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Introduction

The internet has changed everything. Like all monumental changes, the massive social upheaval caused by the web is barely discernible today. However, what we take for granted today was both unimaginable and unheard of just a short time ago.

If we were to go back 20 years, to 1997, what would we see in terms of information technology, dissemination, and architecture? To begin with, we'd see a much sparser landscape in terms of choice and variety. Today, there are well over a billion websites. Back in 1997, there were probably less than one million.

In 1997, there was no Google. The majority of people used Netscape Navigator to scan and choose between those one million websites. They also spent the majority of their time online parsing through the hundreds of false positive results that Netscape Navigator and its ilk returned with every search query.

Regarding connectivity, the average internet connection was via dial-up, with speeds ranging from 28.8 Kbps up to the then state of the art 56 Kbps. There was no high-speed connectivity. There were no mobile devices. If you wanted to connect to the internet, you sat at a desk and used a desktop computer.

All of this was state of the art technology 20 years ago. However, today this same technology would feel antiquated and inefficient. The difference is perspective. There's an old saying that age brings wisdom. That's not entirely accurate. What time does bring however is perspective. In other words, the more time that passes, the more you can "see" the effects, in this case, of technology on society as a whole.

Today, when we compare 1997 to 2017, we can clearly see how rapidly and profoundly society has changed as a result of increased connectivity. However, these changes have also been assimilated with equal speed. It’s interesting to note that no matter how well-connected we become, no matter how quickly and easily we can retrieve, store and share information, we soon accept the more advanced technology as the norm. In some sense, ever advancing information technology is indeed the new black.

In this book, we're going to examine one facet of information technology - a Facebook group. Specifically, we're going to explore how to create and manage a Facebook group from the perspective of an absolute beginner. To begin with, we're going to look at what a Facebook group is and why Facebook groups are an important way to connect and promote your business, your band, your brand or just about anything.

Next, we'll take a look at the specific steps that you need to take to start a Facebook group. You'll learn how to decide who the group is for so that you can tighten the focus for your reach for even greater connectivity. You'll learn how to utilize the Facebook dashboard to do the actual group creation. You'll also learn how to customize your group by adding specific details, creating a look that's yours and yours alone.

Once your group has been created, we'll turn our attention to promotion. You'll learn how to utilize a Facebook fan page and Facebook advertising to draw an audience to your group. We'll show you how to cross-promote your group in other Facebook groups with similar interests. You'll also learn how to attract people with influence to your group, promote your group on other social media platforms and the secret of using gated content to attract members.

Finally, we'll focus on the care and feeding of an established Facebook group. You'll learn how a Facebook group is an organic entity. You'll learn why engagement is essential to the continued health of your group. You'll also learn why spam, in any form, will stifle engagement, and how to ensure that your group remains spam-free. More importantly, we'll show you how to raise engagement by using a steady stream of entertaining and educating content. You'll learn how to find relevant topics for content, as well as how to mine the active interests of your group's members to produce content that matches those interests.

In the end, nothing is going to stop the forward march of information technology. Things will continue to get faster, larger and, ironically, smaller and easier to use. The key to success, no matter how you define that term, is in learning to use information technology to your advantage. By mastering the art of a Facebook group, you will be poised to use the biggest social media platform to your advantage. That, my friends, is the perfect example of the benefits of technological assimilation.

What Are Facebook Groups and Why Are They Important?

September 26, 2006, is a somewhat important date in the annals of internet history. On that day, Facebook became available to anyone over the age of 13 with a valid email address.

Originally designed as a centralized website where the students of Harvard University could connect for academic and social reasons, Facebook soon spread like wildfire. The idea the connectivity inherent in internet technology could be used to connect disparate people in real time was not new. Various other platforms were available that did this is one form or another, e.g. chatrooms and instant messaging provided by AOL, Compuserve and others. However, no one had yet integrated a way to combine chat and integrated visuals into one smooth package. This is what made Facebook a game changer.

Within hours of being started, Facebook had 1500 users on the Harvard campus. In less than one month, half of the graduate and undergraduate population of Harvard were Facebook users. Three months later, Facebook had expanded to include the populations of Yale, Stanford and Columbia Universities. The remaining Ivy League schools were next, followed by nearly every university in the United States and Canada. Universities in the UK and Europe were next, followed by the rest of the world.

