photo credit: HikingArtist.com
Facebook, the largest social media platform in the world. Opportunities for businesses to tap into a database stretching over 700 million people. Many of which have a very detailed profile which shows everyone their interests, sports, music etc.
In short, a marketeers dream.
But what if you are a small business or lets say a band who wants to break through the masses and make their way into fame? They don’t have millions to build fancy websites, hire people to tweet for them, take pictures and put them on a tumbler page, update their music on Youtube and Facebook and organize their next gig.
So how can these people, mostly like you and me, use Social Media and in particular Facebook to leverage their business without spending a lot of money.
Welcome to the Shoestring Guide to Facebook.
Creating a Fan Page
This is one of the hardest things for some people. And I must admit I am not really that good at it myself. But there are a few things that you can do yourself to get it up and running.
A great video tutorial is by Pat Flynn from smartpassiveincome.com where he explains how he did his Fan page with photoshop for one of his own websites. He even created a few Photoshop files to get you going, which can be found here. How awesome is Pat?!
If you don’t know how to work Photoshop, like me, and you have your website on WordPress then you can look for a plugin which creates a Fan page for you. Or you can use a free program called paint.net
One of those plugins is called WP4FB.com which is a plugin to create a fan page on the basis of various, ready to go, templates. Fans are a great deal of your business as they can be virtual sales representatives if you manage it properly.
They do not only buy your products, but they can recommend your website to their network which in turn increases your own brand awareness without spending a penny on marketing itself.
Generating Fans
Generating fans can be a tricky task, your friends only get you so far and perhaps they don’t even want to be updated by your fan page which could be about knitting. So how do you get fans to your site?
Match and mingle is one of the best ways to get traffic and likes for your own Fan page. So you need to look for websites which match your own topic. You then have to convert these to your own fan page. You can do this by just asking to like you since you have the same topic or to give them something special or a gift.
This might be a bit of a tedious task and may take a while before you see some results.
If you want fast a fast result to get some fans to your page, this could be if you just started out and you want to secure your unique fan page name, then I would suggest Fiverr.
I’ve used Fiverr myself to generate some fans for one of my pages and it really works like a charm and all that for 5 dollars. If you are interested in this, then you can use the same person I used which is this Fiverr profile.
The downside of this is that you don’t really know if those people actually like your topic or are real people at all. They are advertised that they are but it is more about engagement and activity.
If you do want more targeted and real leads, there are options available such as Blumpo which offer packages where they basically find the fans for you. They take over the advertising side of things, add their fee, and bill you per member. If you are a business or have some money to spend then this could be for you.
Since this is a shoestring guide, meaning saving money = good, kind of post I will give you an alternative which is a lot cheaper but requires a bit more work from your side. This product is called How to get 3000 fans in 30 days and this is now $19,95 $9,95 US Dollars. This will actually teach you what you can do to get more fans instead of paying someone to do it for you. It is a personal choice but for $9,95 you can’t go wrong. So again the link for the 3000 fans in 30 days here
Thank you email
If you use a mailing service like Aweber.com (which I use myself and is an affiliate link) you can create so called thank you pages /emails. So this is the email you get once you have confirmed the email sign up and will probably one of the most read emails you will send out.
In that email you can put anything you want so why not the like button?
This is just copying the same code you can generate for every other page on your website! If you want to know how and where to get that nice string of code you need to facebook’s developers page here
Communicating
To make sure your fan base remains active is to communicate with them. This is not the same as linking your blogpost feed to your Facebook account. You have to write something yourself and keep them interactive and connected to your brand and product.
HootSuite is one of those programs which can help you manage your postings as you can do this on the go. You don’t have to be behind a computer to put something up, this can be done via your own smartphone. I would highly recommend downloading this free piece of sotware and get you set up with Facebook.
posting
Posting is a frequent question. How much do you actually communicate? Do you say something every hour, every day or once a week? You don’t want to overload your fans like an obsessive person. I usually try to do something once a day, where I ask a question, do a poll or share something I am doing which relates to my fans.
I do have a RSS feed setup to my fanpage using RSS Graffiti which works pretty good. I can do this since I am not posting something on my website every day or multiple times a day. If this were the case then I wouldn’t recommend using RSS Graffiti as your page will become one long string of your posts which will scare the sh*t out of any new fans that want to sign up.
Polls
Asking questions to your audience, one of the most solid ways to get some interaction going on your fan page but also to know more about what they are doing. I use this tool quite a bit and it is good to see some feedback on what you are doing and if you are still connected to your audience. I mean, we all grow up and change ideas and perspectives and this is only natural.
Events
Events can work for some but it is still cool to see what happens if you try. Using this if you have a physical location the options are endless, but what if you don’t?
As an example, if you have a product you can start an event by telling everyone of your latest product launch. The start of the 30 day trial, The start of 6 weeks of bootcamp.
The ones that are “attending” your event become your own personal mailing list as you can send them messages on what you are doing or even better, what they supposed to be doing.
If you make this an “open” event you can encourage their friends to attend too in which they will become fans of your page too.
Wrap Up
All these things above are all things that you can do yourself and don’t have to cost anything besides an hour to think of a few things and get going. If you don’t want to do things yourself and have a budget then the Wp4FB Pro and Blumpo might be your thing. Even if you are doing things yourself I would take the $9,95 plunge and see what the 3000 fans book has to offer. It might give you some more ideas on how to attract your facebook fans so you don’t try thing that may not work.
There is a difference in saving money and wasting time…
Stay cool.
Ralph
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I want to create a link between facebook and my blog, every time a post there I want the link posted on my facebook page. Its there a way to automate this or I’ll just have to post everything manually?
If you post something on your blog, you can make it appear on your facebook via the applications RSS Graffiti. Basically. It just grabs your RSS feed and places it on your facebook page.
This is the link: https://apps.facebook.com/rssgraffiti