21 Creative Ways To Increase Your Facebook Fanbase. If you build a Facebook Page, will fans come? This is the great hope for many businesses. However, fans do not magically appear from the Facebook mist. People must be lured to your fan page. And there are some good and bad ways to go about doing this. In this article, I’ll share a big myth and 21 ways to drive more fans to your Facebook fan page.
The Big Myth There’s a great myth that once you create a Facebook fan page for your business, the first thing you should do to get fans is invite ALL your friends from your personal profile using the “Suggest to Friends” feature. Unfortunately, this strategy may not be that effective and can, in fact, often backfire. There are several reasons not to use the Suggest to Friends feature: Facebook users can only like up to 500 pages and may wish to be selective. Here are 21 ways to get more fans for your Facebook fan page: #1: Embed Widgets on Your Website Select from a number of the new Facebook Social Plugins and place them on your website and blog. 10 Proven Strategies for Greater Likeability on Facebook. Dave Kerpen is the CEO of Likeable, a social media agency that has worked with more than 200 leading brands including 1-800Flowers.com, Verizon and Neutrogena. He is author of Likeable Social Media.
We all intuitively know what likeability means. We have friends who are easygoing, good listeners and there when we need them. But what does it mean for a brand to be likeable online? Now more than ever, when a "Like" is arguably more important than a "link," brands must demonstrate core values of responsiveness, transparency and likeability across Facebook and other social networks.
Listen to your customers and prospects. 1. The number one benefit of a brand’s involvement in social media is the ability to listen to conversation about its brand, competitors and target audience’s wants and needs. For a good case study on how listening in social media has impacted millions of dollars worth of sales, check out IBM’s Listening for Leads program. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. How to Use Facebook’s “Merge Duplicate Pages” Feature to Gain Fans.
The following is an excerpt of a complete article available in our Facebook Marketing Bible. Your official Facebook Page may not be getting all the fans it deserves because users are accidentally Liking unofficial duplicate versions of your Page you’ve created. These missing fans cost you news feed impressions and clicks and ad targeting opportunities, or require you to waste time managing multiple duplicate Pages.
Fortunately, Facebook now offers the “Merge duplicate pages” tool to allow you to roll fans from duplicate versions of Pages into your official Page. In the full version of this article found in the Facebook Marketing Bible, we discuss why using the tool is important, how to use it to gain fans for your primary Page, how to eliminate other duplicate pages, and how to properly greet the new fans of your Page to prime them for future engagement. Below is an excerpt. Why Use the Merge Tool?
Instructions for Merging Duplicate Pages Reporting Non-Identical Duplicate Pages. Facebook Rolls Out Overhauled Comments System (Try Them Now On TechCrunch) Over the last few months there have been numerous reports about a new, fully revamped Facebook commenting plugin that would make the social network a viable competitor to the likes of Disqus, Echo, and the stock comment engines found in WordPress and other CMS platforms. Well, the reports were true, and today Facebook is lifting the curtain on its big new comments platform.
If you want to get a taste of them, look down — we’re currently testing them on TechCrunch. Now let’s take a look at what makes this interesting. First, you’ll notice that if you’re already logged into Facebook, you won’t have to click though any authentication options. More important, you’ll notice that any comments you write are being left under your real name, which spells bad news for you trolls and spammers. And then there are the viral Facebook-centric features that other comment engines simply can’t compete with. Let’s say I leave a comment on TechCrunch and opt to have that comment shared to Facebook, too. Promote Custom Tabs with Your Facebook Page Profile Picture. Many business Facebook Pages use custom tabs to run contests, offer discounts or give away free content. While you can set these custom tabs to be the default landing page for non-fans, you cannot control where an existing fan lands when they visit your Page.
Fans will always land on the Wall first. Problem: How to Promote Your Custom Tabs? So the big question is, how can you draw attention to the custom tabs in your Page menu? Solution: Profile Picture Not to be disregarded, one of the biggest pieces of customizable Fan Page “real estate” is right at the top of the Page, in the left corner, and directly above the tab menu. Example 1: Happy Socks In this example, the Happy Socks Fan Page is hosting a contest, and they want to encourage fans to visit that contest tab and participate.
Example 2: Popchips The Popchips Facebook Page uses a similar tactic, and they also make sure to refer to the tab (by name) that they are promoting. Example 3: AutoCAD WS Thumbnail Image. New Facebook Recommendations Feature for Pages. UPdATE 7/14/2011 Yesterday I saw this “official” message from Facebook referring to the “new” Recommendations feature on our Page: It seems like Facebook has finally rolled this feature out to all Pages. Now you can recommend your favorite restaurants or brands or companies to others: Have you been seeing Facebook’s new Recommendations box in the right column of Pages that you admin or visit? This is a relatively new feature that allows users to add a message/endorsement to a Page. Examples Here is the recommend box, as I see it, on the HyperArts Fan Page: And on a few other Pages as well: When I posted my review on the Chop Bar Page (our favorite neighborhood restuarant), a post also showed up on the Wall of my Personal Profile: Potential for Negative Reviews This feature is different from the Recommend button, which implies a positive endorsement.
However, when you click the report button, as a Page admin, you get these options: Can’t See the Recommendations Section? 8 Brands That Have Found Success on Facebook & What We Can Learn. Dave Kerpen is the CEO of Likeable, a social media agency that has worked with more than 200 leading brands including 1-800Flowers.com, Verizon and Neutrogena. He is author of Likeable Social Media. Any brand worth their social media salt has a presence on Facebook. But just because a brand is online, doesn't necessarily mean that it is doing a good job. While it's possible to suggest some tips and best practices, there's no greater teacher than learning from example. Below, find eight brands that have found success on Facebook, including some takeaways on what they did right and how you can emulate their success. 1.
The Pampered Chef launched their Facebook page at a national conference in front of thousands of enthusiastic consultants. Lesson: Ask your staff, customers, vendors, and partners — who already know you and like you — to “Like” your Facebook page first. 2. Restaurant.com combines exclusive Facebook offers with lots of engaging questions. Lesson: Ask a lot of questions. 3. 4. How Your Business Should Reply to Comments on Facebook Pages.
The following is an excerpt from the Facebook Marketing Bible, the comprehensive guide to marketing your company, app, brand, or website using Facebook. The full version includes an a description of the benefits to your brand of enacting a successful replying strategy, and a walk-through of how to reply to positive commenters, disruptive commenters and trolls, and spammers. Facebook isn’t just a broadcast medium, but a two-way conversation between your and your fans. Communicating directly with those who Like your Page by replying to their wall posts and comments on your Page updates can help fans feel appreciated, increasing their loyalty and the likelihood that they’ll follow your calls to action. It can also inspire them to leave more comments on your Page updates, increasing their news feed optimization — the level of visibility your posts have in the news feed.
When To Engage Comments fall into four broad categories: Constructive Negative Comments Conclusion and Priorities 1. 2. 3. 4. Facebook Allows Users to Tag Pages in Photos, Could Bring in New Fans. Starting today, Facebook users will be able to tag Pages in their photos. Page tagged photos will adhere to a user’s privacy settings, and will only appear on a Page’s Photos tab if set to be visible to everyone. Initially, Facebook is only allowing Pages categorized as “Brands & Products” or “People” to be tagged, but it says it is “looking to expand this functionality to more Page categories over time.” Since a tag will cause a link to that Page to be displayed on a user’s photo, the feature could become an important discovery and growth channel for Pages.
Previously, users could only tag their friends in photos, but now they can tag any Page with the proper category, whether they’ve Liked it or not. A tag of a brand or public figure represents a strong social recommendation of that Page, which will make a user’s friends curious to visit that Page and improve the chance that they’ll Like it themselves. Inside Facebook, NFO (News Feed Optimization) is the new SEO. Everybody with a website knows that Google owns two of their most important marketing channels: organic search (SEO) and paid search (SEM).
In fact, entire cottage industries have developed around them: SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – gaming Google (and the other search engines) into thinking you’re authoritative on a given topic and deserve to be listed highly in its search results.SEM (Search Engine Marketing) – paying Google (and the others) to put you next to sites that it thinks are authoritative on a given topic. Inside Facebook, however, Google is irrelevant. Instead, Facebook owns your most important marketing channels: the News Feed, Notifications, and Messages. And marketers and application developers have analagous marketing options with Facebook as with Google on the open web: News Feed Optimization, on the other hand, is a bit trickier: Welcome to the new world of NFO–the new SEO for Facebook marketers. Designing High Performance News Feed Items 1. 2. 3.