9 Ways to Increase Your Facebook Page’s Fan Base

I have become absolutely obsessed with using social media properly this year.  Instead of just pushing out information, I am going to do what I am supposed to do: engage on social media.  After all, social media begins with the word “social.”  If you’re not chatting it up on Twitter or Facebook, why bother?  You’re just being anti-social.  And I am definitely not anti-social in real life.

My biggest stumbling block, personally, is increasing the number of fans on my company’s Facebook page.  So my interns and I have been researching it.  As we have found, there’s lots of information out there on using Facebook, but not a lot on increasing your fan base.  (Mari Smith has been a great source.)  The following is what we found.  Some suggestions are simple, some require a little more effort, but all seem to be worth doing:

1. Let’s start with the obvious. If you haven’t already, suggest your fan page to your friends on Facebook.
2. Another obvious: In your e-mail signature, add a link to your Facebook page (and your Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, too!).
3. Offer incentives to new Facebook fans, like a special discount or e-book.  A recent survey conducted by Co-Tweet and Exact Target found that 40 percent of people like a brand on Facebook to receive discounts. Incentivized like pages have a 200-300 percent higher click-to-fan conversion rates than regular landing pages.
4. Record and upload a short video for your Facebook landing page (I’d like to put this on my Welcome tab), explaining what your fan page is about and who it’s for.
5. On your personal Facebook profile, add a link to your fan page.  Here’s how Mari Smith said it can be done:  “Change your employer to be your actual fan page (recommended!). This part can be tricky! If the dropdown menu does not display your fan page to select from, the easiest way is to type in the full URL of your fan page.  Or, if that doesn’t work, here is a step-by-step tutorial on how to do this. See also this helpful thread and screenshot.”
6. Find your customers on Facebook with Flowtown, a popular social media tool that helps you learn what your customers are doing and saying on specific social platforms (like Facebook).  If they use Facebook a lot, Flowtown will connect you to them.  [Update: On January 26, we learned that Flowtown is not accepting new customers for a few weeks.  Read more here.]
7. Create a fan box for your website and blog.  Here’s how: Click “Edit Page Link” on the top left side of your page.  Then click “Get Your Badge.”   Customize your badge and place it on your blog or website for additional exposure to your fan page.
8. Ask Internet marketers in your industry or niche to share your page with their friends since you will most likely have the same types of readers (then do the same for them).
9. If you don’t belong to groups on LinkedIn (at all, or that are active), look for industry-specific groups on Facebook, some of which could have thousands of fans.  If you become active in a group (and build thought leadership), other members will get to know you and hopefully they will become a fan of your page.

Let me know if any of these ideas work for you.  And if you have any other ideas, I’d love to hear them!

Image by Flickr user Garry Wilmore (Creative Commons)

This entry was posted on Monday, January 24th, 2011 at 8:00 am and is filed under Marketing, Small Business, Social Media, Thought Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.


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