“How is the Facebook pages feature working as compared to your blog as compared to your website?” Charles asked.

Thanks, Charles – that is really something to think about. Like everything else, your marketing works better when you use the right tool for the job. I think Facebook, a blog, and a website (and I’ll add e-newsletters into the mix) all have very different uses, and they can be integrated into a solid electronic marketing mix.

The website would be the foundation of any electronic marketing. It is a permanent place for company information, such as service offerings, staff bios, testimonials, portfolio work and articles. While it’s important to regularly keep your website updated (do as I say, not as I do – mine is terribly out of date!), this is a more permanent platform than the others. One strength of the website compared to the others is that you have a lot more control over your message. You can take down old content, edit material, and add new information at any time. You can organize your content so it’s intuitive for your visitors to find what they’re looking for – and it’s important to design your navigation carefully. To paraphrase Steve Krug (Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition) you need to do the hard work so your clients don’t need to. Once people are at your website, they should be able to browse around for whatever information they need about you and your business. All of the other electronic marketing vehicles should point back to your website.

A blog can be a component of your website, or freestanding. If you don’t feel ready to build a whole website right now, a blog might be a good place to start. You can write short articles, post links to other blogs, websites, and news stories, and post pictures, video, and graphics. A blog is a great place to casually communicate with your audience and to express to personality of your business. Some blogs focus on tightly defined subject matter, some can be much broader. Because blogs are do-it-yourself platforms, most of us can get content up instantly, without having to involve a developer, so it’s much easier and less expensive to stay current.

Another nice feature of blogs is the ability of readers to post comments. This is optional – when you set up the blog, you decide whether or not to accept comments, if people need to be logged into an account or if they can post anonymously, and if you want to moderate the comments before they go live. I moderate mine because some comments can be computer-generated spam.

When you build a blog (actually, this is true for everything we’re discussing here) you need a plan to get readers. Your website and blog can link back and forth to each other, and there are other ways to let people know you’ve updated your content. Fresh blog content can be “pushed” out to subscribers using an RSS feed. This is something I do not have set up on mine yet. (breaking news – this just in – the RSS feed is now working, thanks to Sharon at PC Momma!) When you see a blue box with the letters “RSS” in it on any website (blog or regular web page), you can click that icon and get a “feed” of the content of that page in a text format. Then you use a program called an RSS reader (or aggregator) to automatically get updates from that page every day. So, in theory, once people subscribe to your feed, every update goes to them automatically. I use the RSS reader that’s built into my Safari (Mac) browser. But I must admit – once I started using Facebook, I just haven’t had time to skim over the 3,000+ headlines that come into my feed every day. A blog can potentially reach a larger audience than Facebook, since it’s open to the general public. Bloggers are great at linking to each other, sharing and commenting on stories, all which help everyone build readership.

I have two Facebook pages – a personal page, with friends, and a business page for Kim Schlossberg Designs, with fans. I really want to keep my personal page friendly and, well, personal. I try to keep any mentions of business very light – so my friends are sure to know what I do, but with no real marketing or selling. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty irritated by people who try too hard to sell on their Facebook page, and I’m doing my best to avoid that. But, on the other hand, I had several people who I mainly know through Facebook ask about hiring me to do design projects for them, and I wanted to help them know more about what I do.

I believe the primary business value of being on Facebook is awareness. Years ago, in the corporate world, I realized that every time I walked around the office (to the mail room, coffee pot, whatever) someone I’d bump into would say, “I’m so glad I ran into you – I need to ask you to do such and such for me.” They might never have gotten around to looking up my phone number to call, but since they saw me there, it was easy to ask for my help.

Today, if people see me on Facebook right when their need for design services comes up, they can simply send a message – as easy as flagging me down in an office hall. The key is to be available when they’re looking, and I think a Facebook presence, handled well, can do that beautifully.

When I discovered how many of my friends were using Facebook for business, I set up a Kim Schlossberg Designs Facebook page. People interested in my business can become fans, and my updates will show up on their Facebook news feed. On this page, I post writings about marketing and design, and links to external stories, other pages, and blogs that I think my fans (I’m not comfortable with that word, just so you know) might also like to see. I also link to my own website when I have updated content, since I’m sure most people don’t drop by every day just in case I posted some work. Fans can comment on the various articles, and sometimes interesting discussions begin. Not everything that goes on this page is also on my blog. It could be, but I’ve been keeping the more casual, brief notes on Facebook only.

All of these channels are cross-linked.  I try to think through how relevant content might be to each audience, and link accordingly. Here’s what I’m doing with this article, which I hope might be helpful to a lot of people. First, I’m posting it on my I’ve been thinking (http://www.kimmarla.com/blog) blog, which is a page of my main website (http://www.kimmarla.com). Then, since my Kim Schlossberg Designs Facebook page has fans who said they are interested in updates, I’ll post a link on that page. When I think an article is more universally relevant, I will also post a link on my personal page. I make a point not to do this too often, but just often enough for friends to know what I’m doing. Both of the Facebook pages have links to each other and to my website.

A final, important component to this mix, is an email newsletter. This is another “do as I say not as I do” because I haven’t sent out one of these for years. But if I had time to follow my own advice, I’d set up an opt-in list of subscribers, and periodically send them interesting articles.  I would have a subscribe button on my website, and the newsletter would, in turn, link back to the website for readers who want more information. Sean D’Souza is a master at this, and his article this week (http://www.psychotactics.com/artbusiness-growth) brings home the importance of a dependable, regular e-newsletter.

For most of us, blogs, Facebook and email newsletters are free or close to it. You could hire someone (like us) to set up your Facebook pages, or to customize and personalize your email or blog templates, but there are usually templates that work pretty well. The biggest commitment on any of these is your time to create the content. They are all meant to be do-it-yourself publishing vehicles. But, that being said, our writers would be happy to help out or even ghost-write your articles and posts.

This is the mix I’m working on for my business. You might come up with something different for your readers.

There are many more ways to stay in touch with clients, prospects and friends, that are not covered in this article, but things to consider: hard copy newsletters, Twitter, MySpace, and good ole’ fashioned stay in touch phone calls.