1. Post a Status Update
Post a
status update mentioning your facebook page.
Don’t be
afraid to outright ask people to join your facebook page. Ask and you
shall receive.
Give them
a great reason why they should join, tell them news, or find a creative way to
mention and link to your page:
2. Get fans to upload and tag photos
If you
host (or attend) an event with several of your fans take a bunch of pictures,
post them to your page, and then ask your friends to tag themselves in the
pictures.
If you
can get your fans to upload pictures to your page, or tag themselves in
pictures you uploaded, this will post to their walls as well and will lead to
additional traffic for you.
3. Offer an incentive for people to sign up
Using
custom iframes you can create a dynamic facebook landing page with a “reveal
tab” that contains content that is visible only to fans of your page.
The more
valuable your incentive is, the more people will be compelled to click the
“Like” button to access it.
Examples
of exclusive content could be: An exclusive Video, an exclusive
whitepaper/.pdf, exclusive pictures.
The image
below shows different levels of increasing effectiveness for acquiring new
fans.
Involver
offers apps (and several of them are totally free) that make it easy to create
a “Fan Gate” containing incentives, like a file or coupon, that will cause more
people to “Like” your page.
4. Contact admins of groups related to your page
Groups
are more powerful than pages in terms of their messaging ability. Pages send
updates, but groups send messages directly to a users facebook inbox,
triggering an email alert.
If you
contact the admin of a facebook group with some valuable content that adds
value to their readers then this can help them nurture their community and help
you build yours.
5. Get people to join your page via SMS
Send a
text message to 32665 (FBOOK) with the words “fan yourusername” OR “like
yourusername” (without the quotes).
This
feature is ideal when you’re in front of a live audience.
6. Install a page Badge
Facebook
Badges are a simple, yet effective way to link to your facebook profile.
Unlike
widgets, badges are simply images, and will load much faster.
7. Install a facebook “Like Box” into your site
Installing
a “Like Box” is an excellent way to allow visitors to your site become fans
without even leaving your page.
The like
box builder tool makes it easy to customize the size of your like box, the
number of connections to display, and even the color scheme.
Shown in
the image below is the rarely used “dark” color scheme.
8. Use status tagging
Status
tagging is a cool and fairly new feature of facebook.
This
feature allows you to tag any page or person by entering the @ sign and then
typing the name of the page or person you want to tag.
9. Suggest your page to friends
Use the
“suggest to friends” feature of your page. Use this feature sparingly.
Personally, I try to only invite people go my page once because I know it
annoys me when multiple people invite me.
If you
have many friends you might want to consider using the “invite all” Google
chrome extension, rather than clicking hundreds or thousands of times.
10. Install a Like Button into your site
Installing
a like button allows visitors to like your page, and when they do this posts
the their activity stream.
This can
send more traffic to your site and if you have a facebook “Like Box” and other
content promotion your fan page, since this will help you convert your visitors
into fans.
11. Connect your page to Twitter
Connecting
your page to Twitter is an excellent way to convert your twitter followers into
facebook fans.
Using
this strategy will cause all of your posts to be sent to twitter, with a link
back to the facebook version of the post.
www.facebook.com/twitter
12. Link to Your Page as a Place of Employment
The info
box uner profile pictures is being phased out, so now if you want an omnipotent
link on your profile to your page you will need to list your Page under
employment. Once you do this your Facebook Page will appear under your
name on your Profile.
13. Install commenting on your landing page
This will
allow people to comment on your page, even if they are not a fan.
Any
comments made can broadcast to news feeds and lead to more traffic to your
page.
Setting
up facebook commenting requires registering a facebook application, so act on
this tip with caution unless you are comfortable with code.
14. Leverage Traditional Media
Since
facebook is so widespread you can use any forms of traditional media and
achieve results.
Newspapers,
Media Buys, Radio, and TV all work, but are often very costly.
To
maximize your promotion offer a free gift to those who join you page.
15. Newsletter Promotion
If you do
email marketing send a message to your subscribers letting them know about your
fan page and consider including a link to your fan page in every email.
16. Email Signature
Every
email you send is an opportunity to link to your facebook page.
Check out
the email signature tool wisestamp for a creative way to link to your social
profiles.
