I’m a HUGE fan of Facebook. Okay, perhaps I’m a bit too addicted to Facebook, but regardless, there is huge potential for bloggers to make a name for themselves with this social media giant.

With 50 million members and growing, users spend more time on Facebook than any other website, including Google! That is just crazy when you think about it. Google may still be the number one site when it comes to traffic, but Facebook definitely has the search engine giant beat when it comes to the amount of time people spend on the site.

As important Google is when it comes to driving natural, laser-targeted traffic to your site, Facebook certainly can’t be ignored either.

Are You on Facebook?

How many of you have a personal account on Facebook? Chances are most of you do; whether you’re keeping in touch with old friends, new friends, relatives or business associates.

I use Facebook for all of those reasons. As I admitted earlier, I’m quite addicted to it, and I imagine many of you are as well. This would explain why people spend more time on Facebook than Google. I don’t think Google quite has an addiction appeal… agreed? I mean, other than searching for stuff, what else is there to do on Google? I think I made my point.

However, when it comes to Facebook, there is so much more you can do on it. Aside from posting on your friends’ Walls, commenting on posts, pictures, videos and comments made by others, playing various games and such (something I never got into), this includes promoting your blog and bringing in new readers.

How Can You Market Your Blog on Facebook?

There are three ways that you can market your blog, website, business, service, and pretty much anything you want to on Facebook. However, I’m going to cover two methods that are completely free and don’t take much time at all to setup.

NetworkedBlogs

NetworkedBlogs is just what the name implies. It’s basically a network of blogs that people can follow directly on Facebook thanks to their fancy App. As a blog owner, you can submit your blog for inclusion in the network. What this does is allow other people to follow your blog; they can Vote, “Like” and comment on your posts, rate your blog, etc.

Another nifty feature is the Auto-publishing setting. Whenever you publish a new post on your blog, you can have NetworkedBlogs automatically post an excerpt of that post to your personal Facebook profile or even to your Facebook Page, or both.

I’m sure you’ve noticed a neat little widget on the sidebar of this blog, as shown in the picture. This makes it easy for your readers to follow your blog while they’re already on it, as long as they’re signed in to Facebook. This is cool because now whenever your readers are on Facebook and you publish a new post, the post will show up on their News Feed, which they can click on it from there, rather than having to click over to your blog. It saves them time and is more convenient.

Facebook Pages

Pages (previously known as Fan Pages) can be used to promote virtually anything; yourself, your site/blog, an organization, cause, service, product, etc. They are a great way to build your brand and get exposure for whatever it is you’re promoting.

As you may notice, I’m promoting my home page, which is not my blog. I do this for branding purposes, but if your blog IS your home page then this will work just as well to help you brand your blog.

One thing I do is make use of the Static FBML App that creates a tab that you can direct first-time visitors to. What really sets this App apart is that you can insert your own HTML, which will then convert that into an actual page on your Page. It also creates a new tab which you can give whatever title you want. I chose to title it “Welcome!” As you can see in the screenshot below, I have a link to the home page of my site as well as a link to my blog on the Welcome! tab. This is what people will see when they first come to my Page.

Final Thoughts

Before I go, I want to leave you with a few additional tips to make both of these strategies more effective. When viewing your NetworkedBlogs profile or your Facebook Page, you have the opportunity to invite your friends to follow your blog or “Like” your Page. I strongly suggest using this feature!

Now, I know this can be seen as spam to some people, so I also suggest adding a personal note in your invite to make it more personal.

One final tip…

Make use of the RSS settings Facebook provides to import Twitter and other RSS feeds you may have to promote your blog, business and whatever else you want to share with your friends.

If you’re not yet using NetworkedBlogs or have a Facebook Page setup, you’re missing out on potential traffic, readers, and sales. Both are free and don’t take a whole lot of time to setup.

Remember to add people that you think would be interested in reading your blog, and then invite them to follow your blog and “Like” your Page.

And on that note, I invite you to follow me on Facebook as well if you’re not yet doing so:

• My Personal Profile Page
• Work From Home Resources on NetworkedBlogs
• ReplaceYourSalary.com on Facebook

Thanks for all your support, and I hope you’ll put these Facebook marketing tips to good use for your blog and business.

The following is a guest post by Sam Bakker. If you would like to guest post on this blog, please contact me.

It’s no secret that Facebook is an excellent source to make money online. With over 400 million members, the money is there for the taking. Many online marketers have come out and said that Facebook fan pages are currently the best free way to make money on the site. This is because of their viral nature. In this article, I am going to discuss an effective technique for increasing fans on your page with the intention of taking it viral.

The first time I discovered Facebook’s viral nature, I was looking at my news feed. A friend of mine had joined a pretty funny group. I clicked into the page out of casual curiosity and found out that the page had only been running for the past 24 hours, but had managed to have over 100,000 people “Like” it. I refreshed the page to see how fast its rate growth was, each time I did, at least 100 new people had joined. Over the next week, more than 1.5 million people joined that page as fans gave the owner exposure to all of their news feeds when they placed a message on the fan page.

So how do we create this incredible viral effect? The first way is to gather enough members in a short space of time. The rule I like to use is that if you can get a fan page to 20,000 people within four days then the page will go viral.

The best way to get these first 20,000 friends is to use a method which I like to call the “Rapid Movement Method”. It consists of utilizing the fans of other pages in order to help build your fan page. Look for fan pages which have similar subjects to yours and about 100,000 fans already (we want these pages so that we can tap into their growth while it’s still happening). Some fan pages will have the contact details of the admin. But if they don’t, you will need to ask them to contact you using the “Discussion tab”. This option which the majority of Facebook fan pages have gives you the opportunity to get in touch with the owner by placing a quick comment asking the administrator to contact you. When they do, you have the chance to negotiate a price for the post. If you have got it right and your topic is one which could potentially go viral, then you can expect your page to grow to a stage where you can use it to make money online.

Sam Bakker has been making money online for the past 7 years. If you would like to get a free copy of Sam’s new Facebook marketing report visit his Internet business website now.