Promoting with a Facebook Fan Page – Revisited
First of all, I’d like to thank Kim Roach for a killer traffic growing guest post last Friday, and I’d also like to thank her tribe. Many of Kim’s loyal followers came by SPI over the weekend, and to all of you I’d like to give you a warm welcome and a big thank you!
Secondly, I’d like to welcome all of the visitors coming from the Internet Business Mastery Blog today, linked here from a guest post that I wrote that went live today about eBooks. Thanks for stopping by!
As many of my long-time followers know, a few months ago I wrote one of my most successful, most widely-spread posts EVER, entitled THE Blogger’s Guide to Facebook. It goes over 2 months of hardcore research about Facebook as a means of traffic generation, including instructions on how to setup everything from scratch and maximize your results.
Since then, I haven’t let up on Facebook one bit. Now with over 1,550 Facebook Fans, I realize even more the power behind Facebook – not only for traffic generation, but for building a long-lasting, deeper relationship with your audience. Besides an email list, I believe a well built Facebook Fan Page is the next best thing in a blogger’s business-building arsenal.
Let’s get into it…
Driving Traffic
As I mentioned in THE Blogger’s Guide, Facebook is decent at driving traffic to your blog or website, but not the best as far as the quantity. However, the traffic that does come from Facebook tends to be of a much higher quality. By higher quality, I mean:
- The bounce rate is lower.
- The time spent on the site is longer.
- The number of page views per visit is higher.
- Conversions for various metrics are better.
Even today, all of the above still hold true for me.
Doing the Work For You
A lot of people have told me that a Facebook page is just a waste of time and their energy and efforts could be better spent trying to implement other means of traffic generation.
“My Facebook Fans would be my subscribers and followers on the blog anyways,” they say.
True, but think about this:
Facebook is all about connections and this is something we can use to our advantage. When your fans comment, paste links, or do anything on your Facebook page, their actions get posted on their own personal profile for all of their friends to see. Many of them will be interested and click over to your own page.
This means you can reach people (virally) that you would have never been able to reach otherwise, without having to do any real extra work. By participating, your fans are doing the work for you.
Relationship Building
Like I said, besides an email list, I think Facebook is the next best thing for your blog.
Why?
Because of the way you can interact with your audience.
With Facebook:
- You can easily organize multiple discussions with several different people at the same time. You can’t do this with Twitter, especially when it comes to going back to the history of certain conversations that you’ve had, and all of the pieces of the conversation involved.
- Other people can easily join in on existing discussions.
- When people leave comments, others who have already contributed to the conversation are notified. In most cases, they will return and read the latest comment and contribute even further.
- You can easily post links which conveniently allow you to select a graphic to go along with it. Choose one that is eye-catching and relevant, and you’re sure to grab people’s attention.
- Other people can easily post links or pictures to add to the content of whatever is being talked about. Your fans will feel like they can help contribute to the community, which is always a great feeling.
- You have a bit of control over some of the things that people post on your Page. It’s best to not be a Nazi and let people say what they have to say, but if people are shamelessly promoting things that aren’t relevant, you can easily delete them and keep your wall clean.
- And last but not least, people really get a sense of community on your page.
So you’ve setup your Facebook Page. Now what?
Here’s a list of things you can do on your fanpage that I’ve found to work quite well over the past several months:
- Post Links to Your Blog Posts: You can have this done automatically, but I don’t have it setup that way. I like to manually copy/paste my blog post urls into my status, which allows me to also add some additional commentary to go along with it. The commentary is vital for getting people to click your links, and it makes it seem less like you’re spamming. Here’s an example:
Notice the eye-catching graphic (imagine this showing up on your Facebook wall), and my commentary as well.
When you paste a link, Facebook automatically detects the Page Title and the Page Description, so if you have the All in One SEO Plugin for WordPress, make sure you optimize your Page Title and Description because that’s exactly what will show up here.
- Post Links to Other Helpful Posts: People will appreciate that you’re sharing what you find useful on the web. Seriously. Again, don’t just post the link – add some commentary to go along with it.
Keep People Informed: Heard any breaking news lately? Why not share it? Chances are you’ll be the first one to inform them (because a lot of people breath Facebook), and this will strengthen your authority.
- Keep People Updated: If you’re working on any cool projects (which I know you are), keep people updated on your progress! It can even help create some buzz for things that you might have planned for the near future.
- Test Certain Topics: One cool thing that I’ve learned to do with Facebook is to test topics out before they become blog posts. If certain topics generate a lot of interest, I usually write a blog post about it. And to take it even further, I make sure to mention that the Facebook page is where the discussion started (to get more Facebook fans), and I also make sure to link to the blog post in the discussion where I tested out the topic (for instant traffic, since the people who are in on the discussion would want to read more about it).
