Everytime I add a new page to my site, I go to the Facebook page for that site and add the new page to it, like a typical "like", showing an image, some text, and the "like", "comment" and "share" buttons. They have to come to the site to read the whole page, so if the image and lead in text is intriguing enough, they'll click over.

Hi tnet.

Are you also active on Google+? It's my experience is that the social endorsements from G+ is more effective then from FB (+1's vs Likes i.e.). The thing is that FB keeps it mostly on their domain and it's value is most relevant there and thus doesn't extend out as far as G+'s social layer.

Sure 10K Like helps as search engines pick it up and it creates a buzz. But when you connect your content on the web to your G+ profile, are active on and around G+ or at least publish your blog posts etc there then it's really effective for faster indexing and high ranking in Search and it makes it all look consistent with the rich snippets as a bonus.

Not only is a +1 more effective for a higher ranking but the social data of various sorts can also i.e. be used in Adwords for example to be shown along with your ads generated from Adwords on Google and on partner sites. And for I said enough without mentioning mobile (in-app data, Google+ Sign-In and app distribution to Android etc etc.

Just some reasons why I invest more in this then FB!

This is a simple trick which will give you a 20/30% more of clicks: get square images for the post you upload to Facebook.
Silly? Let's me explain it.
Facebook adds an image of 155 pixels (width) to your posts. If your image is a rectangle, their software will reduce the height (if it's horizontal) or crop to the top area of the image (if it's vertical).
When you use a square image, you have a 155x155 px thumbnail and, here's the trick, that's near the size of the images uploaded by the people and way more clicked than common links.
Try it for yourself and back here with your results.

Of course, you can feed the Google machine as danielmulder suggests but your site will be pandalized/penguinized (what's next? platypusized?) while Google Inc. earnings and its shares up to the skies.
In my own experience (I've ben circled by more than 4000 users) the click ratio in G+ is simply ridiculous. Most of the 90% are just bloggers and webmasters begging for the salvation and "we do not click anywhere".

Thanks for that to the point tip you gave there Lexur. I'll try it! But on the matter Google vs FB I think you did not argue a strong case. It's all a matter of personal preference I think. Some think Google is a monster lurking in the deep, others see a gentle giant waving them in with money. But still I am very interested if you can tell me how I can gain authority with validated content for personal branding and SEO with FB. Prefer it to be something I can actually use in a corporate setting. I tried Google is bad! Facebook good! already.

danielmulder, I don't know who's you. From your two messages (the only and ones here) your point of view is the same of the agencies working for Google in its desperate attempt to gain traction between other people than bloggers, webmasters and photographers.

The real question question is not to gain authority with validated content or not because even if you gain a lot of that, a few days, weeks or months later you will discover your website has been caught by some misterious update regarding a magical algorithm which, actually, just means Google takes another fraction of its monopoly in search to send the traffic to its own services. You can be even more silly and start a freakin campaing to remove the links that get traffic to your site by different channels than Google.

You can still do big efforts building a great page in Facebook or in the desert... errr Google+ but the truth is you simply need to focus on your site, build things that people will love.

I've been using images with a little bit of text and a link for the last few weeks, since facebook changed the way it 'collected' an image from the page.

Prior to that I would write some text then add a link which would bring up a thumbnail image (often a choice of all images on the page including the products) - this now doesn't appear to work or it gives you a choice of just 1 or 2 images which are useless (navigation buttons or something insignificant).

What I've noticed is that the the number of People Saw This Post has doubled or trebled using the large images so not all bad I guess.

Question for danielmulder re square images: I have medium (180x180) and large (360x360) images (as well as rectangle images but will convert those specially) as standard. Should I post the medium size or large size? Or should I make a special size up and post 155x155 on the nose?

Hi! This is my first post to this forum!
I am also new to webmastering, but am learning as I go. I manage the FB account for our site, and I have found it useful to reach out and post to relevent pages from our page, provide content/posts that other page admins would find useful, send messages as our page to generate interest, and engage/like/comment on posts from other pages that we follow.
I have also found it really useful to identify other pages with many followers that operate in a similar field, engage with them and the page admins. request that they post on our behalf. Basically create relationships!
Hope that helps!

Facebook has surely one of the worst traffic ever, especially if you have a generic fanpage and you're trying to drive traffic to a website. I recently got hold of a fanpage that has 650k likes and I'm trying to monetize it in every way possible. So far, I haven't seen results that would make me proud.

I know that it depends on a lot of things and there are people who are having success. I'm only judging from my own experience. Some pages might convert far better with far less likes if its audience is targeted and active, but Facebook is definitely not time-worthy as a long-term method.

I guess it's probably because of the audience type and Edgerank that I'm performing bad though.

I'll surely try the square photo thing and see how it goes.

...Facebook is definitely not time-worthy as a long-term method

...for everyone but Facebook and so there are websites.