This phenomenal growth did not go unnoticed by the media. By the time September 26, 2006, rolled around, the non-academic members of the general public were lined up, eager and ready to give Facebook a spin. So when Facebook did open it's doors to the public at large, what was, until then, a phenomenal growth rate quickly became unprecedented. In eleven months, Facebook experienced an extraordinary monthly growth rate of over 178%. By August of 2008, Facebook had 100 million worldwide users. In the coming years, that growth rate continued unchecked. By July of 2010, Facebook exceeded 500 million users. In September of 2012, there were 1 billion people worldwide who used Facebook regularly.

Today, Facebook's numbers continue to be impressive. The site has, on average, 1.86 billion monthly users and 1.23 billion users who are active on a daily basis. No matter how you cut it, that's a whole lot of traffic. The number one billion gets tossed around a lot, so much so that it becomes meaningless. So, here's a quick stat that will help you to pull Facebook's enormous reach into focus - if Facebook's average daily users were a country, that country would be the most populous nation on Earth. That's a lot of people, which translates to a lot of eyeballs that could be looking at what you're interested in promoting.

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Introduction

When it comes to making money online and profiting from your website, one of the most reliable strategies is to sell products. Yes, you can make money with ads or affiliate programs, but if steady streams of income that you can count on are your goal, having your own paid products is the way to go.

That being said, it can be expensive and a bit risky to offer your own products for sale. This applies in particular when you're talking about physical products. You have to buy the inventory, store it, and then ship it out to customers. Not only does it take a substantial investment on your part (and a risk if the products don't end up selling), it's also quite a bit of extra work to ship and handle each item.

Digital products, on the other hand, are easy to create, easy to store, and you can sell the same item over and over again. It's a lot more scalable and an excellent way to generate a reliable income from your online presence. It's also what this guide is all about. Over the coming pages and chapters, I'll show you what digital products are and why you should create them, how to create info products that your audience wants and needs, how to create your first digital product, and how to expand on this idea so you can keep working away on creating your very own digital product empire.

Along the way, there will be plenty of tips and ideas to get started, make things easier, and most importantly make this entire effort more profitable. I recommend you read this guide with a notebook in hand to take notes and jot down ideas as they come up.

By far the most important job for you is to take action. This short guide won't do you any good if you sit on the information and don’t do anything with it. I would like to challenge you to start working on your first digital product as soon as you're done reading the guide. In fact, read it with the intent to have your first product launched within a month (or even earlier). Start thinking about the products you can create as you read it and then get to work. The only thing standing between you and your first digital product that makes you money is action.

Ready to get started? Let’s start by taking a look at what these digital or information products I’ve been talking about are and what you can create yourself.

What Are Digital Products

Let’s dive a little deeper and talk about what exactly digital products are, what different types you may want to consider putting together for your audience, and the likes. As you read through this chapter, you may start to come up with potential product ideas. Jot them down, so you have something to brainstorm and work from throughout the coming chapters.

The main reason digital products are such a great way to make offers to your target audience, your website visitors, blog readers, and email subscribers is that they are products you can create yourself. There's no overhead. There's no long product development and testing process. There's no warehouses and shipping department to worry about. They are products that your customers purchase online and then download.

I’m sure you’ve come across plenty of free and paid digital products already. They are the short reports or audio/video recordings you get as a "Thank You" for signing up for someone’s email list. It’s the eBook you bought on a website ages ago to learn how to get your baby to sleep through the night. It's the video tutorial course you signed up for to figure out how to use Facebook ads. And of course, the report you're reading right now is a digital product.

In essence, digital products are bought and downloaded online. Most of them are information products. The big advantage is that they are created once and can then be sold again and again. This means that a digital product business is very scalable. Once you have your product, it’s not much harder to sell 1,000 copies than it is to sell 5. That’s what makes it so attractive to online marketers and solo entrepreneurs. It’s not terribly complicated to get into the information product business, yet you can scale it up to make big money by creating more products and reaching larger and larger audiences.

