I like to check out the blogs and sites I follow, as well as Facebook. You know, like Copyblogger, Mashable, and Techcrunch. They’re all kind of industry related. However, sparked by a Monster-fueled Halothon, I decided to pop in on the Xbox community over on Facebook.

I had never been to their FB page, and it was nice. They have 3  custom FBML pages. One for everyone, one for the hardcore gamers (like me!), and one for the new Kinect. Of course, even though it has a separate tab, the “All” page had the Kinect, as well. And that was also the landing page.

Just recently, I had to ask the Guerilla Chefe how to set my custom FBML page as the landing page for everyone. It’s so simple, I felt dumb for not knowing. So just to keep you from feeling dumb, here it is really quick.

Go to a page you admin. On a page you admin, click “Edit Page”

See? I even highlited what to click.

Click “Edit” under “Wall Settings”

Select which landing page you want from the drop-down.

That’s it in it’s entirety. I told you it was pretty easy, and for some reason I even included pictures. So hopefully you guys learned something, and now, I have a few more Covenant to kill before bed.

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You should already be familiar with these sites!

That’s right, Guerilleros! As I promised, today we are going to look at how YOU can build a loyal fan base around your blog! I discussed the importance of a blog in the last post, and today I am going to give you 6 steps to follow for building a blog community that can attract real attention. Everything in it is easy, and with a little maintenance, you can have a killer blog following!

1) Provide Quality Content! (Duh!)

No one is going to read a blog with nothing on it, or worse, nothing good on it. So get a writer, or sharpen your pencil, because without some awesome content, written well, no one cares about your blog. Should this even be listed as a step?

The key is quality. An excellent test for this is to ask your self, Would I put this on my personal blog? If the answer is No, get back to writing. And it can’t be stressed enough: A Blog Is Not An Advertisement! You’re trying to give value to your readers, not sell them something.

2) Comment, Comment, and Comment Some More!

You can pack in as many keywords as you like, but that method is going to take some time to yeild results. Wouldn’t it be nice to find a large group of people who would be likely to be interested in your blog, all at once? You can! Unless you are blogging about something really obscure, someone else is already blogging about it. So go to their sites and leave comments.

But don’t just agree and leave a link. That’s not helping you. Leave insightful comments that show you know what’s up in your subject. Leave enough comments, and the readers will follow. Keep leaving comments, and you might get a link back! It takes time, but it will work!

3) Socialize Your Blog!

This is easy as pie. Put your posts up on Digg, StumbleUpon, all the major social bookmarking sites. This is a social media marketing page, and since you’re reading it, this too should be a given.

4) Keep Socializing!

Seriously, keep at it! Every word you write should go on all of these sites. And not just your writings either. you want to be very active on these sites, so people start to recognize your name, and trust you as a source for high caliber content.

5) Share the Page!

No one goes to just one person for advice, and that’s true for your blog, too! So instead of letting the reader go somewhere else for that second opinion, bring it to them. Ask other blog authors to write a piece for your site. They should be honored you asked, plus it’s free publicity for them, as well as a way to increase their followers with your followers. And your fans stay loyal, because you brought them a whole new place to learn from. Win-win for everyone!

6) Spread the Word Domestically!

Nothing is more aggrevating than asking an employee of your clients if they saw their picture on the blog, and they reply “What blog?” Really? Why are we even bothering, if your client’s employees don’t even know about it?

The largest fan base is initially  composed of an extended network made up of the friends of people directly connected to the blog. AKA, the employee’s friends and families are going to get the word out a lot faster than you. Use it!

That’s it folks! Building a blog community doesn’t get any easier than that. Yeah, it’s a little time consuming, but it’s worth it. Once you have a loyal fan base, you’re set. And speaking of loyal fan bases, make sure you join the revolution, and become a Social Media Guerilla!

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Apparently no one actually READS anything online, they scan it for content, and just read things that catch their eye. Except for my faithful Guerilleros, you guys read every word of these posts, right? Right?!

Since people are only reading what catches their eye, you need to make sure you draw attention to what you want people to be sure to read. How?

Write it in big letters!

