5 Days of Social Media {Facebook}

Welcome back to 5 Days of Social Media, my contribution to the Homeschool Crew’s Blog Hop — 5 Days of Blogging. 

 

 

 

Yesterday, I talked about Blogging — where I coverd, 5 Reasons to Start a Homeschool Blog, 5 Reasons You May Not Want to Blog, and 5 Interesting Things to Blog About.

 

Today, I’ll cover, 5 Reasons a Facebook Fan Page is Imperative for Homeschool Bloggers.

Some of you are already set up with a personal Facebook page, but that’s all you have. Mixed in with your friends and family are some local homeschool friends, some folks you met online on a forum you frequent, and some folks that found your on Facebook after discovering your blog. This is how it began for me.

 

When I first signed up for a Facebook account, my purpose was mostly to keep up with friends and family who were out of town. I wanted a way to get news to everyone at once, and share pictures of Ben. But before I knew it, I was getting friend requests from local friends, online friends, and people I had no idea who they were. I enjoy meeting new people and sharing homeschool ideas, but my high school buddies in Arkansas didn’t really care so much for all of the homeschool chatter. 

 

What was a girl to do? Well, I went back to Facebook and signed up for another account, moved all of my homeschool friends to that one and added a social icon for Facebook to my blog, making my first Facebook page more personal, and leaving off the homeschool talk. Before I knew it, I had 800 homeschool friends on the new page. It’s a lot to keep up with. And what I’ve discovered is that I end up with a lot of information in my News Feed that I don’t really have a lot of interest in. There are 800 people telling me what they ate for dinner, who’s making them angry, and that they had a flat tire on the way to the library this morning. This isn’t really useful information for my homeschool journey. 

 

So, I finally started a “Fan” page for my Blog. It’s relatively new and growing slowly, but my hope is that the 800+ “friends” I have on the homeschool Facebook page, as well as other folks interested in the information that I usually share on that page, will “like” my Blog Fan Page and I can begin the job of moving everything there. Then I can go back to having a personal Facebook page that just has friends that I really know — and hopefully, they’ll no longer get lost in the sea of homeschooling!

 

There are other (more important) reasons to have a Facebook fan page for your blog (or business) as well. So, let’s talk more about that.

 

 

I’ve already discussed this reason above. But I’ll reiterate it here. When your focus is to share information about homeschooling (both as a receiver and giver of said information), all of the clutter on your News Feed can be difficult to wade through. And, if on your personal Facebook page, you have a mix of homeschool friends and other friends and family, all the chatter about homeschooling will begin to annoy all of those who don’t really care what’s on sale at your favorite curriculum store. 

 

Once you have your Fan page in place and have promoted it to all of your friends, you can begin promoting your blog there. Each time you publish something on your blog, you can then post it on your Fan page for all to see. Or better yet, set it up to automatically synchronize, using the Networked Blogs Facebook app. Networked Blogs will automatically publish your new Blog post for you. It also has a feature whereby other folks on Facebook (whether or not they are your friends or fans) can follow your blog. You can also follow blogs and use Networked Blogs as a Blog Reader. Be sure to add a social icon for your Facebook Fan page onto the sidebar of your Blog. You can also place a Networked Blogs widget there, making it easy for people to follow you blog.

 

Sometimes there are things you don’t necessarily want or need to blog about, but you want to get the information out to your friends or fans. For example, I love sharing free books for Kindle, curriculum sales (especially for companies with whom I am an affiilate), or upcoming events, like conventions or Facebook parties. If things work out really well, you will be sharing content that other people want to share as well. Facebook is all about community and sharing the love. Hopefully, it all comes back full circle and drives more traffic toward your fan page, and ultimately to your blog.

 

Having a Fan page will enable you to go “like” other Fan pages. Other bloggers, curriculum companies, National parks, museums, and more people and companies you enjoy may have Fan pages, too. While you hope others are “sharing” your content, you will also have the opportunity to share the content of those Fan pages you “like” as well. This serves a dual purpose of spreading more homeschool love to your fans, while garnering the attention of the pages you “like” and “share”.  

 

This might not really be imperative, but I just love the photo album option on Facebook, so I wanted to mention it. While it’s not the only place I store photos, I so appreciate that I can upload and share photos of our homeschool days, field trips, and family vacations. You can do this both on your personal Facebook page and on your Fan page, in categories that make it easy to grab photos for your blog or to share with your fans.

 

I hope you are inspired now to go begin a Fan page for your blog. If you do (or if you have one already), please leave a comment with a link here so I can go and “like” it! I would also love it if you liked Ben and Me Blog as well. 

 

Be sure to stop back by here tomorrow, when I’ll be talking Twitter!

 

Now, hop on over to the Homeschool Crew blog and find another topic that interests you! There are nearly 70 to choose from! Clicking on the button below will get you there lickety split!