2-For-1 Facebook Marketing Book Reviews

Using Facebook to Build Your Business by John Cruise
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Are you thinking of adding a Facebook page to help promote your business? If so, this book is made just for you. It explains the "whys" of using Facebook to help customers find and keep in contact with your company, and then it explains the "hows." It deals with social media strategies and best practices.

As the author states on page 29, "If you do something without any goal, it will only turn out to be useless." For that reason, business owners will want to read through this book once to get a basic understanding of Facebook, then develop a Facebook marketing plan - the author gives suggestions for both no-cost marketing and paid Facebook ads - and then keep the book close by for reference as the Facebook page develops.

While the book will primarily help those just starting out in the process of creating a presence on the social media network, those with established Facebook pages who want to know how to calculate their return on investment (ROI) and track their social media statistics will learn how to do so.

For me, the most helpful chapter of the book was "Applications You Can Use For Your Facebook Business Page." Even though I consider myself fairly well-versed in social media, I hadn't heard of some of these useful apps. Another particularly practical chapter is "Common Facebook Marketing Problems," which will help companies avoid some embarrassing errors.

I received a free review copy of this book from the author in exchange for a fair, honest review.

Facebook For Business Owners: Facebook Marketing For Fan Page Owners and Small Businesses by Tom Corson-Knowles
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book guarantees you'll increase your sales via your Facebook business page or your money back. If you're brand-new to Facebook, it will walk you through the process, starting with the very first sign-up page. Helpfully for Facebook newbies, these pages include screenshots with notes that make it super-easy even for people who don't know social media from Cheerios.

Those who already have an established business profile on Facebook can skip ahead to Advanced Profile Setup or even further ahead to chapter three, which explains how Facebook works. This includes a discussion of Facebook's Edgerank algorithm, with tips on how to keep your Edgerank high.

The marketing tips that follow are extremely specific, which is helpful. Colson-Knowles emphasizes consistency, which is always a good strategy for any social media campaign. He gives tips on what kinds of promotions work best in Facebook ads and on avoiding being categorized as a spammer by the Facebook powers that be.

The end pages of the book contain additional resources, such as a lengthy list of motivational videos anyone can watch free on Youtube. I'm not much of a motivational video type, so what I found to be much more useful was the excerpt from Corson-Knowles' book 57 Hot Business Marketing Strategies. Readers get the entire chapter on guest blogging, including a helpful screen capture of what a spammy blog looks like and a template for requesting a guest post slot on a quality blog.

Overall, Corson-Knowles' tips seem practical and specific enough to be actually helpful. I don't know how many copies he's had to refund the money on, but I imagine it wasn't very many.

I received a free copy of this book from the author in exchange for a fair, honest review.

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