I've been on a Facebook kick all week, so going to wrap it up with a post that asks a question. But first, let me set it up with some background.
Let's go back to around 2004/2005 when blogs were the social medium of choice for the most part. In those days, one could leave a relevant comment on a popular blogger's blog post and almost be guaranteed traffic back to their own. (Keep in mind this predates "nofollow" tags too.)
I experienced that very phenomena myself. I'd go hang out over at Seth Godin's blog (this was during the time when he accepted both comments and trackbacks), leave a comment or two and, invariably, I'd see traffic from it back to my site. I could count on about 10 percent of that traffic staying with me too. It wasn't a bad strategy for such a nascent time.
The field is way too crowded today and blogs are a dime a dozen, so that technique doesn't work nearly so well as it used too. However, I'm of the opinion that the old is new again, this time in the form of Facebook Pages.
As previously mentioned, I've set up a Facebook Page for The Digital Handshake. One technique I'm using to market it is by finding other authors in my field who have their own Pages, becoming a fan and favoriting their Page on my own. Not only that, I'm writing Wall posts mentioning their books, sort of as a way of expressing good will and camaraderie. I'm also commenting on their Wall when it's suitable to do so (meaning when I have something to say that's relevant).
My question is, do you think that technique will produce similar results? Does becoming a fan of, say, Chris Brogan's new book, Trust Agents, mean that some of his fans will become mine? I think it's a possibility, though I'm not sure how to measure the effect, other than by raw numbers.
The other thing that I'm wondering is whether Facebook Pages are the nouveau riche way of marketing via Facebook, over and against using Groups, personal profiles or Ads, for example. What do you think? Feel free to weigh in.
Image courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons, Marcin Wichary, photographer
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