Original photo by fischerhuder. With apologies to I Can Has a Cheezburger.

The Zen Habits Facebook App, and How to Promote Your Blog

If you’re a Facebook member, I’m excited to share with you the new Zen Habits app, which allows you to have the latest Zen Habits posts and share your favorite ones with your Facebook friends.

If you enjoy reading my posts, I’d appreciate it if you could spread the word and share posts with your friends, if you think they’ll like them.

I’m new to the Facebook game (just signed up recently — befriend me here), but apparently a bunch of Zen Habits readers are not. There’s a Zen Habits group on Facebook that already has 690 members … some pretty cool people on there, with shared interests. I just joined myself.

For those of you who aren’t aware, Facebook has 58 million active users. That’s a lot of people! With 200,000 new users each day!

If you’re a blogger like myself, you might be interested in reaching an audience like that. Glen of the LifeDev blog and the LifeRemix network has launched a new Facebook App Creator for Bloggers that makes this process easy. I’d recommend you give it a look (it’s how I created the Zen Habits app).

The app creator will walk you through creating an app for your blog, and host your app for you, for a pretty low price ($5 per month for one blog) … if that worries you, you can try it out for free for one week.

It was recently featured on Tech Crunch, where they gave away some free Pro subscriptions. If you’re interested, I might be able to haggle a few gift subscriptions for you guys.

Glen also did an interesting post on LifeRemix where he talked about how to use Facebook to make your blog posts go viral. And here’s a video if you’re interested in learning more.

If you’d like to sign up, give Zen Habits a few extra cents with this affiliate link: Create a Facebook Application for your blog.

Posted on 1 January 2008 in Aboutzenhabits |
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Comments (14)

pavs Says:

January 1st, 2008, 15:40 pm

I will definately give it a look. Facebook campaign of your blog has a lot of potential.

Lee Kottner Says:

January 1st, 2008, 20:29 pm

This looks like a great too. Thanks for the tip. Really enjoying your blog and suggestions.

Suzie Cheel Says:

January 1st, 2008, 21:05 pm

I have just joined Zen Habits group and will use your link to set one up for the Abundance Highway.

I have just befriended you but the link in your blog post does not go to your profile

You have inspired me to simplify my life and take my blog to the world this year
Thankyou

Bill Says:

January 1st, 2008, 21:17 pm

Yes, as mentioned above, the link you gave to befriend you does not seem to work.

Leo Says:

January 1st, 2008, 21:19 pm

Thanks guys … fixed the link so that it goes to my profile. I’m a FB newbie, so forgive me.

Glad you’ve added me as a friend!

Bill Says:

January 1st, 2008, 21:23 pm

To add to my comment above… This link works for me, if anyone else wants to try it:

http://tinyurl.com/2o8ejq

Bill Says:

January 1st, 2008, 21:23 pm

Oops, sorry, didn’t see that you’d just corrected it :) cheers!

John Hirbour Says:

January 1st, 2008, 23:53 pm

The link to befriend you didn’t work write in my RSS reader (Mail.app) but does work right when I click it from the actually web page, not sure if the RSS field gets generated differently or not…

Eugene (Editor, Varsity Blah) Says:

January 2nd, 2008, 0:51 am

Finally, a decent reason to join!

Jon - FreelanceFolder Says:

January 2nd, 2008, 2:31 am

That is so cool! Thanks for letting us know about this Leo, took me about 5-10 minutes to create an app, very nice :)

Jon Henshaw Says:

January 2nd, 2008, 8:57 am

I’m curious to know what the affiliate (partner) link payout is? I noticed you’re using them on all of your links to their site, but I couldn’t find any information about it on their site.

Eunomiac Says:

January 2nd, 2008, 10:26 am

WARNING: In my opinion, joining Facebook is one of the most effective ways to complicate your life. If you don’t have an account already, seriously consider whether you want one: It’s a very, very effective social networking platform, which makes it very easy for people you haven’t heard from in decades to find you, add you as friends, and pester you with friendly messages that you simply MUST respond to out of politeness.

If you’re like me, you’ll avoid Facebook for a few days… causing your buddy requests, messages, wall posts, pokes, etc to build up, making the act of ‘catching up’ a real chore that just gets worse the longer you procrastinate. Most people I know, who aren’t in love with maintaining over a hundred social contacts every day, get over the novelty in a month or two. Now, they nod knowingly whenever I profess my loathing of Facebook.

I only say this because Zen Habits is all about simplifying one’s life, and I think any suggestion of Facebook on such a site should come with the disclaimer that it runs the very real risk of complicating your commitments.

Leo Says:

January 2nd, 2008, 18:26 pm

@Jon: I’m not sure what the payout is … the developer is a friend of mine, Glen, and I can pass on your questions about it if you email me.

@Eunomiac: I hear you. :) The Zen Habits Facebook app is basically for those who already use Facebook on a regular basis. I’m not suggesting that you sign up just for this, or recommending Facebook in any way. I’m new to it myself, so I can’t speak from experience. It does seem like a great way to keep up with friends, but I can see how it could be overkill.