Facebook Fan Page Strategy II

Make sure you start with Facebook Fan Page Strategy I for Steps 1-5!

When we left off, we’d covered some of the basic things you can do to find new fans for your Facebook page, as well as connect with the ones you already have.

And I teased you with Steps 6-10 — and left you hanging!

So, without further ado…

Successful Facebook Strategy: A Few (More) Basic Tips

6. Ask users to get involved

I know it sounds simple, but the more you guide your fans — the more they’ll do what you want. This isn’t to say that you should treat them like dummies — but some basic language can go a long way.

For example, instead of posting “We’re so excited it’s the weekend, because we have a big sale coming up!” try “Click “like” if you love a good bargain! We’re celebrating the fact that we made it to another weekend with a special sale starting Saturday — details posted at 7am, so stop back!)

One brand that uses this really well is Active.com — check out some of the latest Facebook posts:

See how they used the call to action to get a response, but still shared some brand-specific, relevant information?

7. Choose your landing page wisely

A few bloggers have recently explained HOW to pick which landing page fans see when they arrive to your page — but WHY?

Think about the way Facebook walls are set up. Depending on the settings, you either see posts from the brand or a mix of brand and fan posts — but where can you learn about the brand itself? get an idea of what the page is used for? see what other social media tools the brand uses?

Take Growing Bolder TV, for example — we use the “Welcome” tab that we customized, using Static FBML (now that app is outdated/depreciated by Facebook — you should instead use iFrames, which will get their own post soon)

So when non-fans arrive, they see:

A lot better than just the wall, huh?

Once someone “likes” the page, they’ll be taken to the wall on subsequent visits (although the Welcome tab is always accessible on the side of the page). But for this first impression, we’ve made it clear that we have a lot to offer.

Another tip? If you are running a sweepstakes or contest, you can set that as the landing page to get more entries.

8. “Like-Gating”

This was miiiighty controversial at Social Fresh, and many questioned if it violated Facebook’s TOS. The conclusion? Probably not…but it needs to be used with caution.

Like-gating is when you require people to become fans of your page to get certain information — whether it’s coupons, contest entries or other material.

There are some good tutorials for doing it effectively:

• “Like-Gating” Your New Facebook iFrame (via Scalable Social Media)
• How to Like-Gate Your Facebook Fan Page (via Say it Social)
• Using Like-Gating to Increase Facebook Likes by 50% (via Excellimark)

The stats back it up — pages that employ like-gating DO get more fans. Initially. But I’d be careful, because just getting fans won’t do you much good. Getting good, engaged, loyal fans who want to connect with you and SHARE your stuff is the key. Discovery is a great example — see how it got 25M likes on Facebook without walling off its content.

9. Offer exclusives

Whether you like-gate it or not, it’s a GREAT idea to offer exclusives to your Facebook fans — and they can vary depending on what your goal is. In the case of Growing Bolder TV, we don’t sell retail items, but we do try and get people to watch our program (and tell their friends!) So our page includes a custom video, only for Facebook, as well as a link to our Schedule, a special wall where people can tell us how they are Growing Bolder, and a Facebook-exclusive fan photo gallery.

Other brands can offer coupon codes, secret sale information, giveaways and more.

Give people a reason to “like” your page, and they’ll come back.

(Besides, remember this via WebTrends from Steps 1-5?)

Give your fans what they want.

10. Spread the word

Facebook’s latest changes have made this frustrating and difficult — but once you have your fan page set up the way you want, spread the word! It used to be easy to click “suggest to friends” on the side of Facebook pages, but that tool disappeared with the latest feature push. Rumors are that it could come back, but even if it does, it’s not the most effective way to find new fans.

A few thoughts:

• Facebook advertising (very effective and relatively inexpensive!)
• Asking friends to tag your page when they mention you (using @) so their friends see the link
• Remembering to include buttons/links on your websites, newsletters, twitter bio and more, so that people know where to find you on Facebook
• Sweepstakes/contests (in just the first two weeks, we’ve seen amazing growth on our Growing Bolder TV page via a month-long sweepstakes campaign)
• Use QR codes to bring people to your page (see my post)
• Do Facebook-targeted newsletter/email marketing campaigns to ask people to come “like” you

What else do you want to know about Facebook marketing? Let me know, and I’ll continue to post my thoughts on social media strategy in the coming weeks!