Promoting Your Site Through Facebook
So you’ve got this site with your organization’s name all over it. Here’s a few ways that might help increase traffic to the site and sales.
Facebook Posts with Website Links
To get people to visit your site from a Facebook post, you just need to copy the address of the page where you want them to land (the URL) and paste it into your post. Let’s say I want to promote a new product that was just added to the site.
How to Put a Website Link to a product in a Facebook Post
Visit the item page on your site where the product is and click into the picture:
Copy the entire URL that is in the address box in the upper left corner, including the “http:” In this example the URL is http://artisansexchange.org/collections/new-products/products/hand-felted-one-eyed-red-tooth-monster-with-wings-global-groove
On your Facebook page, paste the URL in the Status box. Facebook will resolve the link below your post:
The pictures are square and Facebook uses a 4X6 horizontal template but it adds a little mystery to the product, don’t you think? Delete the URL from the post and replace it with something you want to say:
Click on the Publish button. Voila! The post is on your Facebook page with a link to the product on your website.
Boosting Your Facebook Post
Unfortunately, Facebook isn’t as kind to business posts as it is to your posts of your cat. Your cat post goes out on the News Feed of your friends but posts from business pages do not get nearly as much traction with the people who have liked your business site. So you may want to give your post a little nudge with a “boost.”
Boosts are not free but are very affordable. You select the duration and the audience and the amount of money you want to spend.
How to Boost a Post
Click on the “Boost Post” button. A page similar to this will display:
Select and audience, a budget, and duration. You can set up a target audience based on location or demographics (sometimes we only want to post locally). Facebook gives you an estimate of how many people will be reached. It can be worth a couple of bucks to get your post seen. In this example, while the site has almost 2000 likes, Facebook estimates that only 160-430 people will see it. But wouldn't it be amazing if 5% of them placed an order?
Click on the "Boost" button. If you haven't already sold your soul to Facebook (i.e. have your credit card on file), you can enter payment information on the next screen.
Linking Facebook Posts to Twitter
If you’re like me, you’re still trying to figure out the use for Twitter posts. It’s difficult enough to post something on Facebook, let alone needing to count your characters and post the same on Twitter. But you can link your Facebook page to your Twitter account so you only have to post on one place. Remember, only 140 characters show up on Twitter (with the rest of the post being turned into a link) so put the important information in the beginning, including the ever-popular, much-maligned hashtags.
How to Link Facebook to Twitter
- Go to www.facebook.com/Twitter.
- Click Link to Twitter next to your organization Page or Profile
- Once linked, you can identify the types of Facebook posts that are tweeted by selecting “Edit Settings.”
Hashtags
While they certainly don’t make your Facebook posts pretty, Twitter users follow certain phrases called “hashtags.” There’s no defined list of these. But if you want your post to show up with others offering, say, ornaments, put the hashtag #ornaments in your Facebook post.
