then have a professional take some pictures. You can get 4-5 quality pictures and then mix it up every once in a while with a different version.
Sometimes we wake up and get dressed and we just feel really confident about ourselves for that day, and I will be that there are many other times that we don’t feel confident about our looks at all. The next time that you have a day where you feel great, you should remind yourself to grab a camera and have someone take a few pictures of you. I know it doesn’t seem important, but it really is! You ARE the brand that people are looking at, and the way that you carry yourself and display yourself is what people will first take in. If they feel comfortable with you, then they will be much more likely to do business with you.
Please make a commitment to upload a quality Facebook profile picture that clearly shows your face in a happy mood in a well-lit environment. Feel free to use something temporarily for now until you find the right picture.
7. IMPORT YOUR ENTIRE EMAIL LIST:
When you first set up your Facebook account you are prompted to invite friends from your email account to look at your pictures. Many people skip this option because they don’t understand it, and when they first join Facebook they are usually pretty cautious about who they want to become their friend. Believe me, I felt the exact same way when I first set up my profile.
Assuming that you now have your profile set up professionally and you are looking to grow your friends list to 5,000 people, it would be very wise to revisit this option and invite everyone from your email account(s). To do this you simply click on the “Invite Friends” link located under the Friends tab on the top navigation bar on Facebook.
Here is a direct link (www.facebook.com/invite.php).
The process is extremely user friendly. If your email provider is Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail then you simply click on the logo and follow the instructions. If you use a different email provider then you will need to click on the link that says “Import Email Addresses” and then click on the link that says “How to create a contact file”. This process may seem a little difficult for non-techies, so if you have any questions, just leave them in the comments below and I will do my best to help you through the process.
* Tip: This email importing tool is a great way to import a database of emails that you may have a collection of. I am not recommending that you spam people to invite total strangers, but I am suggesting that there is some flexibility here for the creative marketer that has a quality email list. Also take note if you are importing more than a few hundred emails at a time, that Facebook may stall out and it will force you to retry the process again. The key is to break your database down into groups of about 300 at a time, and also try not to invite more than about 1,000 people per day, this way it doesn’t come across as spam.
8. CREATE VIRAL FACEBOOK VIDEOS:
Did you know that Facebook is now the
#3 video site behind YouTube and Hulu?
The reason for this dramatic growth is because Facebook Videos can go viral very quickly. You have the ability to upload the video to your personal profile or fan page, and then tag any relevant friends that may be in the video or that want to see your latest videos.
* Tip: If you just randomly tag people in a totally irrelevant manner, they may get ticked off and remove you from their friends list, or write you a nasty email, so be sure to be as relevant as possible in everything that you do.
So think of some awesome videos that your target audience would love and create them, edit them, and upload them to Facebook! Now you can easily share them on your profile, and share them on the profiles of your friends that want to see them. If your video has enough quality to it hopefully your friends will want to post it on their profiles as well and it will start spreading rapidly across Facebook.
The perfect example of a viral video done well on Facebook is the Grasshopper Campaign (Public YouTube Version). They created a motivational video for entrepreneurs and it had hundreds of thousands of views on Facebook as it was passed along. They simply put a plug for their website at the end in a non-sales type way that made it very easy for people to want to pass it around. I am sure that it drove a ton of traffic and business for Grasshopper, not to mention the awesome branding they received as well.
Every time that your video is spread virally, people will see a link to your profile as the user who uploaded the video. This will cause people to check out your profile and request you as a friend. Get creative and come up with some cool ideas for Facebook videos and encourage your friends to share them! Also, you can use this same process with YouTube videos that you create as well. The only downside is that you lose the ability to tag your friends in the videos, but you can still share them on your friends walls and via private messages.
9. START TARGETED FACEBOOK GROUPS:
Now that your personal profile has a professional touch and your friends list is growing like crazy, it is time to start creating targeted Facebook groups and fan pages. For example, let’s say that you are a Real Estate Agent. You may want to create a group for real estate agents in your metropolitan area, or perhaps even more targeted just for your city. Then you can invite other real estate agents to join the group where you can all discuss changes to local laws, and related real estate matters.
But the hidden benefit of being an admin of a group or page is that you have the ability to message the entire group. So as your group grows, it will quickly become more than just your existing friends who supported you at first. You can now add a line to the bottom of all of your updates to the group that says “Add me as a personal friend on Facebook” and supply them with a direct link to your profile.
While you might not think this will do much for you at first, believe me that as some of your groups grow into the thousands you will start receiving dozens of friend requests with every single message. And how difficult is it to add that simple line to the bottom of a message that you were planning on sending anyways?
There are obviously a ton of additional benefits of Facebook pages and groups for your business, but for now I just wanted to point out the valuable benefit of encouraging hundreds of thousands of people to add you as a friend with a simple email signature :)
* Tip: For some of your creative readers out there, why not joint venture or partner with somebody in a related industry to you that already has a group or page with several thousand members? If they add you as an admin, you will be able to send out an email with your signature to thousands of people instantly without even having to create or promote a group yourself. Get creative and this can be a goldmine for increasing your friend base!
Here are some example Facebook groups and pages that you can join and study from:
Real Estate Investing
100,000 Real Estate Investors
Lawyers are Liars
Puppy Lovers
Social Media Marketing 101
Tony Horton P90X Trainer
10. COMMENT, COMMENT, COMMENT:
If you have attended any of my live Social Media Marketing trainings, then you already know that I hate wasting time on Facebook. While this is an amazing resource for professionals it can also suck you in big time! That is why I take so much time to write articles like this to really teach people how to actually use Facebook for business and not just for pleasure!
However, if you can spare just a few minutes each time you log on to quickly comment on recent posts from other people it can actually go a long ways towards giving yourself exposure and encouraging other users to add you as a friend. Basically, every time that I log in, I quickly check the “news feed” on my home tab to see what my friends have recently posted.
When you only have a few hundred friends this is pretty easy to stay on top of, but when you have 5,000 friends it gets a little out of control! Just do your best to quickly skim through and find quality posts that you find valuable. You should respond with a very thoughtful comment and do it quickly so that you don’t waste too much time on this step. The more that you get yourself out there, the easier it will be for people to find you.
For example, if your target market was people who were interested in social media, and you provided training for social media marketing, then you may want to scan through updates to see where you might be able to offer people advice or troubleshoot their questions. You will quickly brand yourself as a social media coach and people will recognize and respect you for it. The same thought process can work no matter what industry you are targeting.
BONUS TIP!!!
Make sure you set your profile up so that EVERYONE on Facebook can view it! There is a section on Facebook that allows you to adjust your Privacy Settings and if you want more exposure, make sure that you are not limiting the number of people that can view your profile! Other Facebook users are much more likely to add you as a friend if they can see more information about your first, rather than leaving it up to their imagination :)
If you have learned a lot from this article and you feel that it is exactly what you needed to grow your friends base quickly, then please comment below and let me know your feedback! If you have ANY QUESTIONS at all about any of the points that I made in this article, please ask and I will take the time to answer. I truly appreciate you taking the time to read this post and I encourage you to SHARE it on Facebook to help me spread the word! This is extremely valuable content that I am giving away for FREE, so pass it out quickly before your friends pay for it somewhere else :)