Hey, Do you manage a Facebook fan-page? It’s easy to create one, but it is certainly not easy to attract and retain a consistent stream of loyal fans to your page. Isn’t it? I have a laughable number of fans on my Facebook page at the time of writing this post. Aargh! How do they attract tons and tons of ‘genuine fans’ to their page? Therefore I decided to conduct a group interview at MyBlogU in which I asked all the Facebook marketers to share their secret of running successful Facebook pages. I handpicked the best 5 respondents. Here’s the entire interview 🙂
Q.1 Share your Facebook fan page’s URL. Please mention the number of fans too.
Ken S.
Bulk Candy
Our business Facebook page is facebook.com/bulkcandy and we have just over 24,000 fans.
Erik Emanuelli
No Passive Income
Here’s the Facebook page of my main blog – NoPassiveIncome : facebook.com/NoPassiveIncome. It has reached 3800 fans.
Paul Manwaring
IMH Blog
facebook.com/dubtechnoblog. Fans – 4680 and growing every day
Kelsey Pangborn
Communication Strategist for Three Pillars Senior Living Communities
facebook.com/threepillarsseniorliving – 381 fans
Q.2 Building a loyal fan-base from scratch is really challenging. How did you gain your initial 100 fans? What is (or has been) your strategy to gain more and more fans to your facebook page? Please share.
Ken S.
Bulk Candy
We got our first few fans by asking. We put up a very visible “like us on Facebook” graphic on our site and it got us our initial few hundred fans. After that we ran a few contests, which really helped to increase our fan base. What has kept them is our content. We try to put out interesting/fun posts that we think our fans will like while trying not to be to look too much like a sales pitch. Besides the contests we get a fair amount of engagement when we ask questions.
Erik Emanuelli
No Passive Income
Correct. Going from zero to your first 100, or 500 fans seems hard. However, if you have already some friends in your Facebook personal profile, getting your first likes for your page could be quite easy. Also, ask your bloggers friends to become fan, and the same can be done for them. Then, I found out that sharing very good content is the key to get your audience hooked (must be relevant to your niche). Plus, I share some funny images. People love them! Finally, gamification really works. Contests, giveaways, games. Just be social!
Paul Manwaring
IMH Blog
The Facebook page didn’t get much traction for the first few years. Then as my blog became more popular, through creating better content, I saw my Facebook page start to grow along with it. We also hosted a few giveaways exclusively on the Facebook page which did get the page some exposure. Also whenever we post something on the page we try to tag someone in it. Usually they share the post on their pages/accounts too. Looking ahead my strategy is to post content people want to see on their feed, for my fans that is quality music. I will look into exclusive download and music videos just for the Facebook page fans too.
Kelsey Pangborn
Communication Strategist for Three Pillars Senior Living Communities
Though I was not in my current role when our Facebook page started up, I do know that our marketing team proudly gained all the fans we have today from scratch, by producing quality engaging content. Though we don’t have a ton of fans, as a smaller senior living community in a tiny town, we’re proud to have 381. We were consistent about posting throughout the week and trying to be light, fun, informative, friendly, and social. We maintained our company voice in all posts and found that photos of people carry a lot of weight in gaining fans.
Q. 3 How frequently do you post to your facebook fan-page? Do you use any social media tool to automate the process? If yes, please share
Ken S.
Bulk Candy
Lately, we post between 1-2 times a week and we do it ourselves (no software). We used to post more often but we are beginning to spend more time on other social media platforms that produce more direct sales.
Erik Emanuelli
No Passive Income
One post from my blog and one funny image per week. Plus, I share interesting content I find within blogosphere. From time to time, I organize contests and giveaways.
Paul Manwaring
IMH Blog
I did use buffer to automate my blog posts but the engagement was terrible. Now I use buffer with my YouTube channel which I upload music videos too. This has been the most effective method.
Kelsey Pangborn
Communication Strategist for Three Pillars Senior Living Communities
We started out with a post or two per week, but we now post 5-6 times per week – usually every weekday and one weekend day. I’ve tried Hootsuite but didn’t care for it. I schedule all posts through Facebook’s scheduling tool for future dates and times.
Q.4 What’s your secret of keeping your fans engaged on your fan-page?
Ken S.
Bulk Candy
To the extent that we engage them, we do it by providing content they like. Using Facebook insights we can see what types of posts get the most response and focus on creating more posts like that. We are about start posting some short videos and I think those will do some real good for our engagement rates.
Erik Emanuelli
No Passive Income
I think the key is being real and honest. Also, people love to laugh, so it’s good to share funny images (relevant to your main niche), which can help make less heavy difficult topics. Keep in mind the gamification principle. For instance, you can reward your most active fans, with a shout-out in your blog, or in your Facebook page. Be creative!
Paul Manwaring
IMH Blog
Quality content. There really isn’t much too it. Your fans will let you know what they like and don’t like. In the past I would post my blog posts on the page. The engagement was terrible, but I carried on as I wanted traffic to my main website. Then I decided not to promote my blog posts on Facebook and switched to videos from my YouTube channel. This was 10 times more effective.
Kelsey Pangborn
Communication Strategist for Three Pillars Senior Living Communities
People, people, people! We try to make sure there are faces in any content we post. Videos always get the highest engagement. Though it takes a lot of time and effort sometimes to put a video together, they always prove to be the best engagers. Photos are a close second, and especially if we are able to tag fans in the photos. People love seeing themselves, a friend, or a family member. We occasionally post a link to another page, though that doesn’t produce a lot of engagement. Rule of thumb though – always have a photo, video, or link attached to a status. Words alone are boring. Our other key has been quick interactions if we get a post, comment, or message. Responding within the hour and tagging them back whenever possible has been key to make people feel important and to realize we are real and personable.
Finally, thanks to all the awesome people who made this interview possible!
Thank you Ken, Eric, Paul and Kelsey for this amazing contribution 🙂
And, thank you Ann Smarty for providing us with such an awesome platform to interact, connect and help-out each other 🙂
What’s your story?
Do you also manage a Facebook page for your company/blog? What has been your success story? Please share it in the comments below 🙂
Great collection of tips here, Abhi!
A lot of ideas and suggestions to help people promoting and building an engaged Facebook fan page.
Thanks for including me.
Thanks Erik 🙂 I’m going to try your tips.
Thanks Abhi! I appreciate that you published my thoughts. Hope will help others to build fans on facebook page.
Nice roundup. Now you have everything you need to build up your fan page!
Yes, I’m excited to try all your tips. Thank you Ken 🙂