The secret of invisible Facebook fanpage : Part 1 : Social Search

[Update]

The secret of invisible Facebook fanpage : Part 2 : Open Graph

Really? Is there a hidden or invisible fanpage on Facebook? Do they really exist? Why should we use invisible fanpage?

There is no doubt that Facebook is now the #1 most visited single domain website on the Internet. People not only have one or more personal profiles, they also have more than one fanpages.

I am currently conducting an experiment using the hidden/invisible fanpage to engage with fans and drive traffic from Facebook to my websites.

What?

Yes. You heard it right. The purpose of using invisible fanpage is to drive traffic to the external website. In theory, it is the greatest tool to monetize the traffic from the largest social network for affiliate marketing, company promotion, new blog post notification and engaging with your fans OUTSIDE of Facebook.

For example, when you like this blog (click on the LIKE button at top of the page below the huge banner), you will become a fan of my hidden/invisible fanpage. Regardless what fanpage you have on Facebook, the first thing you will do after creating your fanpage is to invite people to become your fan by Liking your page! There is no difference to the invisible fanpage. I call it invisible or hidden fanpage, because they are not visible to anyone on Facebook other than the admin of the page. In other words, you can’t see the fanpage’s wall, photos or discussion. All you see is the destination page on the external website. You do, however, see the fanpage update on your news stream on your wall.

Ever since Facebook implement “LIKE” button and Fanpage, millions and millions people and website use it every day, but only few people knows the secret of invisible fanpage.

Here are the main types of fanpage on Facebook. You can create your own fanpage here!

• Local Business or Place
• Company, Organization or Institution
• Brand or Product
• Artist, Band or Public Figure
• Entertainment
• Cause or Topic

All these pages are created and listed on Facebook for everyone to become fan and to post and receive updates. However, there are fanpages that are NOT visible to anyone other than the admin of the page. That’s why I called it invisible fanpage. When someone search the page on Facebook search box, it leads the user to an external website with one click.

In the above image, all the pages link to individual blog post on my blog. They are also searchable on Facebook. Isn’t that cool? This is what Facebook called “Social Search“!

Many large local business directories are also implementing the tactic to get extra exposures and FREE organic search traffic for their listed customers. As you can see, except the first result linking to business fanpage, everyone of the page is linking to external website. It includes the #1 local promotions website at SmartLocalShoppers.com, AOL’s Citysearch.com, Yelp.com, and Verizon’s Superpages.com. The example is endless.

In reality, you can optimize your page title, image and description on your blog and make it searchable on Facebook. You can dominate your own niche with this tactics. For smart affiliate marketers, this can be a great way to drive the social search traffic to their product pages and monetize it.

Here is the beauty of using Facebook Social Search!

The more people like the page, the more people will find it.

Here is the secret!

Adding  Facebook LIKE button on your website is easy, but it doesn’t do any good other than showing how many people like your webpage. It only costs visitor less than 5 seconds and one click to become your fan. It’s like a one time deal. Get it and forget it. So what’s the good use of invisible fanpage?

The power of social network rely on user interaction and engagement. Without engaging with your fans, they won’t come back to your fanpage or website. So the capability of updating your fanpage wall is the key! In other words, you need to post new messages or updates on your invisible fanpage wall, so they will show up on your fan’s news stream. They can share and comment to your fanpage update and their friends will have chance to see it and LIKE it too.

So you may wonder why you don’t have access to your invisible fanpage after implementing Facebook LIKE button on your webpage? Here is the answer.

If you only add the Facebook like button on your webpage, it will NOT give you the access to your own invisible fanpage. You need to add extra component on your webpage.

Here comes the open graph!

With few lines of meta data on your website, it enables your website for social search. It adds your webpage and site to the huge and rapidly growing social graph database.

It looks like this on my blog.

<meta property=”fb:admins” content=”my profile ID” />
<meta property=”og:image” content=”http://www.terencechang.com/images/me/pic000.jpg” />
<meta property=”og:site_name” content=”Living The Dream Lifestyle” />
<meta property=”og:title” content=”Healthy &amp; Wealthy Living” />
<meta property=”og:url” content=”http://www.terencechang.com/” />
<meta property=”og:type” content=”blog” />

With this extra meta information in your webpage HTML code, your webpage will be added to Facebook social search database. Facebook will also create a hidden and invisible fanpage linking to your webpage for you and add you as admin automatically, when the first person click on “LIKE” on your webpage.

The invisible fanpage looks like this for my blog.

When you post an update on your fanpage wall as admin, all your fans will see the message on their news stream under their profile. Isn’t that cool?

Here is how it looks like when I post a new update and see that on my news stream.

In the part 2, I will cover how to add the meta information automatically on your WordPress blog or website. Feel free to share and retweet this post, so more people will learn about it.

Remember to LIKE my blog and this page to receive the notification when the part 2 is published.