With information products, you end up spending a fairly short amount of time in the beginning to create your product, and then shift focus and spend almost all your time marketing it going forward. Until you're ready to create the next product. This is a very good thing because it allows you to focus on and learn how to do this one step at a time. It's yet another reason why it is such a good type of product to produce.

Let's wrap this first chapter up with a quick look at the different types of digital products out there. What they all have in common is that they are a way to share content and information with the people who are looking for it or need it to reach their goals.

EBooks and Short Reports

One of the easiest digital products for most people to create is an eBook or short report. The eBook you're reading right now is the perfect example of this. The content is usually written in a text editor or word processor like Google Docs, or Microsoft Word. It is then turned into a pdf and uploaded to the web. Customers can then download the pdf after they purchase the product.

The big advantages of this type of product are that it’s easy to create with software most of us have and are comfortable to use. It’s also easy to change and update the product down the road. You simply go back to your original Word document, changing it as needed, creating a new pdf, and uploading it to replace the old version. If your preferred method of content creation is writing, this is the way to go.

Audio Books and Audio Courses

If you’re not comfortable typing out your product, or you know that your target audience prefers to listen to content over reading it, audio products can be a great choice. They also make a high-value addition to

your written eBook. Record yourself reading your eBook for an audio book component to your digital product that adds a lot of perceived value. Another option is to create an audio course where you walk students through each lesson in audio recordings. You can create checklists and handouts to go along with the audio content.

Video Courses And Webinars

A third option is creating video products. You can create a video course and record each lesson either via screen capture software or by recording yourself talk using your webcam, phone, or even your digital camera. You edit and upload these videos to your site and deliver them to your customers who can either download or stream the videos. If you go this route, I recommend you create short individual lessons over one long video. It makes it easier to upload, download, and consume. It also makes it much easier for you to go back and change one little video instead of the whole thing when you need to make changes.

Of course, live webinars and webinar recordings make another attractive video product. You invite your customers to join you live and then also provide them with the recording later. It's a fun format that allows you to create your digital content on the fly and interact with your target audience.

Checklists And Printables

Last but not least let’s talk about a quick and easy product you can create out of checklists and printables. People like things that make their lives easier from printable meal plans and shopping lists to checklists for setting up their first blog. Tap into this need by compiling the information and presenting it in an easy to use format. Checklists and printables also make great addition or bonuses to any other digital products.

Of course, this isn't a complete list of what you can do with digital information products. You could also create apps or software, develop custom spreadsheets and the likes. It's simply a list of some of the most common and easy to create digital products. It's a starting point for you, and of course, you can mix and match these products to fit your needs and those of your target audience. Which brings us to chapter two which is where we'll explore what your potential customers want and need.

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Introduction

If you run your own business and focus your social media marketing efforts only on platforms like Twitter and Facebook, you aren’t alone. But that doesn’t mean you’re in good company. Some of the world’s largest brands use Pinterest to market their products and services. Why? It works.

While other social media platforms are becoming more visual, Pinterest got there first and did it best. In a world where we have to grab a new viewer’s attention in 7 seconds, Pinterest can do that for you with a minimum of text because you image says so much.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a visual bookmarking tool where people look for and save new and creative ideas. The idea you bookmark is called a pin, and add pins to different boards that you create so all the information you save is organized, so it’s easy to find later when you want it. Plus, every pin you post on your Pinterest boards includes a link to the site where it originates from, so you can always go directly to the source to learn more details or to buy products.

Imagine looking through a catalog or an online store. What usually grabs your attention for an item first? The text description? Probably not. It’s much more likely the image of the product is what grabs you. After that, you read the text to learn the details. This is the exact premise Pinterest is built on. So you can see, just about any business could utilize Pinterest to grow their brand recognition, gain exposure, improve website traffic, heighten social media engagement and generate more revenue!

If you believe you don’t have time to manage one more social media platform, consider these statistics.

• 93% of Pinners use Pinterest for planning purchases.

• 87% of Pinners have purchased something because of Pinterest.

• 72% of Pinners access Pinterest to determine what to buy offline.

• Over 5% of all referral traffic to websites is from Pinterest.

• Millennials use Pinterest just as much as Instagram.

• The median age of Pinners is 40, but the majority of active Pinners are below 40 years old.

• Approximately 50% of Pinners have a yearly income of $50K, while 10% have household incomes of over $125K.

