Inbound Marketing University

I've got a pretty firm grasp on how to use social media tools in terms of what I want to say and how to tie things together but I have a big dilemma in building traffic to my Facebook page.  I've had tremendous success with my Twitter page, 2100 followers - all organically grown from my <300 tweets.  I am also following <500.  Since virtually every account I see is following nearly the same number of people following them and have put out WAY more tweets, my presence there seems to stand out from the others a little bit so this is happy news.  I'm also happy with how my blog/website traffic is growing in view of how much work is yet to be done. 

In looking around at other businesses, Facebook pages seem to be devilish to attract an audience for when you are new and have labeled as a business.  I've shared the link to my Twitter audience, tastefully of course, and I've tried posting unique content exclusively to the page and quite a number of other things all to no avail.   

I first had a fan page for ME, just my name, as I tried to work out whether it was better to have a personal fan page or one with a business name. I deleted the personal page and started the business branded page about a month or so ago.  Less than half the fans I had on my other page (which wasn't very large to start with) and absolutely no further movement.  I was getting slow but steady gain when it was set up as me personally with less effort than I've put out recently.

I confess I'm flipping back and forth between this effort and my online retail store but since the online store brings in actual dollars these days it's tough to move focus from that to work with my marketing site.  I was one of the many who have lost their jobs in the print industry less than a year ago and I have a lot of experience in this realm (marketing). It makes sense to make use of it especially since I've also got the experience of marketing a purely online business over the past few years to go with it. However, it may be the field of competition is just bigger than I want to tackle.  I feel I have the opportunity to more or less choose my direction these days but I'm navigating mostly uncharted waters as far as my personal network is concerned.  I've also noticed that since things have continued to tighten economically in the print and traditional media industry there are "experts" in social media coming out of the woodwork. 

I've been working hard to build my social media audiences organically, without tools or asking all of my friends to join to help me out, etc..  Same thing I did with my Twitter account but I'm just not getting the same traction...what am I missing?  I'm thinking of just running ads to build it, but I would love to build it organically, purely through sharing over social media. 

Advice?

Lisa I.

http://www.facebook.com/how2marketingadvice