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One fact which has become a hot topic of discussion lately has been the perfect ways to use Facebook as a tool to increase traffic to your blog. Let us have a look at a few tips which you could implement to successfully increase the traffic to your blog / website through Facebook:-

1. Make your Profile Informative and Exhaustive

What is the purpose behind the creation of a profile on Facebook? It is

1. To build a brand name for yourself
2. To portray or establish yourself as an expert in field
3. To generate leads or traffic to your website or blog

Whatever the purpose, the bottom-line remains that your profile showcases exactly what you want the users to know about you. Making friends on Facebook might look like an easy task, but to attract those people, who would actually be beneficial to you and your blog, is a mighty difficult process to begin with. Always make sure that you come across as a person who is willing to share and gather knowledge which is valued by the community you target.

While searching for the right kind of friends, keep in mind the demographics you are targeting. Facebook gives you the option to search through various variables like name, company, place, school, college etc. The good thing about Facebook is that not only are you able to connect with the people you already know, but also the ones who don’t and would like to get in touch with. Who knows when you might come across an individual who would work wonders for your business?

One thing to keep in mind is that you should not go bonkers adding friends in frenzy. Facebook dislikes it and you might end up getting banned for a few days on Facebook.

2. Join the right Groups or Create Your Own Group

Facebook provides you the luxury of making your own groups and inviting people to join them. The group can be based on any theme, ranging from social work to business to entertainment. Depending on the nature of your business, you can start off a group that attracts a major number of facebook users. You can also join other groups to make your presence felt, so that people start having credibility in your knowledge and look upto you for your expertise. You can even send out group invitations to all of your Facebook friends.

3. Create a Facebook Page

One of the most important things to do for a business on Facebook is the creation of a fanpage. Fanpages provide tremendous networking potential from where you can keep your fans updated about your company’s latest offerings as well as share valuable information. Facebook company fanpages are a great way to engage people into your conversations and make them more aware about your website and your blog. Facebook pages can only be created by official representatives for a company, brand or celebrity.  Always make sure that the content which you post on these fanpages in engaging and informative so that more and more people pay return visits to the page.

4. Integrate your Other Social Accounts to Your Facebook Profile and Page

Right now, a tremendous number of applications exist on Facebook, which allow you to integrate all your social networking presence on the Facebook fanpage itself. This helps in driving the traffic in the way you like with the added benefit of people knowing of your all-round activities on the internet. Take the time to link your blog’s RSS feed to your status updates, link your Twitter feed, SlideShare content, and so on to your Facebook profile or page. In this way, whatever updates you make on all these websites would be instantly updated and displayed on your Facebook fanpage.

Encourage people to visit your Facebook fanpage by providing links on your website and everywhere you post and become a part of a conversation or a discussion.

5. Acknowledge and Reciprocate

Consistency is the name of the game on Facebook. Once you have made friends of fans for your fanpage, it is important to engage these fans and regularly acknowledge their comments or feedback. Always be willing to converse with them so that the fans too consider themselves an important part of your page.

Droopy eyes, stiff fingers and overworked wrists. Is Twitter the reason for all of this? A recent article posted in Business Insider speaks volumes about how Twitter is taking away the freedom of the mind and is shackling the time and space of those on it. People are actually reflecting on the dampening feeling that Twitter can give, once you are logged-on to it 24/7 on your laptop or mobile. Clogged up timelines on twitter with people tweeting about almost everything imaginable and that too at a breathtaking speed. Wonder where all this gyan is coming from? You might find yourself running your eyes wildly trying to catch a glimpse of what is relevant and what is a rant.

What sometimes is ever more irritating and even excruciating is that people tend to tweet about almost everything occurring in their lives, whatever comes to their mind. Sharing has become much of a nuisance as if no one has anything better to do. Our body and more importantly are feeling the heat of keeping up with such a haphazard race to tweet (especially if you are following hundreds of people).

