Being that Social Media is mostly self regulated and has only grown over the past several years, you would think that there would be proper guidelines on how to market the correct way on social media platforms such as facebook. By this I mean, understanding the careful balance that’s between online marketing and using a social platform without scaring everyone away from you.

That’s why I plan on de-mystifying the facebook marketing specifics (when it comes to the basics) that you’ll need to know to better establish your brand and exposure from here on out.

In this in-depth blog post, you will learn the following things:

• 3 Basic Steps to Marketing on Facebook
• 3 Intermediate Steps
• 4 Advanced Tools of Master Marketers

It is my goal here, to help you to get started quickly and with the best practices, and actually do it in a way that has people approaching you for your business or wisdom (whichever you prefer).

So with that, lets get started!

The 3 Basic Steps

1.) A facebook account – This is your personal facebook account. You’ll need this to manage your ad services later should you choose to do some pay per click marketing.

2.) A proper account set up – Utilize all the room and the tools at your disposal as best as you can. Here is a small list of things you can quickly do to improve your main account.

A.) Utilize the entire profile real-estate. The proper width of profile should be 180px wide. But the length can be anything reasonable (540 being max). You can use Aviary.com to upload and resize your pictures for free. You can also download some free software from The Jing Project.

NOTE: Try to make sure your profile picture is of you smiling and also use this style of photo on your fan page.

B.)Create something fun that expresses something about you personally with your row of photos (or photo roll) at the top of your profile. You can use myfbbanners.com for free.

Make sure your contact information is all correct. This means you have your correct website addresses for those who investigate your further. The name of the game in social media is transparency.

3.) Create a Fan Page – The reasons you want a fan page is because you’ll use it as the launching platform for building your personal brand and as the store front for your business and communication with fans, customers, clients or prospects (more on this later).

Another reason, is because you can only have a max of 5,000 friends on your personal page, where as you can have unlimited fans on a business page.

To do this, simply type in “Create New Facebook Page” in the search bar when logged into facebook. Most people should use Artist, Band, or Public Figure if they’re a professional.

3 Intermediate Steps

Don’t let the title perplex you. The “Intermediate” steps are really a building upon the basics you’ve just learned about. But more importantly, grasp a larger picture of what can be done.

If you understand marketing, you know and also understand that more exposure you have… the better. That’s why I’ll be exposing to you what I call the Facebook Marketing Strategy of 6 Figure Earners.

So here are a few rules:

1.) Add 30 contacts every day for your personal account. You can do this with the 15/15 sub-rule.

Since facebook protects it’s accounts and members from spam, they closely watch “friend activity”. This means they will watch to make sure people are not abusing their platform which includes mass friending people. To avoid this, make sure to split up your daily friend requests to a couple or a few times a day. The 15/15 rule is 15 prior to noon and the other is 15 after noon.

2.) A Friend Gift is possibly one of the coolest things out there today that almost no-one is taking advantage of. But what is a friend gift? It’s a small thing you give to your new friends upon accepting you as a friend or viceversa .

What I will typically do is write a small message with two links in the text. The first link (advanced) is a link to a special YouTube Video (that I made - Dereck Arreguin on YouTube) where I explain how happy I am to be a part of their “inner circle”. Then I proceed into telling them a little about myself and that I have a FREE GIFT for them on my blog (second link), No Strings Attached.

Just make sure to delete the first link as facebook will pull the YouTube video and place it in the message.

This helps to separate you from the pack of “takers” out there who are only in it for themselves. Besides, it’s really cool giving something of value for free to someone who never even knew it was coming. Make sure to friend me to see this is person http://www.facebook.com/dereck.arreguin.

3.) Personal Connection is what all social media platforms are all about. It gives you a chance to meet and talk to new people (not to sell them something). Here, you can learn about what they do, what their problems are and if there is anything you can help them out with. You become their friend and build a strong database of people.

4 Advanced Tools of Master Marketers

Knowing the tools and the tricks of the trade are important in leveraging the precious time you have every day. Without some of these tools, you might find yourself sacrificing much wanted or needed time doing more important things.

Tools:

1.) Involver – Involver.com is free software that will sync other social media channels to your fan page. By adding Involver to your fan page, you can create updated tabs on your YouTube channel, blog posts and even twitter feed.

2.) Twitter Feed – Twitter Feed is just one of the many tools out there that make social media automation all that much easier. Basically what Twitter Feed allows you to do, is syndicate a blog feed from your favorite blogs or websites straight to your twitter or facebook page. This helps to keep your activity and visibility in check. Just make sure the information and content is relevant and of value.

3.) Facebook Invite All - This is plugin used on google chrome that will help you to “invite all” to a new fan page or group. This helps from having to physically click all the check boxes when telling others about events or promotions you’ll be holding later on. Trust me, this saves a ton of time. You can find this on the Chrome Apps Page by typing in “facebook invite all” in the search bar.

4.) FanPageEngine – This is platform used by master marketers that helps the PPC aspect of facebook to be extremely clean (on site – meaning on facebook). Learn about this if you are interested in using facebook PPC now or in the future.

Bonus: Secret Fan Adder – I call this strategy the “Secret Fan Adder” because it allows me to provide content on social properties such as my blog, that not only gives me a larger social presents, but also allows me to reach a larger audience on facebook (sometimes without them even knowing it).

What I mean by this is, is using a simple thing like the “like” function provided by facebook to help others around the web (who are logged into facebook) to add themselves to my fan base. I do this by collecting a simple code found at http://developers.facebook.com.

Here are the steps to collecting and using the code.

1.) On the developers site, click on Builder For Websites

2.) Scroll down 1/4 of the page and click on Social Plugin Page

3.) Click on Like Button

4.) Copy the URL from your fan page (that you created earlier) and paste it in the URL box. Make sure to set all settings correctly.

5.) Click on “Get Code”

6.) Copy code and paste it on every blog post or anywhere on the web where you can generate traffic to it.

This will give those who view the page the impression that those hundreds or thousands of people like the post. The power of social acceptance is quite massive and so these numbers play a big part. But it does a little more than that.

Because now, when that viewer clicks the “like” button (if they are logged into facebook), they will be added to your fan base on your fan page. Now they will see every post you add to your fan page, giving you more exposure.

And that doesn’t even factor in the fact that their friends will also see the notification as “you liked a page” and can even help you in facebook PPC.

In the end, you’ll have a new fan, more outreach and they’ll (hopefully – if you don’t spam), receive great content and have reason to listen or do business with you.

If you are interested in further facebook marketing, might I suggest: