Facebook is launching a new service that may become a great new sales channel for the security industry. The new service is called Facebook Questions, and it’s going to change the way businesses and Facebook users interact.

Instead of someone searching Google for the answers to life’s questions, they now can ask the entire Facebook community. For example: If someone had a question on dome vs. box security cameras, he or she could post it on Facebook Questions and get a variety of perspectives on the issue.

With Facebook Questions, marketers in the security industry will have a new direct point of access to Facebook users interested in security systems.

Security marketers will then have the potential to establish a relationship with Facebook users by providing them helpful, insightful tips on their security needs.

Below is a screen shot of how users will post their questions. We should note that Facebook will likely moderate Facebook Questions to ensure there are quality questions and answers.

Facebook will use keyword tags to organize questions into different subject categories to make it easy for security marketers to find the questions they can answer.

The Bottom Line

Unlike some of its competitors — Yahoo! Answers, Quora and LinkedIn Answers – we think Facebook Questions will be an immediate hit because of the 500 million users on Facebook.

Facebook Questions will become a place where you can build relationships with potential sales leads. You’ll be able to share case studies as well as interesting facts and figures to become a thought leader in business and home security.

Interacting directly with Facebook users immediately after the launch of Facebook Questions will allow you to get an edge on the competition by being the first to establish your expertise.

With half of the U.S. population expected to be on Facebook by 2011, there’s no doubt that companies must use the popular social networking site as part of their marketing efforts. But just being on Facebook isn’t enough unless you are actively using it to grow your profits.

To learn how businesses make money on Facebook, we asked some of our clients how their Facebook pages have benefited their company. We then took their answers, and after enjoying their amazing success stories, created this list of the top 6 ways to profit on Facebook.

1. Sell Things – Facebook is the perfect place to promote your special offers, provide Facebook fan only coupons, post links to your website, and even sell things right from the Facebook Marketplace.

1. Cut Service Costs – Cut down on service calls and long email help requests by providing excellent customer service through Facebook. By providing answers to commonly asked questions, offering links to help sections on your website, and allowing your fans to interact with each other, you can significantly reduce your service costs.

1. Advertise Cheaply – Facebook’s highly targeted advertising platform lets you reach your exact audience at a price that’s about 10 times less than other ad networks. This makes Facebook one of the best ways to get more customers at a price any business can afford.

1. Increase Business Development – Reach exactly the people you need to reach to drive your business forward. Using Facebook’s highly specific groups you can interact with hobbyists, major organizations, professional groups, and even specific ages, occupations, locations, and interests that you want to target.

1. Conduct Market Research – Get instant feedback on product ideas, customer needs/wants, and anything else you want to know. Polling your Facebook fans lets you avoid major blunders and focus on what’s important to your business.

1. Improve Networking – Facebook takes your networking opportunities to a whole new level of effectiveness. You can develop strong business relationships with major influencers, authors, and executives from all over the world without ever leaving your office.

There’s plenty more ways to profit on Facebook and new and innovative methods are being thought up each day. If you think you have a great way to profit using Facebook or just want to share your success story, leave a comment below.

If you haven’t already done so, make sure to follow us on Facebook to get exclusive fan only content, special offers, and learn about excellent educational opportunities to help your business succeed before anyone else.

Ever wondered the secret to getting your blog posts shared on Facebook and other social media sites?

You might have heard it’s more of an art then a science to succeed and that’s probably right. However, if blog writing is an art, than simple headlines are like paint brushes.

According to social media scientist, Dan Zarrella, the simpler your article headline is, the more likely people are to share it on Facebook. According to his research, blogs with headlines at the 2^nd grade level are shared on Facebook 49% more often than those written at a 15^th grade level!

Here’s a full breakdown of how headline reading grade level changes the average Facebook share amount:

Check out Dan’s fantastic blog for a nice graph of this effect.

Next time you’re writing a headline, remember how simplicity can effect you’re overall results and take a few extra minutes to create a fantastic title.

We’d like to congratulate the winners of our Facebook Marketing Makeover drawing that was announced at this year’s ISC West conference.

Security Selling founder, Brian Offenberger, held the drawing during his popular presentation “11 Common Marketing Mistakes Made By Electronic Security Companies” on March 24, 2010.

The two winners will receive custom branded Facebook welcome pages similar to the one seen below:

Our two winners are:

• Bruce Reedy, SDG Security

• Kevin Magna, Bay Alarm

Congratulations to both of our winners and thank you to everyone who entered the drawing.

To get a Facebook Marketing Makeover for your company, check out our Facebook Marketing Services today.

Facebook has quietly started sending out something new this week: Facebook Insights by email. While no official announcement has been made, Facebook page administrators have been buzzing online about the new emails. Many of them have been pleasantly surprised with this move by the social media giant.
While fairly simple in format, the emails include very useful information for tracking activity on a Facebook page. Page administrators should find the following in their email digests from Facebook:

• The number of new page fans and the total number those pages have
• The number of Comments, Wall Posts, and Likes those pages have received in the last week plus a tally for last week
• The total number of visits the page has receiving both this week and last

These emails are in a simple text format and include links to encourage the less savvy page administrator to grow these numbers.  Facebook is taking suggestions on improving this new feature and you can expect to see more changes to the email digests in the future.

