How to Get Your First Facebook Fans
Small businesses are the kinds of companies that really get the most out of Facebook fan pages because every sale counts for them. If you are able to get an extra few sales every day just from posting a few things on Facebook, then you are definitely going to be in good shape. You should not be looking to get your entire customer base from Facebook, but it’s a great place to get some extra sales in the early stages of your business.
Facebook Ads
Although you may not like the idea, the best way to get some new fans for your small business is to use Facebook ads. The only way people are even going to hear about your business on Facebook at first is if you pay for the ad space, so it should just be viewed as an initial cost for the fan page. You do not need to keep advertising your fan page after you have a good chunk of fans because the fans tend to grow on their own once you have a nice number of them.
Give a Discount for a Like
Another great technique to use when you want to get your early Facebook fan base is to give a discount for liking your Facebook page. Everyone loves a sale, and most people are willing to like a Facebook page if it is going to save them a few bucks. You may be thinking that some people will just like your page and then unlike it the next day, but that’s a risk you should be willing to take. People tend to keep their likes forever once they like something for the first time, so this is not really something that you have to worry about over the long term.
Keep it Consistent and Keep Your Fans Coming Back for More
In addition to handing out a discount to bring people to your fan page, you may want to also give out some extra discounts to your fans on a regular basis. Once someone becomes a fan of your business, you need to give them some useful content from time to time. Some businesses think that any content is good content, but that is not really the reality of the situation. If you spew out garbage that nobody wants to read all day, people will actually go out of their way to dislike your page. On the other hand, if you keep yourself to a few quality posts per day, you will actually see your Facebook fan number go up over time.
Interact & Engage Regularly
Another way to keep your fans coming back to your Facebook fan page is to interact with the fans on the page. If someone leaves a comment on your page, try to comment back and engage with the customer. This is also a great place for customer service, but you will usually want to stick with private messages when it comes to serious accusations. You should never start to delete posts or do any other kinds of sketchy actions because then people will lose confidence in your business. A good rule of thumb to follow here is to let the customer or visitor do the talking at first. Try to avoid asking questions to get comments because some fans will find this to be rather useless and annoying.
Add the Like Button to Your Website
One of the best ways to expand your Facebook fan page once you have a good number of fans is to add a Like button to your website. You can also list the fans of your Facebook page on your website, which sometimes makes people more inclined to click the Like button. If you really want to make sure that people know that you are a reputable business, then you should put a Facebook fan page widget on your website. Consumers sometimes use these to check out what kind of feedback is being posted on the Facebook fan page for the website they are browsing. As long as everything checks out on the fan page, more people will be willing to shop on your website or sign up for your services.
Get the Friends of Friends
Another way to dramatically increase your Facebook fan count is to get your fans to tell their friends about your page. You can use discounts and coupons to add an incentive to sharing your fan page, or you can just hope people do it on their own. You can also use the Facebook Ads system to make your fan page show up as an ad for friends of people who are already fans of the page. The Facebook friend of the fan is probably more inclined to join your fan page, so this is a good form of targeted advertising that you can use to get quality results.
Final Thoughts
At the end of the day, you need to make sure that you have an attractive fan page that people want to view while they browse Facebook during their downtime. If you respond to your customers’ feedback and give them some kind incentive to keep coming back, your Facebook fan page could turn out to be a hit. The key is to not let your Facebook fan page turn into those feeds that never gets read by anyone on the Internet!