6 Ways to Promote Your Facebook Page

Debra — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 15:29:22 +0000

Creating a Facebook Page for your business is one of the more valuable exercises you can do as a small business owner. But once you have the page set up and you are providing valuable, relative content, how do you get people to like your page?

Invite your Facebook friends that fit your target market profile

To invite connections you think would be interested in your Facebook Page, use the Suggest to Friends link.

If you have connected with clients via Facebook, invite them first as your clients should already be supportive of you. Next invite other connections that fit your target market that may be interested in finding out more about what you offer. If you have done a good job of organizing your professional colleagues, customers and prospects into Friend Lists, you can invite these lists as groups to your Facebook fan page instead of sending individual invites.

Be selective in who you invite and as a courtesy, invite them once only. Don’t annoy people with Facebook Page invitations that aren’t interested in your business or know nothing about you. If a person rejects the request, be careful not to send them another invitation.

Invite your email newsletter subscribers

When you are ready to send out your next email newsletter, include an incentive to get your subscribers to visit your Facebook Page and become a fan. Put a free download on your landing page tab for non-fans that will appeal to your subscribers.

To set up your landing tab, use the Facebook Static FBML application. FBML is similar to HTML and can be used to enhance a user’s Facebook experience on your Page. Then edit the Wall settings for your page and select that tab as the landing page for “everyone else”.

Include your Facebook Page URL in your marketing materials

Once you reach 25 people who have liked your Page, create your vanity URL that makes it easy for you to promote the Page and for people to recognize your brand.

Now it will be easier to promote your Facebook Page by including your vanity URL in all your sales tools, such as business cards, brochures, email signature or other marketing and promotion tools you use to help you drive more visitors to your Business Page and connect with them. All of these tools can be used to cross connect you with your communities and make you more visible to those who are interested in what you have to say.

Place a Facebook Like Box Widget on your Website / Blog

The Facebook Like Box is a social plugin that helps you promote your Page to your website visitors. To create your Like Box, fill in the Facebook Page ID for your Page, the height and width of the box, whether you want your stream included and the number of fans to show.

Facebook Like Box Generator (Click to enlarge)

To get your Facebook Page ID, hover over the picture on your Page and the link contains the number. It should look like: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?profile=1&id=12345678912 (the 11 digit number is the id). When you are done, the form will generate the code you need to paste into your Website.

Use Facebook Social Ads

Depending on your business, Facebook Advertising can be beneficial to building your base of prospects because it enables you to tightly target your best prospect based on a number of variables, including geography, age, gender, education, relationship status, workplace and keywords. With this type of pinpoint targeting, you can create and deliver advertising to only those who you feel would benefit from what you have to offer.

A local retail business like a spa, hairdresser or restaurant could run an ad that has an incentive for fans to come in to your store and try your services or purchase your products.
A local service business like a plumber, landscaper or electrician could run an ad that contained an incentive only for new fans (and customers) such as a discount on a maintenance agreement.

Rather than placing ads in the local papers, Facebook advertising can be much more cost-effective in generating leads and growing your business.

Promote your Page on other Social Sites

Most social sites give you the opportunity to promote multiple websites. LinkedIn allows three links and Google profiles are unlimited. Use these opportunities to promote your Facebook Page as one of your key web properties. Don’t forget to use the “Other” feature when editing your additional information in LinkedIn to name the link appropriately.

In addition, integrate Twitter with your Facebook Page to communicate what you have posted to your Twitter followers.

So how will you promote your Facebook Business Page? Let us know what you have tried and how it works for you.

High Five to Facebook

Debra — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:58:26 +0000

This week I was pleasantly surprised twice by Facebook!

Pleasant Surprise Number 1

The first surprise was a credit to my Facebook account for my Ad that I ran for the Get Connected, Get Found tele-clinics in May and June.

Recently, we have detected an increase in invalid clicks on Facebook. Your account was impacted and as a result, we are crediting your account. Your credit has been automatically deposited into your Facebook account and will apply toward future advertising campaigns. Your credits expire December 15, 2009.

Photo Courtesy of JDAC on Flickr

Not only does Facebook give you a PPC capability with very targeted demographics, they also monitor click activity and provide credits if they deem the clicks are invalid. Their help files say that determining what makes up an invalid click is a combination of your daily budget and your target audience with their “secret recipe” applied to the mix.

Now I’m even a bigger fan of advertising on Facebook. I will be starting up the ad again shortly for the tele-clinic that I have scheduled for August. If you are thinking of advertising on Facebook, I highly recommend that you try it out. Take it slow to see how it works, but it does work.

Pleasant Surprise Number 2

I received the following email from their User Operations regarding my vanity URL for my Facebook page:

We have added your requested username to your account. You can verify this change by logging in and viewing your web browser’s address bar.

Facebook provided a mechanism for owners of registered trademarks to submit their trademark information to prevent others from taking it. I did that before the first stampede for the vanity URLs happened at the beginning of June. Since I didn’t have 100 fans for my Page on June 27th, I was not able to create my MasterfulMarketing vanity URL at that time, so I have been waiting to get to my 100 fans.

Imagine my surprise when I got this email and went to my fan page! You can now easily remember my Masterful Marketing fan page name. Now I can build my fan base organically so that all that become fans are truly interested in what Masterful Marketing has to offer.

Thank you Facebook for attending to these details.

Masterful Marketing » facebook advertising