I know, your friends have told you that half the world is on Facebook so you should be, too, that it’s a marketing opportunity you can’t afford to bypass.

There’s no denying that Facebook can be beneficial to businesses, but it’s not going to happen for you unless you’re willing to do the work that Facebook requires. This involves not only learning how Facebook differs from a website, but also doing the day-to-day activities required to make your Facebook page relevant.

When clients ask if they should have a Facebook page for their business, my first question is this: Do you have a personal Facebook page?

If the response is something like “No, I don’t care about what somebody else had for breakfast,” then I’m not optimistic that a Facebook page for this client will succeed. Someone with that attitude has not come to understand what Facebook it, how it works, how it differs from a website, and what it asks of its users.

The 30-day trial

At this point, my advice is the following: Set up a personal Facebook account and befriend your siblings, cousins, nieces and nephews, and friends. Spend time on your Facebook account every day interacting with your family and friends, liking their posts, commenting on their pictures, and sharing their most interesting links. Do this for 30 days, then we’ll talk.

This 30-day introduction to the Facebook culture will reveal that participation is key to having a lively Facebook account. You will learn that as you participate, your reach increases. You will discover that Facebook is a conversation and that you must be willing to converse, even if only to share what you had for breakfast.

If, after a month or so, you find yourself getting the hang of things on Facebook, you may want to consider setting up a page for your business. There are some subtle differences between personal and business pages, chief among them being that with personal pages, you control who has access to what you post while with business pages anyone can like your pages and follow your activity.

In working with your personal page, you’ve learned that you must share information with your Facebook friends before a conversation develops. This is doubly important with business pages. You’ll need to provide a steady stream of fresh information to attract people to your page and to keep those visitors interested.

The information you provide on your Facebook page must go beyond incessant promotion of your new widget. You need to find ways to provide relevant and interesting information so that your followers will continue to follow you and will help extend your reach by liking, commenting on, and sharing the information you post.

Facebook isn’t just about peddling more of your product; it’s about connections and fun. Peruse the Facebook page of a major sports franchise in your area. That team is posting information about the players including backgrounders and injury updates. Its posting photos and game updates. Its giving away tickets, hats, and jerseys to fans who participate on the Facebook page in various ways.

Wow, there’s a lot going on there. And you know what? That sports team is paying people to spend hours a day making that Facebook page lively. If you’re operating a much smaller enterprise, you’re thinking you don’t have the time or budget to operate on that level.

You’re right, of course. But even a small business can have an effective Facebook page if you or a staff member is interested enough to spend some time and thought on a regular basis to make it so.

If you want to, just say no

But if you have neither the time nor interest to do this, don’t think you must have a Facebook page just because everyone else does. Is a Facebook page that sits there and does nothing any better than no Facebook page at all? I don’t think so.

Do what you need to do to make your business prosper, and if Facebook is not in your comfort zone, so be it — and be guilt-free about it.

In the meantime, visit our Facebook page, to get a sense of our approach.

Promote your site and people may come. Print your web address on your business cards, letterhead, product information sheets, and press releases.

That will get you a few visitors, but, let’s face it,  you’re really expecting the search engines to send a steady stream of traffic your way, aren’t you? If that’s your line of thinking, take some time to consider why and how your site might be of value to Internet searchers, how it solves their problems.

People Need Reasons to Visit Your Website

A site that simply markets a product, a service, or a book without providing additional value or solving problems is nothing more than an electronic brochure. There’s nothing wrong with an electronic brochure, mind you. Electronic brochures give potential customers the lowdown on your business, answer all the usual questions, and screen out nonqualified prospects, but they don’t often climb high in search-engine rankings.

If you’re selling widgets, for example, your site would naturally include information about how to buy your widgets, but taking it a step further, you might also include additional information about the history of widgets, how to install widgets, how to troubleshoot widget problems, perhaps even how to build homemade widgets.

It will likely be these extra, nonsales pieces that visitors will find useful and valuable. If your visitors are sufficiently impressed with this information, they will link to it from their own websites, and that, right there, is they key to getting more search-engine referrals. Your site gets extra points when it is linked to by other sites. The more inbound links the better, and the more influential those linking sites are, better still.

So, ask yourself: what incentive does someone have to link to your widget sales page? Probably not much. But if you have information that solves  widget problems, then that may earn you some links, which, in turn, will help your search-engine ranking. Not everyone who follows those links will buy your widgets, but, at the very least, you will be drawing people who are interested in widgets to your website, and that gives you a chance to make a sale.

The problem is that many of these forward-looking authors neither own an eReader nor have they even used one. They have a sense that they should be jumping on the eBook bandwagon, but they’re reluctant to be part of the actual band.

Every author knows what a book is, and it’s easy for authors to envision how their work will be presented in what are becoming known as DTBs (dead tree books). However, an author without eReader experience isn’t quite sure how the readers of his electronic content will connect with his information.

My advice: even if you love the smell and feel and heft of paper books, get yourself an eReader and begin to learn why many readers are going electronic. A Kindle can be had for as little as $79. That’s a minimal investment in your writing career. If you’d rather have a Nook, a Kobo, or any other eReader, that’s fine, too. The important thing is for you to come to understand how your readers will experience your work on electronic devices.

As you begin reading eBooks, you’ll find some that are riddled with typos. You’ll see others where chapter 2 starts immediately after the conclusion of chapter 1 without even moving to a new page. As a reader, you may find these things uncomfortable. You’ll also find many well-formatted, well-presented books that are a pleasure to read. The more you understand how the eBook will read and be read, the more input you’ll be able to have on the eBook’s production.

In working with an eReader, you’ll also learn what’s possible and what’s not in today’s electronic texts. Recently, an author asked us to include several fill-in-the-blank forms in his book. The accompanying text asked readers to print out the forms and to fill them out as they worked through the next section of the book. The author was used to PDF eBooks, where you can print out pages. Printing from an eReader, however, is not an option.

As you think about giving your paper book an electronic brother, understand that an eBook should not necessarily be a digital mirror image of the paper book. Sometimes it’s wise to rethink the presentation in light of the strengths and weaknesses of the electronic format.

• eBooks can include links, both internal and external. If your book includes a glossary for specialty terms, for example, you could link directly to the glossary entry when those terms are introduced in text. If you provide links to websites in your book, people reading on devices that support web browsing can jump right to your linked material.
• While fill-in-the-blank forms or detailed maps of magical kingdoms don’t come across well on the small pages of eBook readers, you can make your forms or maps available on your website and give the reader a link to access them if he or she desires. That gives you the opportunity to connect with your readers again.
• If you had to trim an appendix or two to keep the page count of your printed book at a manageable level, you may be able to restore that information in the electronic version.

In the end,  authors need to think like eBook readers when planning the production of digital titles. Don’t hesitate to pick up an eReader and learn how to use it. At the very least, get one of the free reading apps for your computer or cell phone. These apps aren’t as cool as having a dedicated eReader, but they can give you a sense of today’s eBook experience.

• Amazon’s Free Reading Apps
• Nook Free Reading Apps

In 2010, President Obama signed the Plain Writing Act requiring that federal agencies use “clear government communication that the public can understand and use.” In January 2011, he issued an executive order, Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review, which states that “[our regulatory system] must ensure that regulations are accessible, consistent, written in plain language, and easy to understand.”

Minnesota, where I live, has had a state Plain Language Contract Act since 1981 to mandate that consumer contracts are written in a clear and coherent manner. Hennepin County, where Minneapolis is located, is one of the first counties in the country to develop a comprehensive program to tackle government jargon (others include Los Angeles County in California and Miami-Dade County in Florida). For a year now, Hennepin County has been simplifying syntax and deflating bloated verbiage on county websites and documents to make it easier for residents to understand what their county is doing.

Plain Is Beautiful

Training people to write clearly, as Hennepin County does, impacts us all, every day and in many ways. It is not dumbing down our language. It is illuminating, instead of obfuscating. Here are just five ways plain language could help you:

1. Maybe you won’t sign away the farm—accidentally. The plain language movement will help simplify all the documents you routinely sign at the doctor’s office, the bank, credit card companies, and other entities requiring your John or Jane Hancock. If you don’t understand what you are signing, how do you know you are not signing away your rights?
2. Maybe plain language will keep you out of jail. The courts are filled with people who simply didn’t understand the state or federal regulations they were violating. Plain language helps us know what is expected of us and keeps us on the right side of the law. Here’s an example of a confusing federal regulation translated into plain language.
   Before: When the process of freeing a vehicle that has been stuck results in ruts or holes, the operator will fill the rut or hole created by such activity before removing the vehicle from the immediate area.
   After: If you make a hole while freeing a stuck vehicle, you must fill the hole before you drive away.
3. You’ll be able to find the information you need faster. Plain language saves time for you and everyone else. How many times have you had to reread instructions over and over (and don’t even get me started on the sorry, no-language, step-by-step illustrated guides to assembling an Ikea desk)? If all the instructions in your life were written more clearly, you might have time to buy more stuff and do more things. That should be a no-brainer for all marketers.
4. If you’re a writer, learning to write simply and with clarity will enhance all areas of your writing—from that love scene you spread over three chapters to the tense moment when the heroine explores a noise in the dark and scary basement (don’t do it!). Whether you’re writing the great American novel or a newsletter for your kid’s school, your job is still to communicate. I’m not trying to stifle creativity here, but be aware that the more flowery the prose, the less understandable it can be and the harder the reader has to work. You are taking a chance; many readers will just give up. Personally, I don’t like losing readers.
5. Plain language will improve your business. No one buys what they do not understand—except maybe insurance and technology. Anyway, you get the idea. If you want to be persuasive, write clearly and succinctly; use plain, jargon-free language and influence customers, co-workers, even your boss. Everyone in the office knows who the “good writers” are—they’re the folks who draft clean, easy-to-understand, and to-the-point documents.

It is still early so we can’t gauge the impact of plain writing laws on either the federal, state, or local level. However, several Hennepin County departments report they’ve been getting fewer questions about information and processes since websites and documents have been rewritten, according to the Star Tribune.

 More on Using Plain Language

• Biz Speak Not Spoken Here
• 11 Ways to Improve Your Writing and Your Business
• Technical Terms in Plain English
• Center for Plain Language
• EPA’s Plain Writing Tips: “Clear air . . . clear water . . . . it all depends on clear writing.”

Comments: Tell me about your encounters with crazy, indecipherable language. How would you rewrite?