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 page. And there are some good and bad ways to go about doing this. In this article, we’ll share 10 ways to drive more fans to your Facebook page.
1. Mine Your Data
You should be updating your Facebook page at least once or twice each day. After building an audience and sharing content regularly, you should start to see what works, and what doesn’t.
The key to virally growing your Facebook fan page is by doing more of what people like, and less of what they don’t. So look through your Facebook Insights and find out what your audience loves, and what they could live without.
2. Hold Offline Events and Tag Attendees
Hosting offline events is a great way to engage people and get to know them better. It can also become a great viral tactic. Take lots of photos and even video during your event. Then post this content on your page, and “tag” all of the people there. It will send notifications to each person, and continue the engagement with each individual.
3. Run a Contest
This is somewhat of a gray area because Facebook changed their Promotional Guidelines last year. Essentially, you need prior written permission from Facebook and need to be spending a significant amount on ads per month. However, you CAN require Facebook users to become a fan of your page in order to enter a contest, sweepstakes, drawing or competition. See these two posts for further explanation. PLUS, good news: you CAN run contests and sweepstakes with the use of the apps created by Wildfire App.
4. Get Fans to Tag Photos
If you host live events, be sure to take plenty of photos (or even hire a professional photographer), load the photos to your fan page and encourage fans to tag themselves. This, again, pushes out into their wall and friends’ News Feeds, providing valuable (free!) exposure. And, a picture says a thousand words – we notice the thumbnails in our feed more than text.
5. Questions and prompts
The best questions are open-ended, which means they get fill-in-the-blank, not yes-or-no, answers. Imagine you’re on a first date and the goal is to get the other person talking. The more you listen, the more likely you are to get what you want. The more you talk, the more the other person turns off and you don’t get what you want.
Here are some ways to ask questions:
“What do you think about…?” (For example, you could ask about some recent good news in the niche you’re operating in. Try to avoid asking about bad news unless you’re asking for people’s ideas for solving problems.)
“How do you feel about…?”
You can actually tell people to fill in the blank if you want. For example: “My ideal work day includes ______________. Fill in the blank and tell us!”
“What happens when you…?”
6. “Click Like If… “
This is a really simple formula. It’s all about whether people agree with you. Choose something that you’re pretty sure 60 percent to 100 percent of your fans like. If you got a lot of fans from targeting a particular interest, you can be pretty sure they’ll respond positively to that. Tell them to click like if they like that thing. No brainer, right?
After you have the thing you want to show them or mention to them, combine it with the following variations of the formula:
Post a photo or video related to the dream or benefits you’re selling, and make it something like “Click like if you’d love (to have this benefit)” or “Click like if you’d love to see yourself (living such and such dream).”
“Click like if you love…” (ponies, bacon, or whatever applies to your niche).
“Click like if you think…”
“Click like if you’d love to have…”
7. Place Facebook Ads
Even with a nominal weekly/monthly budget, you should be able to boost your fan count using Facebook’s own social ad feature. It’s the most targeted traffic your money can buy. To buy an ad, scroll to the foot of any page inside Facebook and click the link at the very bottom that says “Advertising.” From there, you can walk through the wizard and get an excellent sense of how many Facebook users are in your exact target market.
Then, when you advertise your fan page, Facebook users can become a fan (click the Like button) right from the ad as shown in the screenshot below. Additionally, Facebook displays several of your friends who have already liked you, thus creating social proof.
8. Display at Your Store/Business
If your business is run from physical premises, put a placard on the front desk letting your customers know you’re on Facebook. Ideally, you have a simple, memorable username. Incentivize customers to join right away via their mobile device and show you/your staff the confirmation for some kind of instant reward!
You might give out physical coupons promoting your fan page. For restaurants, put the Facebook logo, your username and a call to action on your menus.
9. Use the @ Tag
As long as you’re a fan of your own fan page, you can “@ tag” it on your own personal profile wall. From time to time, you can let your friends know about something happening on your fan page by writing a personal status update that includes tagging your fan page with an @ tag. Simply start typing the “@” symbol and the first few letters of your fan page name (this works whether you have your username registered or not), and it will appear from a drop-down menu to select. This then makes it a nice, subtle hyperlink that your friends can choose to click on.
10. Embed Widgets on Your Website
Select from a number of the new Facebook Social Plugins and place them on your website and blog. The Fan Box widget is now the Like Box and it works well to display your current fan page stream and a selection of fans – see screenshot below with Whole Foods Market Facebook Like Box. I would recommend adding a title above the box encouraging visitors to your site/blog to click the “Like” button (which makes them a Facebook fan).
We all know it’s annoying and awkward to ask your friends, family and/or clients to go check out your page. In this video below, Jasmine has some nice tips on how to ask your clients to “Like” your business page without asking. She’ll also touch on why it’s not a good idea to sync Twitter with Facebook, the importance of sharing more personal updates than business updates, and why the more you talk about your business from your page, the less people will listen.
While Jasmine Star is no social media expert, she’s managed to have around 60,000 fans on her Facebook page, so I think whatever she’s doing, it works.
Let’s hear from you. Which ones have you implemented with success? Plus, do feel free to add any of your own creative promotional ideas in the comments box below!
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