How to Get More Facebook Fans
It’s clear that Facebook is not going away and that businesses can get significant engagement and traffic from a Facebook Fan page. This article outlines various methods for getting new fans for your fan page.
- Driving Visitors to your Fan Page
- From within Facebook
- From outside of Facebook
- Converting visitors into fans
- Convert fans from outside of Facebook
Driving Visitors to your Fan Page
Here are some methods for sending traffic to your fan page from within Facebook:
- Facebook Advertising
- Participating in conversations on other page’s while ‘using Facebook’ as your page
- Facilitate and encourage people to interact with your page
- Integrate Facebook Comments into your page’s tabs (social media examiner)
- Encourage people to check in at or tag your venue as a location in their status
- If you host live events take lots of photos, post them on your page and encourage your fans to tag themselves in the photos
- Make engaging posts that encourage sharing, liking and commenting from your existing fans. Their interactions will be pushed out to their own walls where their friends can see them and hopefully they will click through to your page. Here’s a few ideas:
- Ask questions and invite comments to encourage participation
- Post relevant funny and interesting videos, photos, articles etc.
These are some ideas for sending visitors to your fan page from outside of Facebook:
- Promote your fan page from your existing web properties including your website, mailing list, RSS feed, blog, other social accounts etc.
- Promote your page offline, in your print materials and with signs in-store
- Add your page’s stream to your website using the Live Stream App
- Add a link to your page in your email signature
- Post videos to your page and then embed them on your website. Embedded videos have a Facebook watermark linked back to the original video on your page.
Tip: Claim your vanity URL when you have 25 or more fans to make sharing your page easier
Converting Visitors into Fans
Once a visitor arrives on your page there are certain things you can do to encourage them to become fans.
- Set the default landing page for non-fans to a custom page with a call to action to become a fan of the page
- Include a welcome video
- Include images and arrows pointing to the ‘like’ button
- Include an incentive to like the page, such as
- Host a competition where entry requires liking the page (beware that Facebook has specific guidelines for these types of competitions)
- A discount or freebie for likers
- Make your page look inviting by:
- Making use of your profile image and 5 featured thumbnail images
- Claiming your vanity URL when you have 25 fans
Convert Fans from Outside of Facebook
There are a few apps that you can place on your website that allow people to become a fan of your page directly from your website rather than going via the page. Those are: