by Alison Rothwell

In order to maximize Facebook as a marketing tool you need to integrate it into your other business marketing strategies and tactics. You're going to also want to integrate it into your website and/or blog. Facebook isn't nearly as effective as a standalone tactic as it can be when you embrace it completely.
One of the most powerful ways to embrace Facebook to both drive traffic and customers to your website and to also build your Facebook community is to integrate Facebook plug-ins into your website or blog. Facebook offers Plug-Ins; you can find them here

Let's take a look at the basics of each plug-in, then you can decide which strategy is best for you and your business goals.

• Live Stream - The Live Stream plug-in lets your users share activity and comments in real-time as they interact online. This is a good plug-in for live events or for a very active website/blog.
  
  
• Like Button - The Like button lets your website visitors share pages from your site back to their Facebook profile with one click. This is a HUGE promotion tool; all you have to do is provide content that motivates people to Like it
  
  
• Like Box - The Like Box lets your website/blog visitors like your Facebook Fan Page and view the content directly from your website.
  
  
• Recommendations - This plug-in gives your visitors personalized recommendations for pages on your site they might like. It also displays the relevant data that may motivate them to click through. For example, "9987 people liked this".
  
  
• Friendpile -- This fun plug-in shows profile pictures of Facebook Friends who are on your website.
  
  
• Login Button -- Another visual plug-in, the Login Button shows profile pictures of your visitor's friends who have already signed up for your site in addition to a login button. Social proof!
  
  
• Activity Feed -- This is another plug-in that is interactive and provides a nice sense of movement on your site/blog. It shows visitors what their friends are doing on your site through likes and comments
  
  
• Comments -- Finally, the Comments plug-in lets visitors comment on any piece of content on your site and share their comment on their Facebook wall. This is another huge promotion tool, however if you already have commenting features on your blog/website they might overlap and reduce the effectiveness of each other.

Facebook Posts

What you post is as important as how often you post. Let's just say up front that posting promotion after promotion and link after link to your business website is as much of a turnoff as SPAM is in your email inbox. You will lose friends instead of making them.

So what do you post?

Valuable information! It's absolutely okay and recommended to publish content specifically for your Facebook audience. Publish tips, quotes, tidbits of information, links to your blog posts and new articles and even links and information about your industry that lead to websites other than your own.
Let's say, for example, that your business is an information website about single parenting. If you find an article about five minute meals and you think it would benefit your audience, then by all means post a link and a comment about the article's contents.

Video and audio links too! Don't forget that while written content seems to be the standard, people love to watch, and share, videos. It goes back to us being a very visual species. And if the videos are humorous, scandalous, controversial, or extremely informative they'll get shared and passed along like wildfire. Video posts tend to go viral very quickly.

Status Updates. One of the fun things about Facebook posts is that they don't have to be 100% logical. It's fun to simply post what you're doing. Update your status regularly -- once a day is enough. These are often the posts that generate the most interaction.

A Quick Note About Time Management

All of this posting on Facebook may seem like a lot of extra work to do each day. And in the next step when we talk about interaction you may throw up your hands and think "I don't have enough time to do all this." Good news, you can automate much of it! You can also outsource some of it, many companies do.

Automating Your Posting

There are several tools you can use to automate your posting. And depending on your strategy, goals and tactics you may use one or many automating technologies.

If you use Twitter for example, you can connect Twitter to your Facebook profile so every post on Twitter is also a post on Facebook. Double interaction with half the effort. You can even schedule your posts with Twitter which subsequently schedules your posts on Facebook.

Likewise you can import your blog post on Facebook using the "Notes" application and/or the "Networked Blogs" applications.
This is the perfect time to transition into the next very important aspect of using Facebook to market your business -- Interaction!
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Alison Rothwell, online marketing expert, is founder of the SEO Training Club, the proven step-by-step solution to your internet marketing problems. To receive her weekly online marketing ezine to help get higher search engine rankings to increase your online sales, visit www.seotrainingclub.com.