17. Get business cards promoting your Facebook page
Business
cards are cheap.
You can
get 500 business cards from Vista Print for $1.99.
For this
minimal investment you can get up to 500 new fans for your page!
Throw a
link on your card and people will almost certainly check it out.
If you’re
pressed for space in your design all page urls can be shortened from
facebook.com to fb.me, or fb.com.
18. Fiverr
Fiverr is
an online marketplace where services are sold for five bucks.
Check out
their “Social Marketing” and “Advertising” section and here you will find some
people who are willing to suggest your page to 5,000 of their friends for just
$5.
You will
need to make the person who will suggest your page to their friends an admin in
order for them to do this for you, but if you are willing to place your trust
in someone to do this and they come through for you this will allow you to pick
up dozens if not hundreds of new fans.
19. Purchase a Professional Timeline Cover
The new
Timeline layout for brand pages offers you a unique opportunity to customize
your page. Fanpageflow currently offers high quality cover photos for Facebook
Timeline pages at an extremely affordable price here. Be sure to consider our
service!
20. Run a “fans only” contest
An
excellent way to run a fans only contest is using wildfireapp.
There are
rules and regulations around running a contest on facebook so be sure to check
out the facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (“Statement”)
before you run one.
21. Link to your page from your profile
Edit your
Facebook profile information to include promotion for your Fan Page.
At the
bottom of the info section of your profile you can include links to any
websites you are affiliated with.
The more
links you can build to your Page, the more traffic you will be able to send to
your Facebook Fan Page. I am constantly seeking new opportunities to build
links that will send traffic to my Fan Page.
22. Blog Commenting
Comment
on blogs and in the website section use a link to your fan page.
23. Link to your facebook page from your linkedin
profile
Linkedin
gives every user three slots for links to whatever you’d like right on your
profile.
You can
make the anchor text of these links whatever you like, so I recommend using a
call to action such as: Join my facebook page.
24. Upload video to facebook
Facebook
video is very underrated, and exceptionally powerful.
When you
embed a facebook video on another website this video includes a watermark link
in the top left corner to the fan page it came from.
25. Watermark your videos with a link to your
website
Using a
video editing program include a link to your website.
I use
camtasia to add my watermarks, and to record any screencast I create, and this
program comes with a free 30 day trial.
26. Create a memorable URL
If you go
to facebook.com/username you will be able to create a custom URL for your page.
Remember
that this cannot be changed once it is set, so choose wisely.
27. Deliver an exceptional experience
Although
facebook pages are no longer officially considered “fan pages” if you work to
create fans of your brand many of them will certainly seek out and join your
facebook page.
Strive to
deliver an awesome experience for those who interact with your brand. Go above
and beyond when engaging with your community and they will spread the word.
A famous
article called 1,000 true fans maintains that they are all you need to create a
thriving business. Don’t try just to get people to click “like” but instead
seek to create raving true fan who will spread your word far and wide.
28. Link it up
This tip
comes from @garyvee and it’s a good one: link it up!
Hyperlinks
are what weave the web together so use them often and every time you do you are
opening up another gateway into your fan page.
29. Flip the funnel
Drive
your fans back to your website for new blog posts.
Make sure
that your blog has social sharing and many of your fans will “like” your blog
posts and tweet it out to their followers on twitter as well.
30. Track your growth with Facebook insights
Facebook
insights shows you how many fans you have over time, and some fairly detailed
demographic information as well.
Using
this knowledge you can analyze what activities drive the most growth, and then
duplicate your success.
31. Analyze your demographics with insights
Facebook
demographics are a powerful feature of insights that allows you to determine
the gender and age of the people in your page. Once you know this
information you can focus your content to appeal to the age group and gender of
your fans.
Here is
the demographic information of the FacebookFlow fan page:
32. Talk and Blog about your page
Word of
mouth does not start itself. Get the conversation going by mentioning your
facebook page in blog posts and in every day conversation.
33. Learn more about Facebook
The more
you know about facebook the more you can use this knowledge to drive the gowth
your community.
To learn
more about facebook enroll in our FREE facebook ecourse.
34. Drive more traffic to your website
Use these
tips to get more free traffic to your website. Make sure that your “Like Box”
is featured prominently, and plenty of this traffic will “Like” your page.
