Did You Know You Can Blog On Facebook?

Did you know that Facebook offers another option for sharing with your friends and fans?

It is a longer form communication much more like LinkedIn’s professional publishing platform.  And it may be worth a look if your brand has a bit more to share than a recent photo or a link to your latest blog post.

The Facebook Notes app was created and launched in 2006 and allows longer form content much like a blog post. The notes app hasn’t gotten much love or attention from Facebook. But it has more advantages than disadvantages today as content marketing becomes more important for small business success, especially on social media.

Here’s a quick overview of the Facebook Notes features from Smash U Media:

Facebook Notes is a possible alternative for people that might not have their own dedicated blog or website. If you want to write longer form posts on a social site and engage much more directly with your social media following, this is one approach.

Using the Notes feature on Facebook can be another way to build reach, serve and educate customers and add variety to your content approach on Facebook.

How to Find and Set Up Facebook Notes

To set up a Note on Facebook, go to your Facebook home page — not your profile with your timeline — and find the Notes App on the left side of the page under the apps section. Or type “notes”  into your search bar at the top of your page:

Simply click on the icon and it will bring up the application, a simple word document format that allows you to enter text much like you would in a blog or other online publishing platform.

Customization Features of the Notes App

Notes allows for some simple customization like bolding, Italics, underlining, numbering, bullet points and quotes. It also allows you to add photos and tags.  However, it doesn’t allow embedding of video or gifs.

The Facebook Note app also features several privacy settings which allow you to target those in your community you wish to reach with your message. Settings include “public,” “friends,” “friends of friends,” “me only” or “custom,” a setting allowing you to specifically identify the friends on Facebook you wish to target the note to.

Suggested Categories for Post Content

Whether you have a business page or professional page, you can use the Notes feature for:

• How-to’s on a specific service or process.
• Reviews of products or books.
• Events, promotions and sales incentives.
• Personal stories and experiences as they relate to your business relationships.
•  Niche ideas and advice that you want to share with your community.
•  Small business content that you can share, link and add your take on for your community.

Here’s an example of how people are using notes:

Advantages of Using Facebook Notes

There are actually several advantages especially today to incorporating Facebook Notes into your content marketing mix.

First, Facebook Notes allows you to blog directly on the most popular social media platform in the world where a huge audience and community for your message already exists. Blogging on Facebook is a win-win all around. It allows you to directly address existing fans and followers and to easily build that community over time.

Second, Google loves social media and especially Facebook. So longer form content published on the Facebook platform is sure to be indexed quickly and turn up prominently in searches. Just make sure to add SEO and hashtags and to tag your friends in your posts on Notes.

Third, regular Notes posting can drive traffic to your website or Facebook page just like a blog post does. The more consistently you are posting the more prominently you will show up in the search results. Imagine if you could publish one note a week in addition to your regular blog posts on your website. That would add 52 additional pages that you are getting out there with real quality content for both Google and Facebook search to pick up on.

Fourth, the Notes feature allows you to go beyond the 420 character limit of a regular status update. So you can add more insights, ideas and information. Your fans and friends can comment on, “like” or share your Notes or your Notes RSS feed with others. You can also re-purpose a previous blog post using the Notes app.  Just be sure to re-format and rewrite it so that you can publish it as a new piece of content.

Disadvantages of Using Facebook Notes

There are a few disadvantages to keep in mind when using Facebook’s Notes app. The main ones have more to do with linking, spam and images more than credibility, acceptability and value.

First, your Notes will lack permalinks. So while Facebook content is popular with search engines, this one fact may make your entries not as SEO friendly as most traditional blog posts. In the case of Private Notes, Facebook may provide each user with a custom link to your note in order to maintain “privacy settings on a per-viewer basis.” But remember, no one will be able to see these links but those you designate.

Second, the Notes app does not offer a custom domain feature yet. One could redirect a domain towards a Facebook Notes page but by doing so might make a Notes journal look less professional in the process.

Third, spam is always an issue on social media and blogs. However, Facebook seems to have perfected a way to isolate spammers while keeping legitimate comments viewable, allowing users to focus on creating content instead of dealing with loud mouths seeking attention for personal or “business” reasons.

Fourth, the way Facebook Notes handles HTML image tags could give an attacker the ability to launch distributed denial of service attacks against external targets — like your website — using the power of the massive network to amplify the attack. Read more about how this kind of attack could be launched to minimize your chances of being a victim.

Most people would not ditch their blogs for Facebook Notes. But used together with other online marketing tools the app could give your brand definite advantages. Use it as a way to get started and get used to the blogging process before launching a blog of your own. Or enhance what you are already doing on your own website with occasional Facebook Notes updates. You can also use the app for specific campaigns, products, services or to reach a very specific audience.

There is buzz about Facebook Notes being a major focus of the next redesign for Facebook and there may be good reason to believe this.  Facebook needs to keep finding ways to serve it’s small business community and Facebook Notes certainly might be one such approach.

The Facebook Notes app gives you the opportunity to be in the blogging and content creation game now in a turn key environment and system at almost no cost to you, except the time invested to create and promote your posts.

Facebook Photo via Shutterstock

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