4 Comments on Increasing your Facebook Fan Base
On the back of this article from Social Media Examiner on 21 creative ways to increase your facebook fanbase, I wanted to add some thoughts and commentary.
First, I'm not sure I agree on the Big Myth of inviting your friends to be your fan (and the author, Mari Smith, does go back to this point on #21). It will largely depend on who you have as friends. If your friends are a bunch of high school and college buddies from Houston, TX and you happen to run social media for an auto dealer in Boston, MA, then it's probably a good idea to pause before blasting your network. But if you're a local business (say a spa) and your friends are a) truly your friends today, meaning they know what you do and that you're passionate about your business b) local mothers and women, because that's who you interact with via Facebook, then by all means, invite away. They SHOULD be your fans (or you might have a problem with your business)!
I'm not sure if this conflicts with Facebook's promotion guidelines (see #10, on running a contest), but I wanted to note one use of this concept as I saw on a local spa (you can see I'm into spas) called Yolo. As you can see from the screenshot, the post asks for help reaching 300 fans, and in exchange the owner will be giving out some freebies. I love where this is headed, with the following comments and recommendations:
Be more clear - Yolo notes they want to hit 300, but I know that many people (my wife for instance), had no idea what the 300 referred to. She was kind of thinking about the movie 300, and how much her husband's abs don't remind her of that movie. And now that Fans have been replaced by people that "Like" a page, well, the confusion grows. So make sure you're clear that you're asking your fans to share this page and then to have their friends click that fancy new Like button.
Speaking of sharing, the "Share" button (big and blue) up at the top is all about adding something to the wall. The "Share" button (small and gray) way down hidden on the left-hand side is to share the page via your own wall or with a friend via an email address. And finally the "suggest to friends" button allows you to spam your friends, down and dirty. SO - what is it, exactly, you want your friends to do?
Make the offer specific - Take a page from the GroupOn book. If we hit 300 fans, then EVERY fan will get a coupon for 10% off a facial or massage. (Note to Nicki, the owner, I am looking for 10% off a massage).
Engagement Matters - Sometimes you might just want to say "If 50 people Like or Comment on this post, then 20% off a massage." This is perhaps a bit less spammy as you're not asking your current Fans to pass you around like a charity collection hat. Instead you add some solid content (an article about sports massage), and just ask your Fans to confirm it was valuable/interesting. Then the network effect kicks in, and the friends of your Fans see they liked/commented, explore it themselves, get interested, and naturally follow along. (Note to Nicki, 20% wouldn't kill you, and these shoulders sure are sore).
So my final request. Yolo is at 271 Fans (People who like) as of this post. Go ahead and become their fan. Let's help Nicki hit 300.
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- 4 months ago
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