Saturday, December 25, 2010

Best Practices for your Facebook Fan Page

You've gone to the trouble to set up your Facebook Fan Page for your business, charity, event or other interests. Now what? Will people just show up and start talking? How do you get "fans" - now known as "likes"? Are you supposed to just talk to yourself in there to get things going?

Well the answer to that last question is YES. You do indeed have to talk to yourself, and frequently, to get things rolling. No one likes to share in a vacuum. Since YOU are the one invested in making this work, then you are the one who has to chatter away almost exclusively at first. Eventually you will get people talking back to you.

Case Study - RunPee.com

I run a hugely successful Facebook page for a small mom-and-pop business promoting a single smartphone app called RunPee. The app tells movie goers when they can leave their seats during a movie to hit the toilet and not miss anything important.

We currently have more than 2500 fans (try that if you are not Nike or Obama) - and a large portion of these fine people are actively involved in posting and chatting and responding. They invite their friends to join, talk about RunPee on the streets, and are a free source of buzz about the RunPee app. Everything about this page is fun to be a part of - and it helps the business grow. You can use this page as an illustration of best practices: RunPee on Facebook

Some Best Practices to get you Started:


  • Talk to yourself at first, before you start sending out invites. No one wants to join a ghost town. Populate your page with posts and respond to your own questions.

  • Make sure you have a full page of posts you've made that are on-topic (for RunPee, we talk about movies, bathrooms, peeing, movie news, and top PeeTimes from each box office at HQ). After you've made that full page of posts, have your closest friends and family join the page and respond to your posts. This will model to other people that your page is active. They won't care if it's your mom all over the page. Simply having activity is attractive to everyone else.

  • Once your own close, personal peeps have helped you by posting, liking and commenting, then you can do the promotion part. Use the buttons offered to Invite everyone on your friend list and add a note asking them to support your endeavor (so they know this is something of yours). Have your friends and family invite THEIR friends and family to your page (ie - "Help support my daughter's new business by 'liking' her page!").

  • Add your Facebook fan page URL to your email signature and place it on your businesscard. Add a button to join it on your company website or blog. Print and hand out stickers all about your FB fan page. Spread the word whenever you think of it, to everyone you meet.

  • And most important - keep posting on your page. Everyday if you can. At least 3 times a week is the minimum. 4-5 times a week seems to be the sweet spot.

  • While posting, make sure you don't overdo it. Don't post multiple times in one day - you will quickly become a pest on their home pages. That will earn you a quick ticket to an unfollow, or at least will get you silently hid from their feed.

  • Don't make the whole page about you. Ask questions. Answer people's questions. Post quotes and comment on them. Post links to relevant news articles or Youtube videos. If your page consists only of links to your own works (services, products, or articles) then know you are turning people off. Social media is intended to be a dialog, a way to connect. Not for shameless self promotion, but for promotion with a heart - yours. 
by Jill Florio

source :http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art70071.asp

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