Reviews of Facebook Marketing

July 11, 2010 By 4 Comments

Have you had a chance to pick up your copy of Facebook Marketing yet?  If you’re still deciding whether or not it is worth your $20-ish, you might wander over to a few of the reviews so far of Facebook Marketing to see if that helps to convince you.

First up is a video review by Chris Brogan:

Next, here are a few other reviews that you may find interesting:

If you’ve written up a review of Facebook Marketing, please let me know in the comments.  I will keep this post updated with more reviews as I find them.

If you have already read Facebook Marketing, would you mind leaving a rating and review over on Amazon?

Most importantly, thank YOU for all of your support since the book launch!

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Facebook, Reviews, Social Media, Videos Tagged With: , , , ,

Facebook Marketing: Now Available!

June 24, 2010 By 34 Comments
I’m proud to announce that my first book, Facebook Marketing: Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign (affiliate link), is now available for purchase.  It has been a 12-month process from the time that we originally started talking about writing this book to it hitting bookshelves.  I’m proud of the work that I put into it and hope that you’ll find it helpful.
facebookmarketingbook
Below I have put together an overview for you to assess whether or not you think there will be value in spending a few dollars and buying the book.

What is Facebook Marketing About?

Facebook Marketing is a deep dive into how Facebook can be leveraged by your company starting TODAY.  This book is not just a Facebook-is-cool-and-you-should-join type book.  This book provides you with actionable information that you can begin implementing into your business.  It gives you the ammunition you need to convince your boss, your board, your IT team, or your employees why they should be investing time and money on “just another social network.”

Who Should Buy This Book

Simply put: This book is designed for professionals who want to understand how Facebook can be integrated into their business.  This includes anyone from the CEO to the CMO to PR, communications, and marketing.  Besides gaining an understanding of how you can use Facebook within your business, you can also gain an understanding of how YOU can use Facebook professionally as part of your own personal/professional branding.

Where You Can Pick Up a Copy

Does all of this sound good and you are itching to grab a copy or 50 for you and your closest friends? Well, first of all, thank you. It means a lot.  You can grab your copy from one of these awesome retailers:

Facebook Marketing – Amazon

Facebook Marketing – Barnes & Noble

Facebook Marketing – Borders

Facebook Marketing – 800CEORead

Facebook Marketing – Books-a-Million

Note: There is a Kindle edition available but not iBooks or audio versions, as of yet.

How Facebook Marketing is Organized

Facebook Marketing is organized into 11 chapters:

Chapter 1, “From Dorm Room to Boardroom: The Growth of Social Networks,” takes you from the beginning of Facebook in the founders’ dorm rooms at Harvard University all the way to their corporate headquarters in San Francisco, California.  This chapter provides an introduction to the phenomenon known as Facebook including major milestones such as opening the platform to everyone, going mainstream, and the major growth data points.

Chapter 2, “Getting Around Facebook: The Basics,” deals with getting you around Facebook by taking a stroll through the basics.  This includes a summary and detailed description of the basic profile options, notes, photos, videos, comments, likes, friends lists, Facebook Chat, and many other features.  This chapter provides you with a foundation for going deeper into the platform and understanding how it can be integrated into your business.

In Chapter 3, “Establishing a Corporate Presence,” you explore establishing a corporate presence including a deep dive into Facebook Pages and Groups.  You gain an understanding of how to set up each of these features for your business, how they can be used, and which ones you should select based on your needs.

Chapter 4, “Extending Facebook into the Interwebs: The Power and Reach of Facebook Connect,” breaks out of the framework of Facebook and discusses extending Facebook into the interwebs through the use of tools such as Facebook Connect.  You learn how this major feature has been integrated into websites and how you can use it for your needs.

In Chapter 5, “Facebook Advertising: How and Why You Should Be Using It,” you can learn about the Facebook advertising platform and why you should use it.  You learn about creating an ad, setting a budget, selecting cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-impressions (CPM), discovering your target audience, and using Facebook Insights (analytics).

