Facebook has been the social media master for some time now. While other social media outlets like Google+ and Pinterest have made waves, Facebook remains the king.
As bloggers and freelancers, our marketing approaches are almost as important as our content quality and persistence (almost).
Nonetheless, marketing and branding are an essential step to successful and profitable blogging.
While many of us blog because we love writing and have something to share with the masses, there is also usually the aspect of money involved. Blogging is a business and to be successful in that business one has to find new ways to drive revenue.
Though Facebook updates and changes seem to annoy a lot of users, there are typically ways in which we can use these updates to better optimize our pages for business purposes. The new timeline feature on Facebook has received a lot of flak from regular users who are accustomed to their old Facebook ways. However, the facelift poses some very interesting and beneficial marketing aspects. Use these three timeline features more effectively to bring more revenue to your blog.
Strong Cover Photo
The one aspect of the Facebook timeline that most people got on board with right away was the “cover photo” option. This feature allows you to designate a large photo to go behind your “profile picture” on your main page.
The cover photo poses some interesting elements for marketers and branders. When promoting your blog through your Facebook page, you should establish a cover photo that is both visually attractive and suggestive of your brand.
This image is likely the first thing that people will see when they visit your page. With the right image, you can really leave an impression on your visitors so choose one that captures the very central element of your blog or business. Branding is important in blogging just as it is in business. By creating a more seamless image for your blog, you will be able to better communicate and capture followers—and with more followers comes more revenue.
Make Milestones
The new timeline profile style of Facebook is exactly that—a timeline of a person or entities’ life. Basically taking voyeurism to an entirely new level, Facebook now lets you specify defining moments in your life and attribute a photo to them with a “milestone”.
This can be a great marketing tool for anyone out there. Bloggers using Facebook to communicate and connect with their readers should utilize the milestone feature. Help your followers get to know you through your page. Include educational milestones, personal milestones (if you like), number of visitors milestones, site update milestones, and important post milestones.
By singling out specific events you can help your readers get to know you a little more intimately, which will encourage them to follow your updates more closely. Blogging is very much about building relationships. Furthermore, by “milestoning” particular posts from your blogging history, you will draw more attention to those posts. Pick the posts you’ve done that you are particularly proud of or are particularly indicative of your blogging goal.
Highlight Stuff
What many average Facebook users don’t know is that they can carefully customize the size of things posted on their walls. Pins and flags help you to choose what posts on your page are more noticeable and stick around longer than others.
The pin feature allows you to flag a post so that it will stay on the front of your page for seven days. This way that post isn’t buried by other stories or posts. Take the time to customize the size of things on your page. Of course, don’t spend too much time doing this. But if you make an important post to your page, go ahead and widen the image and textbox some, so that people can notice it more readily.
By anchoring a post to your front page for a longer period of time, it will gain more views, likes, and interest than it might have otherwise. Keep these things in mind.
Gaining more revenue online as a blogger is all about exposure. You want people to read your things and come back for more. Use this feature to help drive your followers’ attentions to the right things.
I always though of Timeline looking more like a blog than a social media account, which is why most people hate it.. but then I realized that with all these available options, it really makes up for better marketing, especially the cover photo, where you will have something like a banner of a website for your social media account. Thanks for the tips by the way.
I usually thought Timeline was just another thing about Facebook that will only annoy the users. At first, it made everyone’s profiles messy, but after awhile, people started to realize that FB Timeline was indeed a great tool for business. The three features you pointed out – strong cover photo (it was like a banner similar to a blog website), and making milestones (you can clearly see what that online business is currently up to – by their status posts). I haven’t noticed that we can “pin” or highlight stuff in our FB profiles with Timeline. Thanks for sharing!