The Facebook Fanpage.  It’s everywhere!

After some time of groping in the dark, and some functionality changes to groups and pages, marketers have now turned in force toward the fanpage.

Why? It’s another platform for interacting with your audience and expanding brand recognition.

Need more? Here are some lovely statistics from Morpace, Inc…

• Facebook has more than 400,000,000 registered users.
• 68% of consumers with Facebook accounts say a positive referral from a Facebook friend would make them more likely to buy from or visit a retailer.
• 36% say Facebook is a good tool for researching products.

Here are a few very simple tips, which can greatly improve the quality of your Facebook marketing…

Give your fans a voice
Interaction with your fans is a goal, so allow it to happen and allow it to be easily found.

I often see businesses that have made it hard for fans to be visible based upon the wall settings. Allow your fans to post to your wall, post photos, and post videos. Real people posting photos of themselves using your products, well, that’s gold, especially if you are in the travel and tourism business.

Within your admin section, under wall settings, ensure you are allowing your fans to interact.

Ask A Question
How many times have you carefully crafted a wall post, only to have no comments or response? When you make statements, you automatically preclude interaction.

Ask people questions. For example, if you were going to post about an event happening this coming weekend, don’t stop with just the basic “This weekend be sure to visit blah blah for event XYZ.” Finish with an open-ended question, “What are your plans for the weekend?”.

Try it.  Yes, social media is about connections.  But people really (really) want to talk about themselves.  Are you inviting them to do that?

Post Photos in Threes
Many small businesses are digital asset-poor not having vast library’s of photos and videos. Because of this you have to maximize your assets and try to receive the greatest amount of interaction.

So, when posting photos to your fan page, post in groups of three. You can continue to add to existing albums, and maximize the opportunity for interaction.

Why three? Simply because three photos are all that will show on the page when you post. Post three, then when it is time to post again, the freshest three will display on the page.

A side benefit is that it will display any previous interaction with the album, allowing you to leverage social proof to keep fans posting and interacting with your content.

Those are just three simple tips for fanpage optimization.  There are tons more.  What are your favorites?

Tags: facebook, fanpage marketing, getting started in social media, marketing strategy, Pat Strader

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 6th, 2010 at 8:24 am and is filed under Digital Marketing, Marketing, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.