To gain a full experience while using Facebook, you need to extend its capabilities with Facebook Apps.  In Chapter 6, “Extending the Experience with Facebook Apps,” I discus plug-ins such as flickr, Delicious, StumbleUpon, and several other applications that can help you to connect with your prospects, customers, and fans.

One of the most addressed issues throughout Facebook’s history has been privacy.  Chapter 7, “Addressing Privacy Concerns,” reviews the changes of Facebook’s privacy policy, whether you should have a personal AND professional Facebook account or if you need a single profile, and several other issues as it deals with your privacy, your customers’ privacy, and the privacy of your company.

By the time you make it to Chapter 8, “Developing a Facebook Marketing Strategy,” you will have developed a deeper understanding of Facebook and how you can use it as another part of your marketing toolbox.  Chapter 8 helps you to pull all these tools together to develop a Facebook marketing strategy.

With all the described options, you learn that one of the best uses of Facebook for your business is through the development of communities.  But how do you pull all of this together? Chapter 9, “Using Facebook to Develop Communities,” teaches you how you can use Facebook to develop communities.

Because you’re not the first company to jump into Facebook, Chapter 10, “Best in Class,” shows you some of the Best in Class companies that have fully utilized Facebook to build communities, engage with their audiences, and become more social.

To finish, Chapter 11, “Shaking the Crystal Ball: What’s Next for Facebook,” shakes the crystal ball and tries to guestimate what’s next for Facebook.  This is your sandbox to play in to see if you can figure out where Facebook goes from here.  Place your bets and let ‘em ride!

A Bit of a Warning

While I did my best to keep updating the manuscript, eventually my publisher cut me off from making edits since the book had to head off to the printers and to store bookshelves.  That means that you should expect that some of the stats have changed and that there have been feature set changes.  But, the underlying core is the same.  The theories, strategies and tactics are the same.

Special Thanks

I just really wanted to say thank you for all of the never-ending support.  This opportunity wouldn’t have happened without each and every one of you.  Should you choose to pick up a copy, thank you for skipping a few coffees to grab it.  I hope that you’ll find it useful.

If you have already read it, I’d love to hear your feedback.  What did you think? What can be improved upon in the next edition?

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Filed Under: Announcements, Book Reviews, Facebook Tagged With: , ,

Reply to Facebook Comments via Email

January 12, 2010 By 15 Comments

Today Facebook launched the ability to reply to comments (status updates, photos, videos, and Wall posts) via email.

While this isn’t a major platform upgrade, it would appear that it will drive more engagement with Facebook.  This will occur for 3 main reasons:

  1. Many of us live in our email therefore we’re likely to respond faster to an email then if we have to log in to Facebook to leave a follow up comment.
  2. This reduces the number of steps required to post a response to Facebook once an email notification was received.  Prior to this upgrade you would receive the notification, click the link in the body of email, log in to Facebook, and then leave a comment.  Now, you receive the email notification, hit “Reply”, type your response and hit “Send”. Much simpler, if you ask me.
  3. As ReadWriteWeb notes, employees who work at companies where Facebook is blocked will now be able to engage on Facebook throughout the course of the work day.  They may have been able to make these updates via a smartphone like an iPhone, Blackberry or Droid previously but the risk of getting caught is much higher.  We all know that person that we’ve seen with their head down in their lap all day long texting, playing on Facebook or checking Twitter from their phone.

In my experiences, I tend to respond faster when I can use email as the communications tool.  When I moved my blogs over the Disqus commenting system, I immediately began responding to comments faster because I could easily respond via email.  I think the same thing will happen with Facebook.  I do a decent job responding to comments on Facebook but definitely think that this will increase my engagement with the platform.

Over the past several months of working on my book, Facebook Marketing (affiliate link), it has been very interesting to watch Facebook continue to evolve.  Besides always trying to stay up on everything going around around the social web, I have kept a close eye on what’s happening with Facebook.

Now if they could just enable email notifications for Facebook Pages, the world would rejoice, fireworks would be shot from rooftops and we would all sing carols.  Well, maybe not the fireworks but it would still be very helpful for those of us who manage a Facebook Page, nevermind for those who manage a handful of them.

But, until that happens, I’ll focus on this newest update.  What do YOU think of this new update to Facebook?  Will you engage more via email?

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Photo Credit: Tom Whitnah

Filed Under: Facebook, Social Media Tagged With: ,

Facebook Marketing for Businesses

August 4, 2009 By 43 Comments

writing-a-bookToday is a special day for me as I announce signing my first book deal.  I have inked a deal with Pearson Education/Que Publishing to write a book tenatively titled Facebook Marketing: Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign.  The book is slated for release in January.

My goal with the book is to provide you with a solid overview of where Facebook has come from, where I believe it’s going and then in between all of that, how you can fully utilize the platform to become a trust agent both as an individual and as a business.  I plan on showing you how to build a marketing plan with Facebook as an integral part of that plan, best in class examples, case studies and a ton more.  This won’t be a gimmicky “you should join Facebook”-type book.  I want this to be the type of book that might get you to look at Facebook through a different lens.  I want this book to give you another cannon on your ship from which fire from.  With this book I want to provide you with maps that will help you to chart a course using Facebook that will be helpful to you and your company.

This is an exciting next phase for me as I’ve always wondered whether I had the chops to write a book.  Now we’ll see.  I love challenges and this certainly is going to be a big challenge for me.  Over the coming weeks and months I’ll take you behind-the-scenes and share my experiences as I go through the processes of writing and releasing a book.

As always, thank you for all of the support that you give me.  My hope is that I’m helpful to you in some way that allows you to grow.

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Photo by: avrdreamer

Filed Under: Announcements, Book Reviews, Facebook, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

Give Your Facebook Page a Facelift

June 27, 2009 By 35 Comments

Recently Robert Scoble interviewed Caitlin O’Farrell for the new building43 site which was recently launched by Robert and the team over at RackSpace.  Caitlin is the program manager for consumer marketing at Facebook.  Caitlin spends her time working with celebrities or, as she notes, their publicists, to provide them with a Facebook presence.

One of the key ways of accomplishing this is through a Facebook Page.  As being someone that manages multiple Pages and Groups on Facebook, I was very interested to watch this interview.  Even though I spend hours each day on Facebook, there is so much development taking place by both Facebook and application developers that it’s hard to keep up.

Check out Robert’s interview with Caitlin:

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Blip.tv video.

Two resources that Caitlin pointed out that I didn’t know Facebook provided were the Facebook Influencers and Facebook Marketing resource pages.  I’m going to spend a little time poking around there for new ideas, best practices and to see what some the featured pages are doing.

facebookresources

Caitlin definitely left me with a list of ideas I now have for updating my fan pages and groups.  It was also a nice prod to get in there and maintain interaction in the various pages.  I think one of the normal things that happens in a lot of social networks (at least it happens to me) is that you set up a page, group, or forum where you want to build a community.  But, because of other work, home or other page responsibilities, the pages, groups or forums don’t receive the level of attention that they deserve.

Remember when you build these communities you have to stay active in them.  You have people that join them beacuse they care about the subject or brand that the community is based around.  Be that community manager that they need and want whether it’s Facebook, LinkedIn or any other community you may be a part of.

If you want some more information on Facebook Pages, check out this excellent and comprehensive whitepaper by C.C. Chapman and his team over at The Advance Guard: About Face

If you’re so inclined, jump onboard my two main pages: Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse and Inbound Marketing Summit.

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Filed Under: Advertising, Community, Facebook, Marketing, Social Media, Videos Tagged With: , , , , ,
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