A wide range of age groups are represented on Pinterest, and those Pinners have a nice disposable income. Those same Pinners use Pinterest not only to get ideas, but they go there to make their buying decisions.

Pinterest, more than any other social media platform, can be utilized to improve brand recognition and make sales.

Why You Should Use Pinterest for Business

You may still need more convincing. We get it. Your time is precious, and you may not want to turn it over to compete in yet another social media outlet. To encourage you further, we’ve outlined some of the best reasons why you should be using Pinterest right here.

• Pinners are open to marketing—Around 2/3 of all pins are from businesses. People actually go to Pinterest to shop. They know they are being “sold to” there and they’re good with that…unlike other social media platforms.

• Pinterest is more of a search engine than a social media site. Pinners use the Smart Feed Algorithm and advanced search technology of Pinterest to guide them to ideas they want to explore. Sure, they share pins too, but they consciously go to Pinterest to explore fresh ideas so they can share them.

• A Pin has a shelf-life of 160% longer than on other social media platforms! To be successful on other social media sites, you have to continually put your content out there, so people don’t miss it in their feeds. If someone isn’t on their profile when you post on most social media, they won’t see it. But content on Pinterest is always at their fingertips. Most Pinners use the search feature on a regular basis, which means your content stays evergreen and available.

• Active Pinners have a 9% higher household income than any other social media users. Add to that fact that Pinners use Pinterest to help them make buying decisions and you’ve got a huge reason for adding Pinterest to your social media marketing!

• Pinners state that they use other sources of media, such as TV, magazines, and catalogs less frequently than the average consumer. What this means to you is that you can utilize the free power of Pinterest to reach sought-after demographics while keeping your marketing budget low.

• The average purchase from a Pinner is $58.95, which is higher than any other social media outlet.

• Pinterest offers popular keywords and trending products in their search bubbles in real time. This means you can use Pinterest to learn about emerging trends in any industry or niche. This gives you the competitive edge. And, using Promoted Pins allows you to track what products are growing in popularity or are losing it so you can improve your business products and services before everyone else.

• Pinterest continues to grow in popularity with different demographic groups, including men.

• The referral traffic from Pinterest is second only to Facebook. Twitter, for example, only refers approximately 1% of all traffic.

With Pinterest’s growing popularity, now is the time to get into the game. Another important point for you to know as a business owner looking for marketing mojo—most businesses use Pinterest ineffectively, if not downright wrong. By learning what we have to teach you in this eBook, you will have what you need to use Pinterest the smart and savvy way. Watch out, competition!

Now that you’re convinced let’s get started!

Pinterest Basics: Getting Started

Although this eBook focuses mostly on smart ways to make a splash with your marketing efforts of Pinterest, it's important to start the way you mean to go on. For example, many business owners who use Pinterest don't use a Business Account. This is a shame because that type of account offers some of the most important features for businesses.

A Pinterest business account offers:

• Rich Pins

• Promoted Pins

• Analytics

All of which we will discuss further later on.

If you enjoy using Pinterest personally, don’t worry. You can keep your personal profile and add a business one to it! And, you won’t lose anything!

To get started, go to Pinterest and chose:

1. Start a Business Profile

2. Convert your Personal Profile into a Business account.

Your next step is to fill out your profile completely, including most recent headshot or logo. Add a good description of what your company does. Add what you are passionate about and what you love to Pin. This will help Pinners find and connect with you.

Don’t forget to include your website address in your profile. You’ll need that to verify your site, which you must do to access your Analytics.

To learn more about setting up your Business Account, go here

Next step, verify your website. You can find step-by-step instructions on how to do that here

Once you’ve verified your site, you can request access to Rich Pins. Now’s a good time to do that, so you’ll have the ability to do it when you’re ready for it.

What are Rich Pins?

Basically, Rich Pins provide more context about your idea because they show the visitor additional information directly on the pin!

Pinterest describes them as:

"Rich Pins are Pins that include extra information right on the Pin itself. Currently, there are four types of Rich Pins: recipe, article, product, and app."

This is a great benefit to businesses because it lays out more of the information people will need to know about your business. Here’s a rundown of how Rich Pins can provide outstanding marketing value for your business: