1. Give people a reason to “Like” you
Richard Krueger
Richard Kreuger, co-author of Facebook Marketing for Dummies likes to use the Reveal tab. “A Reveal tab offers first-time visitors a clear call to action.” It provides an opportunity to demonstrate your sincerity when you share something of real value with your fans and can significantly increase your conversion rate. The trick is figuring out what type of giveaway/e-book/download would provide real value to visitors.
2. Rethink your brand as a network
Are you a re-active marketer or a pro-active marketer? Paul Dunay, co-author of Facebook Marketing for Dummies and Facebook Marketing for Dummies, second edition says, “Smart marketers are proactively using social media to drive their business.” See your Facebook audience as a source for feedback, ideas, trending topics and crowdsourcing. Facebook Polls makes it easy to ask visitors questions.
Amy Porterfield
In that same vein, make sure you’re not asking the right questions in the wrong way. Amy Porterfield is the co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies. “The trick,” according to Porterfield, “is to ask questions that are easy to answer. Questions that require just one-word responses tend to get the most engagement. Remember, people LOVE to talk about themselves, so when you make it about them, they are more likely to jump into the conversation.”
3. Activate and engage you fans
How do you get your fans to come back, once they’ve “liked” your page? “Create a robust, ongoing calendar of engagement programs whereby your company gives Facebook fans the opportunity to receive special insider info, tell you what they think about future product and marketing plans, access unusual fan-only deals or learn more about the people behind your brand,” says Jay Baer, author of The Now Revolution.
Daniel Sundin
“Stay on topic,” adds Daniel Sundin, community manager at PETCO. Write about a current event, find and share a funny YouTube video, ask your audience to post questions and repost the most interesting feedback back out as an update—but always tie it back to or relate it to your brand or industry.
“Did you reach a milestone? It can be one important to you or one important to your fans. Celebrate with your fans.” According to Ekaterina Walter, social media strategist for Intel, this is a great way to pull your fans in just like you would your friends, to thank them and celebrate together.
4. Take advantage of Facebook’s Happiness Index
Mari Smith
Mari Smith is co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day and has been described by Fast Company as the “pied-piper of Facebook.” Here’s what she has to say: “Facebook has a Happiness Indexthat shows a spike of 10% on Fridays. As a marketer, you can take advantage of this increase in sentiment by doing something creative.”
Mari’s version of creativity is to host a ‘Facebook Friday’ about once a month and invite her fans to promote their own pages, blog links, or links to other social networks. She shares that her own fan page reports from PageLever indicate that her fans respond best to photos.
Guy Kawasaki is the founder of Alltop and recently published author of Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions. Guy summarizes well the importance of pictures on Facebook. “Twitter is a link economy, whereas Facebook is a picture economy. So just about every status update should include a picture.” He also strongly recommends cropping your pictures to get a good idea of what’s going to show on Facebook. When you create your thumbnail, focus on an interesting area of the picture that will motivate the reader to click for a full view!
5. Measure your success!
The challenge of understanding what to measure can be overwhelming. Here’s a YouTube video that explains What Is Data Mining? A quick 6 minutes, it gives some good parameters about how to evaluate information you’re currently collecting and how you might use it.
Victoria Ransom
Victoria Ransom, founder and CEO of Wildfire Interactive recommends “Once you have your marketing calendar all set and you are engaging your Facebook fans daily, spend some time to find the right tool to measure your facebook marketing.” Jan Rezab of Socialbakers continues, “Only if you measure ‘unique users, fans, conversions, clicks, activity, retention, loyalty and others’ will you be able to fully understand your fans, and (create) an even better targeted offer.”
Chris Treadway, co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day, summarizes it well, “Businesses that succeed will make sense of the currently unmined volumes of data that have been crowdsourced through social media. They’ll use it to get more intelligent and they’ll use data to create better, more intelligent and more targeted marketing campaigns.”
Do you have a Facebook page for your business or association? Would you like to learn more? Are you interested in ramping up your Facebook marketing plan? The Facebook Success Summit 2011*, a virtual online Facebook conference, is bringing together these and 8 more Facebook pros to teach business owners and marketers how to master Facebook.
I have found Social Media Examiner’s Success Summits to be an invaluable tool in my own development as a social media specialist. I started attending last year and am a repeat attendee. My favorite feature of the Success Summits is that after you register for a Summit, all videos, PPTs and Transcripts from that Conference become available to you, as an attendee, for a full year on an exclusive membership site. So if you miss the live presentation, you can view and listen at your convenience. They aslo set up LinkedIn groups for each Summit, which are a great forum for asking “newbie” questions and getting collaborative feedback.
* Full disclosure–Slice receives a stipend if you register for the Summit directly from this page.