You probably saw that before you even actually read that far. Now there are two ways to look at this. Either put what you want to make sure people read in the big letters, or, and this is a trick I use sparingly, make it kind of obscure.

What? Don’t make it clear? Well, here’s where a little knowledge of psychology is useful. People are curious. If they see big words, telling them something that seems a little random, they are more likely to read the surrounding info to see why you capitalized it. This gets them to read even more than just the words in big letters. But if you over do it, they will get frustrated, and not read any of what you wrote.

Another trick is to use bold letters. Again, the eye is naturally drawn to things that stick out. Bold letters certainly do. They also add emphasis to your writing, such as what I did in my last paragraph with the word “why”.  And again, the obscure trick works here too. People read more of the surrounding content to see why that one particular word or phrase is bold.

One more trick I’ll share is using bullets. Bullets have several uses.

• They also draw attention
• They present your info in a clear manner
• They allow you to make several points with out all the damn commas
• They make people think your presenting a lot of info
• They allow you to summarize all your important info so hopefully they’ll read it in the bulleted list

Again though, don’t over do it. Maybe one bulleted list for every 250 words or so.Also, don’t get crazy on the length of the list. Five bullets, maybe six. Otherwise people just start scanning the list.

Your bestbet is to combine all three, like I did in this post. You can even combine all three together for maximum eye draw. Here is an example”

Tips to get people to actually read what you wrote!

• Write in big letters!- People are drawn to them.
• Use the bold key!- Use it to draw the eye, or for emphasis.
• Bullets, bullets, bullets!- Present your info in a neat and orderly manner.
• I didn’t give a fourth tip!- Bulleted lists are kind of pointless if you only put three things on it.

See? Did you read this whole article or just the things I drew attention to?

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Guerilleros, if you’ve listened to interview I had with Marnie Swedberg about Social Media Marketing for Local Audiences, you’re probably already applying some of the tips I shared and creating more exposure (read web traffic) to your brand.

Now, what are you going to do with that?

The biggest point I wanted to make clear was the fact that Social Media is not about you OR your company – the focus is on your Customer, or better yet, on that person that you’ve just met that MAY or may not become your customer.

Since I’m sure you’ve already understood that, being the great guerilleros(as) that you are, you should also know that if you send your newly generated social media traffic to a corporate-looking website, you’re losing the boat.

Keeping The Traffic (And The Conversation) Alive

When people see your activity on Facebook or Twitter, or they become interested in your content on Digg, they’re engaging that conversation you created – whether by posting helpful information, or a cool video, or simply sharing exciting news, those visitors ended up on your site because you connected with them.

If you send them straight to a site with cookie-cutter copy that talks continuously about your company, you’re completely ignoring that conversation and forcing them to swallow the same old commercial pill we’re tired of seeing on TV and Radio.

Become A WordPress Fanatic

That’s where a blog comes in ultra handy – I’ve mentioned before that WordPress is to Social Guerilla what GPS is to a country driver in Manhattan, and that’s one of the reasons why.

Let me make it extra clear by painting you a picture:

You’ve paid somebody like me to create a cool video, post it on an optimized Youtube profile, and you’re getting good hits.

When they click on the link right next to the video and land on your site, they see a blog post talking about the video, along with 5 other related posts and even more videos.

At the end of each post, you add a compelling, but gentle, call to action: “Like these cooking tips? Sign up now and get a 40% discount at our next cooking class”

The difference is that once they came to the site, their experience with the video was extended by the blog posts, and then the call to action came in for an attractive ending (which begins the real sales funnel).

If you haven’t gotten a blog started yet – what’re you waiting for? What’s your biggest obstacle?

———–

If you’d like to know more about generating traffic through social media, there’s a new web marketing guerilla course coming up on March 18th that I highly recommend: Traffic Ultimatum

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This tutorial will cover really basic aspects of writing a wordpress blog post.

It shows you how to log in, add text, images, and embed a video from youtube within the body of your post.

It also explains a little about the photo gallery feature and how to manage pictures once they’re loaded into the WP interface.

Hope this helps your guerilla a bit

See you soon!

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