Marketing Using Facebook and Dribble: Free Advertising

I set out earlier this week to try and market Profit Duck in a few different ways. Although this is primarily a website, somewhere people can access online and learn information from, I like to try and treat it as a business. I do this because I am trying to give an insight into business and try and give hints and tips, for me to do so, I need an outlet to try and test out ideas and then report on them. Operating Profit Duck as a business, seeing it as a brand not only allows me to do this, but it also gives me more respect for my website and in turn I think this makes it overall a better place.

So I wanted to try some marketing techniques which could easily be translated into a real life business, some techniques which not only improve a brand image but also build upon it and make more people aware that it exists.

The Ideas Springing Around

1) Facebook Banners

Everyone will have seen them, they are called Facebook banners, and they are very easy to make. Most companies and business now have Facebook pages or profiles and this means that you need to create a certain brand image on Facebook to try and make people ‘like’ your page or become your friend on your profile. You can see how well some of these companies have done at branding their pages by looking at the top 35 Facebook Fan Pages .

As I went for a profile when I set up the Profit Duck Facebook profile, I needed something a bit different and that’s where I thought about using a Facebook banner. As I don’t have any images to show of myself, a business doesn’t have pictures being tagged of it at a party etc. so instead I needed to use the image section at the top of the page for a different reason, and this is where branding stepped in. You’ve probably already seen many about, mainly people tagging rude words to people so it spells out across the top of their page, but in some cases you can see some truly inspirational stuff. This is why I decided to have a go and create the following:

Not only does this make my page stand out, but I think it puts across my branding to the user and in turn will make them more familiar with it, as well as this it is a great way to advertise on Facebook for free, which of course is reaching a lot of people.

2) Dribble Shots

The other week I saw a great use of the functionality of Dribble. Unfortunately can’t find it anymore. Take a look at what this website is;

Dribbble is show and tell for creatives. Designers, developers and other creatives share shots—small screenshots of the designs and applications they are working on.

Although I don’t do much design work, I decided to sign up and try and get some work done and then upload it, I’m still waiting on being accepted, so at the moment I can’t out my idea, well use the idea I saw for my own marketing. Anyway, what the point of this is is to make something like the Facebook banner above. You make a collection of images and joined together these make a bigger picture, within this picture you can advertise your business, brand, and services.

It’s a great idea.

On the other hand, it could also cause problems. I’m not 100% sure whether I agree with the practice because it seems like it is spammy, and your not really using this persons website the way it was meant to be used, you wouldn’t like your website to be used in the wrong way, would you? Therefore I would save this marketing technique for certain types of business, maybe people who do use a lot of graphics, as then not only can you create a great marketing campaign, but you can also show of your work and in turn gain praise in two areas. If you are a company, say selling pens, it may not be the great way to make a good impression.

It All Depends On You

The problem we all come to in business. Ideas depend on what type of company you are, what kind of competition you have and the way you want your brand to be seen. We can’t all go around exploiting the same techniques, not only would this get boring for the customer, but it would lead to a stale market and a stale world.

Try something new and tell us what it was in the comments!