So unless you have been living in a very remote part of the world, you would know by now that Facebook is one of the best small business marketing resources there is.
Lets face it, all of your customers and potential customers are already on it and all you have to do is learn how to leverage it for your benefit.
Ah, but here is where most business owners get it wrong - they have no idea how exactly to add Facebook to their arsenal of marketing tools.
I have recently been doing a bit of research on this myself and have come up with a few ways to increase the effectiveness of fan pages and here are the top five things I have learned over the last week.
1) Make sure your page is search engine optimised Remember keywords? those little search phrases that should be dispersed all through your content and blog posts.
Well - they are just as important for Facebook as well (in fact all social media posting you do should be maximising them).
There are a couple of ways to do this.
Firstly, you should ensure that when you set up your page you choose a name that has a keyword phrase in it.
That way if people have never heard of your business, they can still find it by searching for specific keywords on Facebook.
So if your business is about making origami ducks and you know that this is a popular search term then there is nothing wrong with using this as the name of the page.
Also make sure you put keyword phrases anywhere where there is text.
Search engines such as Google do take notice of Facebook pages so make sure you don't waste this opportunity.
2) Get Your Timing Right Often, the most effective resources are those that are based on timing and Facebook is no exception.
Did you realise that there is an optimum time to make posts? Well there is and that time is between the hours of 8.
00 - 10.
00 AM and between 6.
00 to 9.
00 PM.
So make sure you are posting between these times.
If you are living in a different country from your main reader base, make sure you check the international time zones so you can make sure you are getting your audience at these key times.
3) Use the Question Feature One of the best way to engage with followers is to ask them for their opinion on something and you can do this you need to use the question feature which can be found when you press the home tab.
Questions are important because they encourage people to leave likes, responses and comments, which in case you didn't know, are brilliant for earning you good edgerank ( a system by which Facebook measures the popularity of your page by the number of interactions it has) and thereby puts your page in front of many more people.
So go to your home tab, select the questions tab and make sure you phrase a question that could have multiple answers (a bit like the old multiple choice questions in old high school exams) and then select as many options as you need.
4) Build A Fangate A what?? OK, basically a fangate is something like a shadow box that makes sure people hit the like button before they proceed to the main part of your page usually for some goodies like a free download or video (so make sure you have one ready).
The first thing they will see is the like button in the foreground with the rest of the content being a blur.
Once they hit like, the page opens up to them.
Fangates can be created easily by visiting 'faceitpages.
com'.
And fangates are one of those things you really can't afford to be without.
5) Use Insights It's not that we don't already love those Facebook designers.
But anyway, I'm going to give us all another reason.
And that is Insights.
In case you don't know, Insights is a free service that has access to all the data from your fan page and can produce a nifty little report which it delivers to you once a week.
This way you always know what your page is doing in terms of 'likes', 'users' and all of that good stuff.
You have to have 30 fans for insights to kick in but I'm sure after all you have red here, you won't have trouble gathering those.
Soooo, for heaven's sakes use this info.
See how people respond to your posts.
Which ones are the most popular? See how many people liked a particular comment and make sure you continue to keep the fans satisfied.
Well that about finishes my top 5 tips for leveraging Facebook fanpages.
Now lets get started! For more tips, see the box below.
Lets face it, all of your customers and potential customers are already on it and all you have to do is learn how to leverage it for your benefit.
Ah, but here is where most business owners get it wrong - they have no idea how exactly to add Facebook to their arsenal of marketing tools.
I have recently been doing a bit of research on this myself and have come up with a few ways to increase the effectiveness of fan pages and here are the top five things I have learned over the last week.
1) Make sure your page is search engine optimised Remember keywords? those little search phrases that should be dispersed all through your content and blog posts.
Well - they are just as important for Facebook as well (in fact all social media posting you do should be maximising them).
There are a couple of ways to do this.
Firstly, you should ensure that when you set up your page you choose a name that has a keyword phrase in it.
That way if people have never heard of your business, they can still find it by searching for specific keywords on Facebook.
So if your business is about making origami ducks and you know that this is a popular search term then there is nothing wrong with using this as the name of the page.
Also make sure you put keyword phrases anywhere where there is text.
Search engines such as Google do take notice of Facebook pages so make sure you don't waste this opportunity.
2) Get Your Timing Right Often, the most effective resources are those that are based on timing and Facebook is no exception.
Did you realise that there is an optimum time to make posts? Well there is and that time is between the hours of 8.
00 - 10.
00 AM and between 6.
00 to 9.
00 PM.
So make sure you are posting between these times.
If you are living in a different country from your main reader base, make sure you check the international time zones so you can make sure you are getting your audience at these key times.
3) Use the Question Feature One of the best way to engage with followers is to ask them for their opinion on something and you can do this you need to use the question feature which can be found when you press the home tab.
Questions are important because they encourage people to leave likes, responses and comments, which in case you didn't know, are brilliant for earning you good edgerank ( a system by which Facebook measures the popularity of your page by the number of interactions it has) and thereby puts your page in front of many more people.
So go to your home tab, select the questions tab and make sure you phrase a question that could have multiple answers (a bit like the old multiple choice questions in old high school exams) and then select as many options as you need.
4) Build A Fangate A what?? OK, basically a fangate is something like a shadow box that makes sure people hit the like button before they proceed to the main part of your page usually for some goodies like a free download or video (so make sure you have one ready).
The first thing they will see is the like button in the foreground with the rest of the content being a blur.
Once they hit like, the page opens up to them.
Fangates can be created easily by visiting 'faceitpages.
com'.
And fangates are one of those things you really can't afford to be without.
5) Use Insights It's not that we don't already love those Facebook designers.
But anyway, I'm going to give us all another reason.
And that is Insights.
In case you don't know, Insights is a free service that has access to all the data from your fan page and can produce a nifty little report which it delivers to you once a week.
This way you always know what your page is doing in terms of 'likes', 'users' and all of that good stuff.
You have to have 30 fans for insights to kick in but I'm sure after all you have red here, you won't have trouble gathering those.
Soooo, for heaven's sakes use this info.
See how people respond to your posts.
Which ones are the most popular? See how many people liked a particular comment and make sure you continue to keep the fans satisfied.
Well that about finishes my top 5 tips for leveraging Facebook fanpages.
Now lets get started! For more tips, see the box below.
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