The following tips were gleaned from two MarketingProfs online webinars on Facebook marketing held December 16-17, 2009 with @jeffwidman of BrandGlue whose clients include the likes of Microsoft, Intel and Seth Godin.
Facebook Marketing is all about the News Feed
That was the central message Jeff shared. It’s all about reaching and interacting with people via the News Feed. According to Jeff, 80% of effective marketing on Facebook happens via the News Feed.
The power of Facebook to give your Fan Page a greater reach is determined in large part on your status updates making it to your fans – and your fans’ friends – News Feed. That could potentially be a lot of folks becoming a Fan. How can you ensure your status updates spread as widely as possible?
It turns out Facebook uses an algorithm to decide which updates makes it to the News Feed – the default view on everyone’s Wall. The ones that don’t are sent to the “Live Feed” (read: jail) you have to click on in order to read. Who does this? Anybody? Bottom line: if you’re not on your fans News Feed you’re nowhere.
Knowing this, your reach and fan page numbers could dramatically improve by implementing the following tips:
- Don’t continually just make statements or announcements, instead focus on engagement.
- Ask questions that will encourage your fans to “Comment” or “Like” or “Share” your updates (see example below).
- Pose simple, short questions – even yes/no type questions are good.
- Post links to a blog article or YouTube video with a question.
- Post a quote or statement and ask fans if they agree/disagree.
- Post a photo and ask, “what do you think of this…or, have you ever seen something so ugly?”
- Post questions daily on topics your fans care about and would find interesting/engaging.
- Simplify your Fan Page – other than coming to your page for the first time to see if they want to be a fan, most people don’t come back to visit (as shocking as this may seem).
- Create a positive, compelling, interesting first impression on your Fan Page.
- Every tab needs a purpose, don’t have tabs just because you can – less is more – and don’t have blank tabs.
- People don’t come to Facebook to read a lot of text (boring) – they scan for items of interest.
- Consider setting up a custom landing page for first-time visitors and give them a compelling reason to become a fan such as: exclusive offers made available only to your fans, appeal to their egos, appeal to their sense of wanting to belong (identify) with a brand as cool as yours, entertain them.
- Realize there are 3 ways to promote your Fan Page to get more fans: (1) Facebook Social Ad (you can target very tightly), (2) Via your existing marketing channels – like your web site, email campaigns, etc., (3) Via your friends – suggest they become a fan of your page.
- When utilizing the Fan Box Widget on your Web site or blog, select the “Include fans” option to show faces of your fans in the widget for increased conversions (people like to see pictures of other people).
- Tagging – if someone appears in a photo you can “tag” them so the photo appears on their personal profile and in their friend’s News Feeds.
- Once you get to 25 fans you can request a vanity URL from http://www.facebook.com/username. A vanity URL is a shorter version of the destination address of your Facebook Fan Page and it will make it easier to share the link with others. For example, my Fan Page Vanity URL is: http://www.facebook.com/ZephyrMarketing – it used to be twice that long with a bunch of “&Ts83%” type characters.
Hope that gives you some ideas on how to market your Facebook Fan Page to get more fans. I know I’m going to give these a whirl. What other techniques have you tried that work well? Please leave a comment.
