I see these wind farms when I’m driving out to the lake, and it makes a perfect analogy for the way that Facebook operates.

Facebook is a platform that is overflowing with potential. It doesn’t matter what niche you are involved in, you’ll be able to find people that have the same interests on Facebook.

It seems that everyone is blogging about it these days. How you can use Facebook to increase your potential clients, visitors, readers, community, traffic, name brand, online visibility, client loyalty…. or potential whatever else you’d like to increase. Whew, that was a mouthful.

So what does it boil down too? What do you need to know about in order to use Facebook to your advantage?

Back to the analogy. You might have guessed it.. you are the windmill, and Facebook is the wind. All the Internet Marketers are setting up shop at Facebook, trying to catch as much of the wind as they can.

The cool thing about the windmill farms, is that you’ll see hundreds of windmill standing side by each harvesting huge amounts of the wind’s energy but:

1. The wind will never dry up and go away.
2. No Matter how many windmills they put up, they’ll never catch all the wind.

Let me first list some of the potential uses of Facebook and then go into why it should be important to you as an Internet Marketer in this new world of Web 2.0.

1. Easily connect with past clients and friends.
2. Search and find people who are interested in your “niche”
3. Use Facebook as a hub when you’re on the run.
4. Facebook can increase your online presence, or visibility.
5. Drive traffic to your main site or blog.
6. Help further develop your personal brand.
7. Facebook has the ability to incorporate other Web 2.0 app such as twitter, and SU.

Easily connect with past clients and friends - within an hour of creating my facebook account, I had a friends request from someone I worked with over 10 years ago. A few days later, I was requested by an old classmate with, just to mention a few. This is a great place to meet up with old friends, clients and work relations.

Search and find people who are interested in your niche - that doesn’t mean you go in with your sales page blazing ready to cram it down everyone’s throat. You’ll be shut down faster than you can get started. What you want to do is start searching for people with your same interests, join some groups or networks to do with your niche, and with your interests. If they don’t have any (which is highly unlikely) create one. Started chatting with people and forming relationships.

Use Facebook as a hub when you’re on the run - this is a way cool use for facebook. Facebook is very mobile friendly and allows you to keep track of messaging and what’s going on with your “empire” from where ever you can get mobile service (not that I’m that connected yet LOL).

Facebook can increase your online presence, and visibility - by giving you a place to communicate and get involved. Your profile allows you the freedom to “strut your stuff” so to speak, but by just going around and chatting with your network of friends you will increase your online presence. 9 times out of 10, if you’re genuine in wanting to meet people and get involved they will go and check out your profile page all on their own

Drive traffic to your main site or blog - Again, just by being genuine in your networking people are naturally going to be interested in what you’ve got going, and they will go check out your site.

Help further develop your personal brand - this is the fun part. Web 2.0 is about relationships. You can’t be all stiff and business like all the time. Be yourself and let your personality shine through. This is what’s going to make the difference for many people. Are you real, or are you just your profile? This further expands your personal brand.

Facebook has the ability to incorporate other Web 2.0 apps such as twitter, and SU - By including these application onto your Facebook profile, it keeps your friends in touch with what you’re up to. Updated regularly, these applications will certainly help you further your “community” and your personal brand. Example - people like to know what Ed Dale is searching for on his twitter. They look to see. (but that’s a whole other post ).

I’ve only been on Facebook for about one month. I created my account as part of the thirty day challenge back in August. Honestly, at first I was only planning on keeping my profile up there for the duration of the challenge. I’ve already got so many accounts on different networking sites that it can be difficult to keep up with it all. After see the potential available to me, I’m looking to expand my use on Facebook, and decrease it on some of the other networks.

So basically, if you have an online business and are not using Facebook, you’re missing out. I heard some stats (have not verified them) that 100 000 new accounts are created each day and that Facebook will double in size in 6 months.

That’s an amazing amount of wind!!. You only need to harvest a tiny big to have more resources than you’ll be able to handle.

Watch for further posts on Home with Heather as to the Facebook apps I’m using, what’s working and what’s not.

I’d love for you to come by my Facebook page, say hello, and add me as a friend.

blog promotion, community, facebook, lead generation, personal brand, potential, Social Networking, Web 2.0

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 14th, 2007 at 4:23 pm and is filed under Web 2.0, Social Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.