Aug 3, 2010

Leveraging a Facebook Page for Your Blog

If you're a blogger, then connecting with people is probably important to you. And if you're serious about making those connections with others, then you probably follow all of the usual 'rules of blogging' so readers can find you.

The rules are pretty standard, so your typical blogging day probably looks something like this: read and comment on other people's blogs, link back to other people's blogs, register yourself for relevant directories and networks (like ours!), make sure that you respond to comments on your posts, etc., etc.

If you do these things faithfully, then you're on your way to building a regular audience for you blog. However, many bloggers miss out on one great compliment that can greatly enhance the sense of community on your blog...

The Facebook Page!

A Facebook page for your blog can bring in new readers, allow you to connect with other resources, and develop conversation in ways that few other things can.

Creating a page is pretty simple. Facebook has a central place to manage Pages You Admin. And there's some great help on Creating, administering and editing your Page. But once you've created your page, there are a few things you'll want to do.

Set Up Your Blog Feed

This is probably the first (and most important) thing you'll need to do. Adding your blog feed will ensure that everything you post on your blog automatically shows up on your Facebook page. Some people like to do this manually with each new post so that they present it however they wish, but I recommend you automate this process.

There are several ways to do this, but we really like the NetworkedBlogs application. Much of our reasoning has to do with technical mumbo-jumbo that I won't bore you with here. Essentially, it'll provide you with a nice-looking feed of your blog content onto your page.

Once you register your blog with NetworkedBlogs, just make sure that you edit your Feed Settings so that your blog content publishes to your page's wall.

Connect to Other Pages

Facebook is arguably the best tool around for connecting people. If you've ever reconnected with someone that you haven't seen in years through Facebook, then you know exactly what I'm talking about. And because the Page functions almost identically to a personal profile, then many of the same 'rules' apply.

That means becoming 'friends' with people and other pages is a foundational task. When you want to connect with someone, you send them a friend request. With a page for your blog, you would use the 'suggest to friends' tool. Essentially that means that you are asking them to be friends with your blog's page. When they accept by 'liking' your page, then your blog feed and wall post comments will appear in their News Feed.

You'll also want to communicate with your page the same way that you would with a regular profile. You can use the @mention feature on your page wall to mention other people, and people can @mention your page in their status updates. And when you 'like' other pages, it doesn't hurt to do things like adding them to your page's favorites and @mentioning those pages from your page. It's all about engaging conversation and community.

Invite Conversation/Participation

One of the coolest things I do with my page is to invite other people to participate in the conversation, even apart from the blog itself. I've had people answer questions, submit content, and connect with each other through conversation on the page. Many of these individual snippets aren't developed enough to be a full blog post yet.

We've also started doing the same thing on the page for The High Calling. Participation increases substantially when we ask friends of the page to submit questions, and connect with the resulting conversation. It's easy to see how a little conversation prompt can generate some really cool connection points that you might not have otherwise.

Facebook can be a powerful tool to engage and expand your audience for your blog, especially if you use it correctly. Applying these simple techniques can help your blog get noticed and improve the quality of the conversation that you hope to generate.

Oh, and if you aren't a part of The High Calling community on Facebook, be sure to like us there!

Photo by Claire Burge. Used with permission. Post by Dan King.