Don’t forget to become a fan of Security Selling on Facebook for important marketing tips and information you can’t get anywhere else.

Brian Offenberger, Founder of electronic security internet marketing agency Security Selling, presented a webinar to ISC Education on February 16^th. This webinar taught salespeople how to start increasing sales and boosting profits! To check out the slides from the presentation and start finding out how to grow your sales, become our fan on Facebook and gain access to exclusive content just for fans! The slides are posted under the “Free Stuff” tab on Security Selling’s Facebook fan page and are only available to our fans.

This presentation shows you…

• Easy ways to prospect for new customers using the internet

• How to use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, email, text messaging, teleseminars, webinars and more to increase prospects, leads and sales

• Automated selling practices to up-sell, cross-sell and retain customers

• Free tools to help you sell more with less stress

To see the slides from this webinar, become our fan on Facebook and gain access to them in the “Free Stuff” tab. In addition to these slides, you will have access to tons of other exclusive content, just for our fans!

You may have noticed the big changes on Facebook recently. With the redesign, you are no longer seeing all news feeds and updates. Facebook has been randomly selecting only 250 updates to show you every time.

There is a way to change this. Follow these steps and you will be able to see all updates again.

1. Go to the home page.
2. Select  “Most Recent”



3. Scroll to the bottom of the page
4. Click “Edit Options”



5. Reset the maximum number of friends shown in Live Feed.

You should now be able to see all Facebook updates in your News Feed! Don’t forget to become a fan of Security Selling on facebook for access to exclusive content just for our fans!

Are your customers already on Facebook just waiting for an easy way to connect with you?

There’s a fast and easy way to find out. Here’s how:

• After logging in to Facebook, click the Ads and Pages button. It’s the second leftmost button at the bottom of your screen.

• Next click Create an Ad button. It’s the big green one near the top right of the screen.

• On the next screen type in any Destination URL (I use google.com). You will also need to type in a Title and Body Text. It doesn’t matter what you type here as you won’t be using it. Once you’ve typed something, click Continue.

• Now you can enter in the demographics you’re interested in. To narrow by city, click the circle By City next to the Location options and type in your city.  Be sure to select whether you want to include cities within 50 miles of your city as well.

• Check or type in any other characteristics of your market that you want to include in your user demographic estimate.

• Scroll to the bottom of the page and look at the Estimate:. This is the number of active Facebook users that Google estimates fit into your demographic selection. Here’s a sample estimate I got:

That’s it; you can now discover exactly how many people you can reach using Facebook marketing.

Be sure to become our fan on Facebook.

In business today it’s critical to generate measurable returns from your lead generation and customer retention efforts.

It’s quite trendy right now for marketers to talk about social media outlets like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and others as profit producing tools for business.

But do they really produce profits?  How do you know?  After all, social media is all about human interactions and conversations (kind of like a meeting at the Rotary Club).  How do you put numeric quantities around human interactions, something that is critical to determining profitability and ROI?

Here’s five ways we found as effective measurements of social media ROI for most companies:

#1 – Measure website traffic

It’s easy to find out how much website traffic you are receiving from social media outlets.  As long as your website conversion rates remain constant, increased traffic will result in more leads and sales.  You’ll probably notice higher conversion rates on traffic coming from social media sites, as these website visitors are often more engaged than others.

#2 – Measure search engine rankings

Google, Bing and other search engines are now showing social media results on search engine results pages (Google search your name and watch your LinkedIn profile come to the top).  Search engines are indexing and factoring Facebook and other social networks into search results…use social media the right way and you’ll see improvement in your organic search engine rankings.

#3 – Lower costs of marketing to existing customers and prospect base

You can interact directly with customers and prospects through social media channels like Facebook, forums, LinkedIn and others.  That means no direct marketing costs for things like direct mail, flyers, email and collateral to interact with your audiences.  Do it via your social media channels and save.

#4 – Count your inbound links

Inbound links are links from other relevant websites to your website.  Inbound links from relevant sources are the number one thing search engines like Google consider when determining search engine ranking results.  Social media, by getting your message out through multiple channels, allows you to increase the amount of relevant, inbound links to your website.  Count the inbound links to help determine social media marketing impacts.

#5 – Track the number of leads and sales

Everything surrounding your website can be measured, including how traffic comes your website.  Track the number of website visits from social media sources that result in leads and sales.  A free program like Google Analytics will do a great job in providing you this information.  It’s quite simple to calculate ROI when you know the sources responsible for generating leads and sales.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – July 14, 2009 – Security Selling today announced the debut of its free security industry specific internet marketing blog, The Security Marketing Blog.

The new security industry internet marketing blog contains free information, tips and resources to help security companies, integrators and life safety companies increase online lead generation and sales.  It is updated at least twice weekly.

“Security companies everywhere need to increase incoming sales leads and sales through online channels,” said Brian Offenberger, president and founder of Security Selling.  “Our blog is a resource center for companies to get tips and tactics to succeed with internet marketing.

The blog can be found online at www.SecuritySelling.com/blog/

About Security Selling

Security Selling helps security companies, life safety companies and integrators increase sales and grow lifetime customer value through internet marketing.  The company provides training, marketing audits and web development/web marketing services for security industry clients.  Learn more at the company website at http://www.SecuritySelling.com.

Media Contact:

Dale Knauss

Online Marketing with RSS Ray

(602) 412-3426