By the way, anyone who wanted to wander over to MacGillicuddy's Facebook page and "Like" it, is more than welcome! http://www.facebook.com/#!/MacgillicuddyMonster

Puppets and Stuff just liked MacGillicuddy's Facebook page.  Ok I guess you can like pages. And let us not forget the handy fblike tag!

Macgillicuddy Monster on FB

Okay as I'm learning my way through all this.  I have a Patsy Hoolahan Face Book page and from there I am building fan pages for other characters.  Currently there are fan pages for Patsy Hoolahan, Klooky Martinez, and Millie Haskins.  These guys and gals would love to have folks like them. There are videos posted on their pages if you are not familiar with their work.

If you want to promote your business or anything else on FB, what is the best way to go about this?  There seem to be several options.  Also, any suggestions regarding making people aware that you are on FB?  Someone on here has had to already traveled this road, no sense in reinventing the wheel.

Re - web site.  Should one change the search words (there is a name for this - I am NOT a techie) that the crawlers look for periodically?  I am still considering adding a blog with tips, wondering if there is anything else that anyone feels has helped them?  

One more question - what is a good number of product (puppets) to show on a web site?  I am thinking of cutting some of ours, and trying to get a feel for what is enough and what is too much.


Thanks.

Part of what I will say is repeated, but here we go:

In order to attract people to FB, you should update regularly; perhaps consider offering freebies to people who like your page; make sure you promote it on your own website (use widgets etc); make sure you like other pages or share content not just on your own page; etc. There's a little X factor involved.

Interesting anecdote: my facebook widget on School of Puppetry is sort of hidden. It sits 'behind' the featured pattern on the top of each page. Out of curiosity, I rotated them so that the pattern was 'behind' and the FB was in front. I got about 3 times as many likes on FB as normal and when I rotated them back to their original positions, the likes dropped down again. So prominent positioning on your website helps A LOT. Likewise, promoting it via other websites, such as in your signature or via another social network is a good idea too.

You shouldn't change keywords unless you're finding your not getting target audience as much. Ie. if you have keywords not relevant to your site, then don't use them. A good idea is to use this free website grader:
http://www.websitegrader.com
It will tell you where you need to improve things like that; you can also put in competitor sites for a comparison of how you do vs, say, this forum.

For the products, be ware of customer paralysis. This is where you have too much choice and not being able to decide what to choose, the customer decides to walk away. Go to http://www.smashingmagazine.com and enter "e-commerce" into their search. There are about 10 good articles there on improving sales on your site, do's and dont's, etc. There's also a really (really) good one about layout of product pages. I also recommend the one on product photography, as buying puppets will be a visual thing

The site is also full of info about how to use social networking better, so you could also look there for info about using FB.

Another idea is to introduce a blog or some form of regular updates. Most people interested in your work will want to be notified of news, so having a newsletter or even just using FB as a newsletter is a good idea. When I make a new post on my site/s I tweet it or put it on FB, and it goes out via email/RSS subscription too. I also now tweet/FB when there are new comments on the site. Doing this increases interest. Looking at your site, it might be a good idea to do an occasional "We have X puppet available on our site right now" post - don't be spammy about it, but an occasional one will help with sales.

Well first of course you need to be registered with FB. Once you do that I would suggest creating a page for your business or other interest. I'll leave the how to on that up to the FB help section. One thing I might suggest is creating a registration/login that is just for your business instead of using your personal account. That way you can separate out all that personal stuff easier. 

You also have the option of creating a Group but I would suggest not doing that. Instead join some of the existing groups out there and get involved with them.

Are you talking about keywords? Keywords are normally used in the header of a page (not something you see) and at one time search engines used them to index your site for searching. Folks used to take advantage of that so now they don't rely on them as much. Keywords now must match content in the page they are used on to be of any real use. No real reason to change them unless the content of the page is changed. Mine have stayed the same for years. That being said with something like a blog since it is dynamic you have the option to control the keywords for each blog post. Still though they should match the content of the entry. For example if you did a post on shadow puppets you would want to make sure that was part of your keywords but one on marionettes would instead want to make sure you have used marionette as a keyword.  That is kind of simplifying the whole thing but should give you an idea.

BTW: Didn't you have a website? Can't seem to find it in your Profile. Have I gone and broken something with all my piddling.

I'm pretty sure you get a ding from search engines if each page on the site uses the same keywords. Looking in Google Webmaster, I get "duplicate meta descriptions" coming up in things I need to fix. My template currently uses the same keywords despite dynamic content. I'm pretty sure the idea is that keywords and descriptions are meant to be specific to each page.

Incidentally I learned recently that you can merge a 'friend me' profile into a business page. However, you still need a profile to act as an admin to operate the page.

I did the same thing: created a profile instead of a page. In the end I just made my profile extremely super-secret private and I just have to remember to change to the page account in order to post stuff. Fortunately my Twitter accounts post directly to FB so I rarely have to make updates via FB itself.

I'm pretty sure you get a ding from search engines if each page on the site uses the same keywords. Looking in Google Webmaster, I get "duplicate meta descriptions" coming up in things I need to fix. My template currently uses the same keywords despite dynamic content. I'm pretty sure the idea is that keywords and descriptions are meant to be specific to each page.

Hmmm.... interesting. I had not heard that before.  My description is dynamic but not my keywords.  May have to look at that.

I'm not entirely sure if that's true or I'm just misunderstanding something. But google webmaster lists duplicate descriptions for SOP, so I'm guessing while it's not a huge deal, it's one they think is important enough to mention.

Well I was wondering how to use my characters face book account.  I was thinking. Since I am doing a series of episodes, I may use the FB site kind of the way TV shows have discussion on line about episodes.  I could post behind the scene pics etc.  I don't have any traffic there now, but I could comment under my episodes to check it out.  If anyone would like to check out "Patsy Hoolahans" facebook page and give me ideas I would appreciate it.

Well I was wondering how to use my characters face book account.  I was thinking. Since I am doing a series of episodes, I may use the FB site kind of the way TV shows have discussion on line about episodes.  I could post behind the scene pics etc.  I don't have any traffic there now, but I could comment under my episodes to check it out.  If anyone would like to check out "Patsy Hoolahans" facebook page and give me ideas I would appreciate it.

And the link to Patsy's FB page is.....   true we could search for it but a good rule of thumb is to always post a link when you mention it.   I am going to try and integrate a persons FB Id into their profiles so it auto links in the Profile and on post but that will be for only your main FB account.