Your Blog + Facebook: Tips for Promoting Your Business Blog

It’s no secret that Facebook is one of the most powerful social media tools available for the inbound marketer. Many businesses have leveraged the influence and reach of Facebook to garner new leads, communicate directly with customers and reinforce the prominence of their brand. If you’re not using Facebook to promote your business blog, you may be missing out on an opportunity to rapidly expand your pool of potential leads. Below are six practical tips you can utilize to promote your business blog by way of Facebook’s many useful tools and applications.

1. Establish a Facebook Page for Your Business

This tip almost goes without saying, but it’s absolutely necessary for you to set up a Facebook page for your business. Completely fill out the “About”, “Basic Info” and “Contact Info” sections of your Facebook page. Make sure that you choose a profile image and cover photo that is consistent with your branding; you’re going to want your Facebook page to appear as if it is an extension of your business website and blog.

2. Place Facebook Buttons on Your Business Blog

There are several useful Facebook buttons available that enable you to share your blog content on Facebook. You can find them on the Facebook Developers “Social Plugins” page. When you place a “Like” button on your site, visitors who “Like” your post will by default be promoting your blog in their news feed on Facebook. Placing a “Share” button allows visitors to actually post your content to their Facebook timeline, thus sharing it with their friends and offering your business blog an increased level of exposure.

3. Install a Facebook Comments Module

Although there are dozens of blog commenting modules to choose from, the ease of installing Facebook’s Comments box makes it a clear choice for your blog. In addition, when people comment on your blog using their Facebook profile, this activity will appear on their personal Facebook timeline, as well as in their friends’ news feeds. The Comments box is customizable through Facebook’s Developers site, allowing you to adjust the width, color scheme (light or dark), number of comments to show, etc., to suit your preferences. In addition, you will also have several comment moderation tools available to you, and a social relevance ranking metric so that you can keep track of the buzz being generated by your blog posts.

4. Use Facebook to Generate Content Ideas

One of the most simple yet powerful forms of communication is the question. Ask your Facebook audience what type of topics they’d like to see covered on your blog. You would be surprised how many amazing content ideas can come from your audience when you solicit their input and demonstrate that you sincerely value their opinion. When you begin to publish blog posts based on the suggestions of your audience, be sure to credit them for their ideas. This reinforces a bond of trust and mutual respect between you and your readers, and it will naturally integrate your Facebook activity with your blogging activity.

5. Highlight New Content and Repromote Old Content

Every new blog post you publish should be highlighted and promoted on Facebook upon its release. Firing off new blog posts on a regular basis is critical to maintaining the freshness factor that your site needs to occupy a prominent position in Facebook’s news feed. If you have older content that has never been shared on Facebook because it predates the existence of your Facebook page, by all means repromote that content via Facebook. Try to select posts to repromote that have “evergreen” topics (not date-sensitive) to ensure relevance. This combination of new and old material will give your audience a more well-rounded view of the kind of content available on your business blog.

6. Embed your Blog Into a Tab on Your Facebook Page

Several Facebook applications exist that allow you to use HTML in order to embed your own website into a tab on your Facebook page. One of the most popular utilities available for this is the “Static HTML: iframe tabs” application. This app enables you to embed your blog or website into a tab on your Facebook page by way of using a basic HTML iframe. What this does is create a portal in which your blog can be viewed directly from your Facebook page, allowing your Facebook audience to view your latest blog posts without ever having to leave Facebook. This powerful utility enables you to leverage the authority of Facebook’s domain in order to gain more blog exposure. Thousands of top companies utilize this application to basically “double up” on their content exposure, since they’re able to also occupy prime virtual real estate on the largest social networking site in the world.

Using the tips listed above will not only allow you to promote your business blog in an easy and cost-effective manner, but it will also open up new opportunities for you to significantly increase your brand exposure and build an even larger base of loyal customers.