35. Produce Epic Content
If your
blog content is epic this will drive the growth of your page in a serious way.
Epic
content has the best chance of going viral and if a blog post goes viral this
also causes it to move up in the rankings in Google, leading to even more
traffic, a percentage of which will convert to fans.
36. Install a like button into your posts
Installing
a like button into your posts will help drive extra traffic to your posts and
it will also show that facebook is an integral part of your brand.
If you
have a self hosted wordpress blog I recommend installing the WP FB Like plugin.
The more
you can integrate facebook with your site the more likely people will be to
join your facebook page.
37. Make a Facebook like sign
Blue Sky
Factory created a Facebook “Like” sign tool that you can use to create a
cool image that will help promote your facebook page.
38. Buy Them
We don’t
normally recommend this option, however we recently came across a service
called FanJive that seems to provide higher quality fans than the rest of the
competition.
The first
1,000 fans are usually the hardest to get so a service like this might help you
get the critical mass needed to get more genuine organic fans.
39. Run a targeted ad campaign
Facebook
advertising is exceptionally powerful due to the ability it offers to hyper
target your market.
Facebook
ads can be targeted based on age, location, and interests.
40. Turn your customers into fans
If
someone likes you enough to buy your product then there is a good chance that
they will like you on facebook as well.
Rig up
your “thank you” page with a facebook “Like Box” and you’ll be good to go!
41. Advertise your page
The more you
advertise your page the more fans you will be able to achieve.
Facebook
advertising s a smart way to promote since you can target specific demographic
and interest groups.
You will
need a sales funnel in place in order to justify an advertising budget and I
recommend setting this up prior to advertising on Facebook.
When I
signed up for my Hosting account with GoDaddy I was able to get a free Facebook
advertising coupon for $50 and I believe they are still offering this
promotion.
42. Use Hootsuite to manage your page
By using
Hootsuite to manage your facebook pages you can maximize engagement by
scheduling your posts ahead of time to go out when they will get the most
attention.
Facebook
posts get the most engagement early in the morning and a few hours before bed.
43. Get an attractive profile picture
A picture
says a thousand words, so to really optimize your business page you should use
the largest profile picture possible.
Currently
the maximum profile picture size is 200 x 600 pixels.
44. Do a “fan of the month” promotion
By
highlighting one of your best fans every month you indirectly encourage fans to
engage more, so that they can win the coveted fan of the month title the next
month.
Offer a
monthly prize, such as a cool free product or service related to your brand,
and the competition for this title will only increase.
45. Message your friends and ask them to join
This
tried and tested method takes more ground work, but this method will allow you
to build relationships and target the friends that you think are the most
relevant to your page.
46. Include a link to your fan page in your forum
signature
If you
are active in any forums you will have the option to attach a “signature” to
every post that you write.
Throw a
link in your signature to your facebook page, and it will be clicked.
Do your
best to add value and answer questions with your posts, and people will be more
inclined to click your link and join your page.
A link
with a call to action is more likely to get clicked than a link alone, so go
with “Join my Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/fbflow” instead of simply:
“www.facebook.com/fbflow”
47. Create a redirect URL
Creating
a redirect to your facebook fan page is one way to “presell” the people who
click it on joining your page.
For
example, if your link is: www.yourdomain.com/joinmyfacebookpage anyone who
clicks it will probably join your page.
Here is
an article on how to redirect a webpage.
48. Give away fan page swag
Websites
like Zazzle make it easy for people to customize swag, such as the nifty “you
like this” t-shirt below.
If you
gave away shirts (or mugs, or stickers) like this with your facebook url
included you could easily amass an army of walking billboards for your facebook
page.
49. Find more facebook friends
The more
friends you have, the better your chances will be that some of these friends
will join your fan page.
Facebook
has a “Find Your Friends Tool” that allows you to import your contact list from
a variety of email clients, or an email list.
This tool
also displays “People you may know” which I have found is very good at
suggesting people that have many mutual friends as me.
50. Share this article with your facebook friends
If you
share this post with your facebook friends and it will become obvious to them
that getting more fans important to you, and if you have included a link to
your facebook page in your info box or the “Website” section of your website
there is a good chance that they will click it.
