When you create a Facebook Page for your business and need to start growing your fan base, you need to drive visitors to your Facebook Page.
Unlike Twitter or Google Plus where you can proactively communicate with other businesses and people, on Facebook people have to visit you first. Then they have to Like your page in order to start receiving your updates in their newsfeed. If people aren’t actively seeking you out on Facebook, they aren’t going to know they should Like your page.
Driving traffic to a Facebook Page is similar to driving traffic to your website. If people aren’t looking for it or know about it, they aren’t going to find it. This means you need to start promoting your Facebook Page where your potential fans are going to see it.
Here are a few ways to start driving traffic to your Facebook Business Page:
Send an internal email to your staff and have everyone Like the Facebook Page. Also encourage them to share your company’s Facebook posts on their own timeline to increase brand awareness and spread throughout their social circles as well.
If you have already started growing fans on other channels such as Twitter, Google Plus or the best platform, email, then start promoting your Facebook page in those existing communities. Send out an email announcing your new Facebook page. If you are offering an incentive (see below), then make that message clear in your email.
Put a call to action on your website so that visitors know you are there and can Like the page from your website. This can be done rather easily if your website is built on WordPress using plugins:
Create a highly targeted Facebook ad campaign promoting your Facebook Business Page. You can even set up a contest to drive traffic directly from the ads for more incentive for them to click the ad and to get their Like or capture their contact information.
Another way to run an ad that people will click on is to offer access to download a coupon for someone to Like the page. If you aren’t the kind of company that can offer coupons for whatever reason, create some kind of exclusive offer for Facebook Fans only.
Promote your Facebook page in other online communities such as LinkedIn Groups, Google Plus Communities or Niche Forums. If you are posting content to your Facebook page that would be of interest to people, get into those conversations and offer some insight. Put your Facebook link in your signature or if a specific Facebook post would be helpful and relevant to the conversation, post a link to that directly to compliment your contribution to the community discussion.
Like other business pages and start tagging them in your Facebook posts. Then you will get on their radar and if you are posting quality content, they will likely reciprocate the tag and get a link to your Facebook Page in front of their fan base.
Find blogs that post articles about similar topics. Sign up for their newsletter or RSS feed so that you are notified immediately when they publish a new article. Read the article and if you can be one of the first few comments on the page, leave something insightful (not just “Nice article!”). Most blogs have you enter your website that will make your name a link, instead of putting in your website URL, you can put in your Facebook URL.
Once you start driving people over to your Facebook Page, you’ll need to convince them they should click the Like button.
When driving traffic to your Facebook page to increase your Likes, you should send them to a landing page tab instead of your default Timeline page. This would be a new tab that you add to your Facebook page with a specific message on it. (Check out this article from Jay Baer on Social Media Examiner for quick ways to create a landing tab on Facebook).
The reason to send people to a Facebook Landing Page instead of your main timeline is that if they land on your timeline, they may not see a reason to Like your page. If they land on a page that has a message created specifically telling them why they should Like the page, they are more likely to click that Like button and start receiving your updates.
People are more likely to Like your Facebook Page if there is already a foundation of fans, that’s how social proof works. So how are you supposed to reach that tipping point of Facebook Fans?
The best way to start building a Facebook Page from scratch is to offer some kind of incentive for the first X amount of Fans that you get. Or offer to run a contest for when you reach a certain number of Facebook Likes on your new page. Don’t try to hide from having a new page, people will see that and will be less likely to Like your page.
There are services around the web that will let you spend a few dollars and get you hundreds or sometimes thousands of Facebook Likes. This is clearly against the Facebook policy and if you get caught, your page will get shut down.
Another reason that buying Facebook Likes is a foolish move is that those Likes are not real people who are actually fans of your company. These fake Facebook Likes are only for show and will not help your business in anyway.
Buying these fake Facebook Likes will also make it difficult to measure the real ROI of your true Facebook Fans. The numbers will always be skewed because of the fake Likes.
The one reason that is understandable (but not acceptable) for a business to want to buy Likes is for the social proof factor so that when people visit their Facebook Page, they will be more inclined to Like it because they see the Facebook Like count is in the hundreds or thousands already.
Is that worth getting your page shut down over? Our answer to that is no.
Have you been wildly successful with using these Facebook tactics listed above? What have you tried that failed miserably? Leave your tips and experiences of growing Facebook Page Likes in the comments below.
By connecting with customers via social media, you build a stronger relationship with them and reenforce your quality over your competitors. You will extend the lifetime of your relationship with your existing customers while still bringing in more business as usual. This directly impacts the bottom line of your business.
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