This piece deals with how one could tackle this Twitter Fatigue in the most efficient manners available today:-

Get rid of those noisy updates

In case you are following more than a thousand people on Twitter, chances are your eyes will actually feel numb and overworked due to the speed of the changing timeline. In between the hoola-hoopla of everyone talking about everything, what matters is the person you follow and would want to see on your timeline. When this becomes imperative, the solution comes in the form of Tweetdeck, an application that lets you toggle between multiple accounts. It also helps you in separating who you follow along with @replies and direct messages into columns.  For a more targeted experience, one could use apps like Seesmic and Hootsuite.

I follow you, you follow me

Before getting into the debate about the importance of following back the ones who follow you, there are many applications out there which help you in managing the people you choose to follow. An application which offers an auto-follow option for greater convenience is SocialOomph. You don’t really have to keep a track of all the people who follow you, as the application automatically starts following these followers. But SocialOomph gives you 72 hours to review your new followers and see if you would like to proceed with the auto-follow.

I’m losing my touch

Have you always been a tech-junkie or presented yourself as a social media magnate? Have you always been a part of the online community that talks about all these subjects and have followed people who speak the same language? In the glut of things, do you find yourself bogged down by everyone talking about the same things over and over again? Somewhat like a mini-personal crisis that makes you stay aways from Twitter. A few tips to overcome the same:

• Start following a different breed of people altogether – Try finding people with a new story to tell on a different and out-of-your-league subject. This would keep you on your toes every time he/she tweets about something offbeat. Try Twitter Chats and follow people who you are influential and make sense when they tweet. Tools like WeFollow, Twellow and Listorious can be used to find Twitterers and Twitter lists by categories.

• Make Tweet experience an Interesting affair – Now that you’ve already taken care of the above mentioned steps, you can begin putting the spice back into your tweets and making it an exhilarating experience for you and your followers. Twitter can be fun only when it is taken as fun. Otherwise there’s nothing much to it than 140 characters and a few shared links.

Image Courtesy – Funcage

How many friends do you have on your Facebook account? How many followers do you have on Twitter? Perception plays an important role when you go through a person’s profile on either of these social networking websites. A random stroll through somebody’s profile would automatically shift your attention towards his/her friends list. You quickly form an opinion about the person judging by the number of friends the individual has. You start ranking the person on the social media popularity or influential scale and make up your mind about being a friend or a follower of the same person. This is what social media has done to us.

Getting the twitter handle of that cute one standing with a drink in her hand in the bar becomes a matter of life and death. Did someone mention a cell-phone number? Amazing how technology becomes redundant, even though mobile phones are shaping the way people will communicate in the future. But for the time being it is the Social networking space which has completely dominated the Gen Y and Gen Z minds. From the looks of things, it has become pretty obvious that people spend a hefty proportion of their daily time doing social networking, either on their laptops or through their cell phones. This makes it even more important, especially in the Dating circle, to know about the whereabouts of a person on these social networking websites (Will I get her Twitter handle?). It kind of makes it easier to get to know the person, without actually having to approach them directly.

See it as a sign of hesitancy or smartness, but people nowadays prefer to know a person a lot better by interacting with them on Facebook or Twitter, just to get to make sure if he/she is worth the time spent on planning a meet and actually meeting them. Gone are the days when the awkward paper notes and online chat messages were exchanged, just to make that elusive first contact. Guys have become more coy in the way they approach girls, and we all know how choosy girls can be when it comes to hanging out with guys and then even more circumspect in posting the pictures of the meeting on Facebook. Social reputation you see!

The way conversations are happening between friends and colleagues alike too has changed. Facebook and Twitter seem to have become the best ice-breakers and even the topics of regular conversation. I may dare call it as a meaningful conversation, but that is how things are shaping up to be in the modern world. Having a great Facebook profile and posting funny, witty or smart Tweets can surely make or mar a person’s reputation in the real world. Certainly a case of deadly importance, unless you don’t want to get labeled as a social outcast.

Therefore the first thing to do while creating a profile on Facebook would be to deck it up with jaw-dropping information – You ultra-lengthy Amazon Books list, the uber cool pics of your last trip to Leh and Ladakh, that awesome dance party you threw on your roof-top or just your self-shot dressed up (down) pics in front of the bathroom mirror.

It’s all good until it keeps the comments coming and lets the people know that you are indeed, socially alive and kicking.