10 Tips to Increase Blog Traffic with Facebook

""Facebook is the most popular social networking site with over
350 million members. Not only is it a great tool to connect
with friends, family, colleagues and more across the world,
but it's also a great tool to increase traffic to your blog.
Following are 10 tips to increase blog traffic with Facebook.""
1. Complete Your Profile Strategically

Consider your goals for your Facebook profile. If you want to
use it as a tool to establish yourself as an expert in your field
and drive traffic to your blog, then you need to make sure
your profile includes the information to support your
expertise.  Be careful about the types of photos, videos, and
personal interests you include in your profile though. To use
Facebook as a tool to drive traffic to your blog, you'll need to
make a lot of Facebook friends, and it's likely you won't want
them all to see those pictures of you drinking in college!

2. Find Friends

Use the search tool to find people on Facebook. You can
search by name, company, school, and more.  You don't need
to know a person before you request to be their friend on
Facebook. The worst that can happen is that they decline or
ignore your request, and the best that can happen is that they
become a part of your Facebook network!  You can also find
people to friend by looking through the friends of people
you're already friends with and looking through Facebook
groups and pages to find people with similar interests to your
own. When you find people who match your criteria and
might be interested in your blog content, go ahead and send
them a friend request!

3. Join Groups or Create Your Own Group

You can create a group for any topic or reason on Facebook
and invite people to join it. Search for groups related to your
blog's topic, and then join those groups and get active in the
conversations going on in those groups. If you can't find
just the right Facebook group to support your efforts to drive
traffic to your blog, create one! You can send out group
invitations to all of your Facebook friends.

4. Create a Facebook Page and Become a Fan of Other
Facebook Pages.

The Facebook page feature is another great way to network
with the Facebook audience. You can become a fan of
existing Facebook pages (just search for ones related to your
blog and then join the converation), and you can create your
own. Facebook pages can only be created by official
representatives for a company, brand or celebrity. Your blog
could be considered a brand, so go ahead and create a
Facebook page for your blog. Then be sure to feed your blog's
content into your Facebook page status updates and
continually add interesting information to it to keep the
conversation going.

5. Link Your Other Social Accounts to Your Facebook
Profile and Page.

There are many tools available to help you build a great
Facebook profile and/or page that can drive traffic directly
and indirectly to your blog. 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. This way, your updates appear in your status stream for
all of your friends to see. In some cases, a new tab is added
to your Facebook profile or page, so content from some other
services (such as SlideShare) is always easy to find.

6. Promote Your Facebook Link

Include your Facebook link in your blog's sidebar , in your
email signature, and anywhere else you can think of to
encourage more people to find you and send you a Facebook
friend request.

7. Be Active

Don't just create your Facebook profile, page or group and
then disappear. In order for your Facebook efforts to drive
traffic to your blog, you need to actively update your status,
share great content, join conversations, and engage with
other people. By building relationships with your Facebook
friends, you can indirectly grow your blog's audience, too.

8. Acknowledge and Reciprocate

It's one thing to make friends on Facebook but it's another
thing entirely to build relationships with them. Don't just
spend all of your Facebook time updating your own profile
and sharing your own content. Instead, spend the majority of
your Facebook time commenting on other people's statuses
and conversations, sharing other people's great content,
responding to direct messages, and so on.

9. Place a Facebook Ad

Facebook ads are fairly inexpensive, can be targeted, and
can raise awareness of your blog, your Facebook page, or
anything else you want to advertise.

10. Be Human

Facebook has a very personal edge to it. Unlike LinkedIn,
which leans more toward a business edge, Facebook users
expect members to be human, not promotional. With that in
mind, mix your status updates and content between
promotional information and entertaining, personal updates
(just don't get too personal, remember how many people can
see your Facebook updates).