Over 700,000 businesses have created Facebook pages. Of these, how the majority are your competitors? This short article examines 10 ways any business, whether it's five or five thousand employees, can engage its Facebook fan base. Use even a number of these methods and you'll create brand awareness and interest, customer advocacy, and viral marketing streams.
1. Initial Thank You Messages
The "Thank You" note will be the most underrated business tool ever. Let's be honest; we sometimes send "Thank You" notes to be able to sustain or extend business relationships. Certainly, these messages are about gratitude, but moreover, they're about showing each fan your business recognizes her enthusiasm and cares about her opinions and ideas.
"Thank You" Messages are best sent straight to fans. Though some Facebook users have Walls ready to accept people for posting, almost all will simply allow contact by way of a direct message. If your fan is in the minority, posting to the Wall continues to be inadvisable because it might anger your fan.Remember, make "Thank You" messages personal, transparent, and don't assume for information than you should. For instance, a profile photo of an infant might not mean the fan has a new baby, but alternatively that his brother does. Don't turn the fan off by assuming he's a father.
Finally, timing is important. Send initial "Thank You" messages in just a day, however not within hours, of an individual being a new fan. It is just a delicate balance between responsiveness and looking just like a spammer.
2. Wall Posts with Questions and Links
Facebook users become fans of pages they believe can have content strongly related their lives and interests. Pages that look at this fact will post meaningful quite happy with links to help reading and/or source materials. Also, pages show their desire for engagement if they incorporate open-ended questions for fan response.
Facebook Insights could be useful analytics tools, but we caution you to simply accept the assessments of one's posts without having to be offended if Facebook decides your quality is low. Without fan interaction, great posts get lower rankings. The Insights section becomes far more meaningful as your group of fans grows and continues to connect to the page. Once this happens, you are able to evaluate fan demographics in addition to how many comments, posts, and likes.
3. Timely, Thoughtful Responses to Fan Posts
Fans who post to your page's Wall, write comments to your posts, take part in discussions, and hit the "like" button to items in your page are your very best online advocates. Their activity (depending on profile settings) can go viral across their very own Facebook networks, alerting potential new fans that their friend has found something worthwhile in your page.
Answering fans who participate together with your page should really be quick, but thoughtful. Whoever responds to an opinion or post should do this in a confident, helpful manner.
4. Community Content - Local Civic Events
Fans of business Facebook pages tend to be more probably be local and loyal customers. They are the Facebook users who know your organization, but additionally know your community. The chances are these customers will soon be encouraged to locate news beyond your realm of your organization featured in your site.
Around possible, promote the events of other important businesses, community service organizations, chambers of commerce, and development associations. As well, promotion of cultural events - local plays, music concerts, art exhibits, fundraisers - is just a fantastic method of showing fans your business cares about things crucial that you local residents.
If yours is just a larger, well-known business, promoting community events continues to be a good idea. Those in your management will have to decide the scope and regions of your Facebook page's civic news.
5. Community Content - Local School Events
Similar to my advice in the earlier section, community content regarding schools can be quite a powerful engagement tool for Facebook fans. (You may also get facebook fans here)With the decline of traditional media sources, newspapers and local TV news, residents are losing outlets for educational reporting.
Content production with this idea and the prior idea about civic news can be quite a daunting task. If an interior employee is responsible, posting even daily updates about high school/civic news might be unfeasible. With out a budget for more personnel, making connections with local secondary schools and colleges is a significant step to seeing this goal to fruition.
The absolute most your organization can perform in this effort is show the students, teachers and administrators valid reasons for his or her participation. Student writers could be published in people sphere, teachers can start using a taboo tool (Facebook) in a confident manner, and administrators can increase awareness of and support for his or her schools and programs.
6. Fan Incentives - Free Give-Away Events
Who doesn't like getting something free of charge? And yes, you will find truly free things these days. Automobile dealerships can share oil changes. Restaurants will offer fans a free of charge appetizer with a meal.
The key is to supply fans things they want. One easy, always popular give-away item can be an iTunes gift card. These give-away events offer great opportunities for cross-promotions with other businesses (whether they're on Facebook or not).
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