Like email marketers, many social media marketers are obsessed with their number of Facebook fans. This is primarily due to two reasons: it is a social media metric that is easy to measure, and it’s an indicator of how many people you can potentially reach when making updates to your Facebook page.
Number of Relevant Facebook Fans
There are plenty of services where you can pay to quickly increase your number of Facebook fans, but all you’re doing is increasing a number. You’re not building a following of people who find you a credible source of information in your area of expertise and are willing to do business with you or refer you to their friends.
Here are four ways you can increase your number of Facebook fans who will care about your updates:
- Ask existing Facebook friends to follow your fan page
- Make it very easy for people to follow you on Facebook from your website and blog postings
- Send a relevant and compelling offer to your existing email list
- Create a Facebook ad that appears in front of your target customers that directs them to a custom welcome tab on your Facebook page
Why Facebook Fans Are So Important to Word of Mouth Marketing
The whole point of increasing your number of followers is to amplify word of mouth exposure by being able to distribute your Facebook fan page updates to your followers who can then see the update as well as an indication of any Like or Comment activity that would cause them to find out what other people are saying.
In addition, when a Facebook user likes your fan page or one of your updates, that information is displayed in their News Feed so anyone reading their News Feed will see that person has had some interaction with your Facebook fan page. This is a process that happens automatically on Facebook and doesn’t require anyone to remember to refer you in the right context or take further action to forward an email to a friend.
The very act of someone liking your page or updates initiates an automatic referral process that requires no additional effort from the person doing the liking. This is what makes the Facebook network so powerful.
There are shortcuts to quickly increasing your number of Facebook fans, and there is the right way to do it by focusing on those people who would benefit from the products are services you provide. Like most marketing activity, effectively building a Facebook following takes time and effort to be sure you create the right following to amplify your word of mouth marketing.
What are some other ways you have increased your number of relevant Facebook fans?
Image by Paull Young
Free Social Media Strategy Template
Are you overwhelmed by the number of social media sites and don’t how to integrate social media into your sales and marketing plans?.
If you don’t have one already, here is a free template that will help you clearly identify and align your business goals and social media marketing activity.
You might also like:
