Tips For A Better Facebook Page
Having a business fan page on Facebook is as important as a blog was about 3 – 4 years ago. Here are a few tips to help grow your fan page on Facebook. Please keep in mind Facebook recently change “Fans” to “Likes.”
- Activity – I know this seems obvious but you would not be surprised at the number of business that believe fans pages who practice this behavior. Creating a fan page takes time and effort but can drive a lot of traffic. You should never have the “one and done” attitude when working in Facebook (or the social media world). One of the best ways to help promote activity is to have a conversation and not a monologue. Here recently a fairly small Facebook fan page received over 2000 comments and likes in a week (I believe that is great activity for a small business). Nothing makes me more frustrated than seeing a profile page or fan page (basically the same feeling in twitter) that has not been updated in several days, weeks, or months.
- Multimedia (photos, videos, etc) - Nothing is more boring than a fan page without videos or photos. This can be easily changed by using an application or uploading photos. I was just hoping around on a artists fan page and they had some personal songs listed. I thought this was a great way to get fan input.
- Run A Campaign – How do you like the idea of placing ads to female users between the age of 25 – 55 who live in southern states? Facebook can! I use the ad network in Facebook and I love it. The ad network offers great targeting. You can run very specific ads. Excellent way to generate traffic to your fan page (even your business website).
- Use A Unique Landing Page – Facebook allows fan page owners to customize your landing page. I think this is a great way to give users a call to action, publish a phone number, and customize a users experience. I have personally grown fan page likes into the thousands with users landing on the fan page wall, but ideally having them land on a custom page is best. I believe you would see conversions improve if you implied this technique.
- Contest Or Give Something Away – Do I even need to mention this tip? People love competitions and free things. This is an easy way for your fan page to grow very rapidly.
- Co-workers Yo – Asking your employees or co-workers to ask their fans to like your business or fan page is a great way to built a loyal base. I would be careful as to not flood your close friends with recommends and such, but doing it once or twice should be fine. Plus, isn’t that what social networking is about.
- Reply To Posts – For a while, the company I work for had some limitations (I control the network…haha) on personal computer use during office hours. Boy, did that rule hurt our early Facebook growth. As your likes grow it will become increasingly difficult for one or two people to monitor your activity. Especially if the person in charge has several things to take care. While I wouldn’t totally encourage freedom on one the most sleep depriving website known to man, I would suggest adding some leniency.
- Unique and Attractive Fan Profile Picture – Again, this should be a no-brainer, but some companies and individuals overlook the importance of this step. For a few hundred buck, some designers can create a beautiful picture to use. When you start planning for this step consider your brand and colors.
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Marc is currently obtaining a Masters Of Arts in Religion. Although not considered well read by a friends wife and a conversation hog by another friends wife, Marc spends hours wasting time on political/news websites, blogging, and reading religious books. Lastly, he quintessentially defines football fanatic. 
9 Comments
Good FBML or the landing page design attracts more people. Of course, we should always see to it that our landing page design are always related to the fan page or business niche.
I hate to be ‘one of the detractors’ but I really think social media is overrated. Yes, it’s great that social media advertising can be targeted to a specific group of people, but it is mostly going to be attracting the people who spend their lives on facebook – not the crowd that most B2B firms want to spend money attracting.
I think you are right. There is that fine line of “wasting” and utilizing a huge marketing opportunity. Facebook is so big it is hard not to take notice and participate.
I agree with you for the most part. I never saw the appeal of it. However with the way things are, having a presence on the social sites is almost required.
Facebook landing pages produces results only when stuffed with things people are interested about. Thus, social media networks is not a waste of time, it just needs some careful thought and planning by targeting the right audience and not everyone else on there.
Thanks for the comment Amanda. I agree. People will totally interact with your Facebook fan page if it is interesting and has a lot of relevant content.
I think the first point in this article is the most powerful…most businesses post to their new social media pages consistently for a couple of weeks and then other priorities take over and the page goes dormant. As a consumer, I certainly won’t connect with a page that I don’t expect will be consistently updated with valuable information (has to be valuable.)
Secondarily, as a consumer if I see a social media badge on your site and head to your fan page, only to find it has been abandoned it raises some basic questions about your commitment and follow through. It wouldn’t stop me from working with you, but would concern me a bit.
I think social media, will simply be an ante to be in the game in the coming years (as opposed to being viewed as an assertive marketing tactic.)
Right on. Thanks for commenting.
These are some good tips. I particularly like the one about running some sort of competition on your Facebook page as it has the potential to attract a great number of fans to your page. This in turn means more and more people will find out about your products or services. So it’s sort of a win-win situation. Facebook fan pages are extremely vital for business today because they help in increasing brand recognition and awareness. I recently read somewhere that Starbucks has around 12 million fans on its Facebook page, which is a lot more than the number of users on its own brand website!