internet income

What You Will Learn
In this lesson, you will learn the basics of creating brand pages on the social networks.

What Is A Brand Page?
In its narrow sense, a "brand" (as defined by the American Marketing Association), is a "name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers." In its broader sense, a "brand" can represent any organization, project, campaign, or cause and can take many forms; including a name, sign, symbol, color scheme, slogan or any combination of a name, sign, symbol, color scheme or slogan.
Good marketing requires that you "brand" your business venture and, preferably, each campaign you launch. An effective brand requires an attention grabbing logo and color scheme. Your logo should incorporate, or be accompanied by, a slogan—a short sentence or phrase expressing the essence of what you have to offer.
Social media sites such as Facebook allow you to create "brand pages." Although you must first have a personal profile from which you administer your brand page, your brand page has an independent identity. It can be liked or subscribed to independent of your personal profile. Indeed, in most cases, visitors to the brand page are not even aware of who administers the page (unless you tell them in the "info", notes, or status updates on the page). You can (and should) create a brand page corresponding to any active website or advertising campaign. Some individual entrepreneurs and small businesses just use a Facebook brand page in lieu of a website for their business.

Advantages
A main advantage of a social media brand page is that it easily allows your visitors to connect with you on a continuing basis. Recall from our previous lessons that one of the main goals of any web site is to create an opportunity for continuing contact with your visitors. As ways to accomplish continuing contact we have discussed email newsletters, discussion boards, comment sections, RSS feeds, and other techniques. Brand pages make it easy for your visitors to connect with you on a continuing basis in ways that are very familiar and comfortable to them. When looking at a Facebook brand page, for example, your visitor only has to click on the "Like" button and your updates will then show on their newsfeed. It is less of a committment and less of an effort for a Facebook visitor to "Like" your brand page than it is for a visitor to your website to sign up for a newsletter or add your RSS feed to their RSS feed reader (if they even have one). In addition to the ease of creating the permanent connection, the visitor feels more confident that he or she can control the connection because they are familiar with Facebook. If a "fan" of your Facebook brand page later reconsiders, they are confident they can block your updates or "unlike" your page at any time, easily and conveniently. In comparison, unsubscribing to an email list is more trouble and subscribers are less confident they have control over the process. Thus, Facebook adds a level of ease and comfort to "subscribing" to your updates and will increase the number of people with which you can maintain continuing contact.
Another advantage of a social media brand page is that your subscribers are more likely to see your updates. With email lists, spam filters are becoming more and more a hindrance to even wanted messages arriving in someone's inbox. Your blog entries are only viewed by those who take the trouble to pull up your blog. Social media sites, however, are visited frequently and all the information in which the user has interest is in one place. Users who have become very active with social media are much more likely to be online and have an opportunity to view your updates.
Plus, it is easier for you to post status updates on social media sites like Facebook than it is to add information to a webpage or create a blog entry. In most cases, you just enter a link and Facebook pulls up a picture and description to be added to your post. You then have the opportunity of adding your own words. This ease and speed of publishing information allows you to stay in contact with your connections efficiently.

Creating Your Facebook Brand Page
While Facebook is known to change their format from time to time, you can create a brand page on Facebook, at the time of this writing, by looking for the "pages" app on the left column of your personal newsfeed (the view you get from clicking on the "Home" button). By clicking on "Pages," you get a view which has on the top right a "Create a Page" button. By clicking that button, you are given the opportunity to choose a category. Choices at the time of this writing are "Local Business or Place," "Company, Organization or Institution," "Brand or Product," "Artist, Band, or Public Figure," "Entertainment," or "Cause or Community." Each one of these choices gives you numerous sub-choices for a category. If you have a webpage already, in many cases the right choice for you, if no other choice appears to be right on target, will be to select "Brand or Product" as your main selection and then select "Website" as the subcategory. The first time you create a brand page, take some time to look through all of the category choices to become familiar with them and to select the one best suited to your purposes. This can be adjusted later if necessary.
You will also need to give your page a preliminary name in the text box just below the subcategory selection. Give some thought, of course, to the name you select as this will be very important to your marketing success. When your page is created, you will have a link to your Facebook brand page like a link to any webpage. Facebook, at the time of this writing, gives you a long complicated URL at first, but then provides a short URL with your chosen name, if available, after you have obtained a certain number of "Likes" to your page.
You will be given the opportunity to upload a logo as you create your page. In most cases it will be necessary to modify your existing logo so that it fits into the space provided by Facebook. An even more severely cropped image will appear to the left of your status updates and comments. You will need to experiment with your image and watch how the image appears in both places, tweaking it to your liking.
You will also be asked to provide "info" about your business or campaign and can provide a link to your website. The info section does not have to be long and detailed, but should concisely explain what you offer. For example, on my NovemberStar Facebook page, I created a company overview that stated only "Promoting Indie Music and Artists. Providing info and music samples to fans looking to discover great new indie music." And, then for "Mission," I stated, "Help music lovers find good independent music. Help indie musicians find fans." From there, I can add to and tweak it as necessary as feedback becomes available.
During the page setup, you will be given the option to allow posts while the page is open to appear as posted by the page, even though made while logged in to your personal account. I recommend this option as it will save you some switching around when you are posting in a hurry. You will also be given options about who can post and comment on your page. I recommend that you allow anyone to post or comment. The more interactivity the better. You will need to monitor the page closely, however, and you may have to block certain people if they are trying to sabotage your page.
Go through all the settings and instructions and get your page like you want it. It doesn't really take very long to set up your page and it will be a powerful tool for you.

Posting Your First Status Update
Your page is not really complete until you have posted your first "Status Update." A good choice for your first post is a link to your website with a brief description of what your website is about. A good second post for SFI affiliates is to log into TripleClicks and find a product that matches the theme of your page. Something to keep in mind is the taste of the first people you expect to follow your page. As I know that one of my friends who will "Like" my NovemberStar Facebook page collects old vinyl LPs, I searched on TripleClicks for vinyl records for sale. I searched the "Movies, Music and Games" department for the word "vinyl." I soon found the classic Jackson Five LP for sale. I clicked on the link to that product on TripleClicks and found the little box that said "Share/Save," clicked on it, and then clicked on the Facebook link. A page opens with your tentative Facebook post where you can add some language to appear above the link and select the right thumbnail picture to appear with the link. Then, just click "Share" and you have another Facebook update – which is a link to a TripleClicks product that tracks you as the seller. When someone clicks on that link in Facebook and buys from TripleClicks, you can earn a commission!

Other Social Networks
You will also want to create an account with Twitter and, although Google+ is still not open to brand pages as of this writing, you will want to create one on Google+ as well when available. Depending on the type of business or campaign that you are promoting, you may want to consider a few of the other social networks as well. We will discuss later how you can link your Facebook brand page to your Twitter account.

Conclusion
Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter allow you a wonderful opportunity to promote your "Brand." Your first step is to create your brand with
a name, sign, symbol, color scheme, slogan or some combination thereof – and create it to match your website if you have one. Tweak your website logo to work well in the limited space for it on Facebook. Then, just follow the instructions above and the instructions on Facebook to create your Brand Page. There are many advantages to creating a brand page on the social media sites and no disadvantages of which I am aware.

What's Coming Next
In our next lesson, we will discuss creating your Twitter account and learning to use Twitter to promote your business.watchout