- Ask For Help: If you need help with anything, your fans will be right there to assist you, sometimes within the minute.
- Be Personal: Step away from the usual content and give people a glimpse of what your non-blogging, non-business life is like. They will appreciate it and you’ll seem more like a real person that your fans can connect and relate to.
These are just a few of the things you can do on your page if you’re looking to update it. Mix it up, but keep the updates consistent, and it will do wonders for you and your brand.
Insight – Your Facebook Page Metrics
When you setup your own Fan Page, you’ll see something in the left hand sidebar under your profile picture that is called Insight. This is only visible to you (and any other admins for your page), and it’s where you can check all of your stats. I won’t go over the details, but you can check to see how many interactions your page has received, the growth of your page, the demographical breakdown, etc.
In case you’re interested, here’s the breakdown of all of my fans so far (as of April 16th):
Also, once a week Facebook will send you an email with a summary of the metrics of your fanpage, which is pretty cool too.
The Part That Sucks About Having a Facebook Fan Page
I love Facebook and how the Fan Page system works, but there’s one thing that I hate about it:
As the admin, I don’t get any sort of notification when people leave a comment on my wall.
I have no idea why this is the case, but in trying to find a solution, I came across a forum post on Facebook that has over 6000 people complaining about the same exact thing.
The only real way to stay truly updated on your wall is to check it every so often, which is exactly what I do. It sucks, and hopefully Facebook will have a solution for us soon, but I don’t mind because of everything else I mentioned today.
If you find a solution, please PLEASE let me know. If I find one, I’ll update this immediately as well.
Show Off Your Facebook Fan Page!
Since THE Blogger’s Guide to Facebook was written, I’ve received at least 100 emails from people who have created their own Fan Pages with the help of my guide. That’s awesome!
Now’s your time to show them off. If you have one, feel free to leave a link to it in the comments below. I’d love to have a look.
Thanks everyone, and I wish you all the best. Cheers!
p.s. If you have yet to join me on my Fanpage, come check it out!
Posted on : April 19th, 2010
Related posts:
- Are You Optimizing Your 404 Page? Yes, Your 404 Page.
- THE Blogger’s Guide to Facebook
- Promote Your Own Products by Promoting Other People’s Success With It
- Discover How Facebook Can Snowball Traffic to Your Website
- How to Hide a Page from Google
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67 Comments (Click Here to Leave a Comment Below)
Hey Pat,
I thought about setting up my Facebook Fan Page but I have yet to start on it. I was wondering what are the benefits that compare directing readers to our Facebook fan page to sharing with them our personal Facebook profile. What do you think?
Cheers,
Vincent
The Facebook Page can have your business name at the end of it, so you will get a bit of SEO presence from it. The pages rank very high in Google. Other than that, they are basically the same thing, so it’s just personal preference. Many people prefer to keep their friendships/family separate from their business online, like myself.
Plus, I believe there is a 5000 friend limit with your personal profile, where as there is no limit with a fan page.
Yes there is. Fan pages too provide better branding and outreach opportunities for you especially if you want to use Facebook Ads.
Hey Pat,
You have a lot of good information here! I will definitely be following the advice you posted above.
I just got started on my FB fan page. I absolutely LOVE soccer and decided to create a website for it – the website is currently under development. In the mean time I use the FB fan page to alert fans of cool soccer events, goals, and blog posts, among other things, around the world. When the website is ready for use, I will alert my fans.
If you have any suggestions on how I can improve my FB fan page, by all means, please let me know. I know I am missing a landing page but I will work on that in the near future.
Soccer Yourself FB Fan Page – http://bit.ly/bP6adG
-Ricardo
P.S. That’s actually me under your Keep People Updated!
Haha, yup! That is you!
Good job on the fanpage. Great to see you with so many fans already. However, when I visited your page, I was just taken directly to the wall. Did you happen to check out the video about how to create your own landing page? I think that would help a lot, and only people who are new to your facebook page would see it, so they would be more likely to become a fan. Hope that helps! Cheers!
Pat,
I did check out the video of creating my own landing page. I am in the process of doing that right now. With the new FB situation of liking a page rather than becoming a fan, things are changed a bit. Either way, I hope to have a landing page ready in the near future!
Thanks for the compliments and comments!
-Ricardo
I think the only difference is the terminology. Instead of clicking a “become a fan” button, it’s clicking the “like” button. It all does the same. it just sucks they used the same word as “like” which you can do to people’s comments, videos, pictures, links, etc.
I like what you are doing Ricardo and I just became a Fan. I hope to see it really develop and take off.
Tyler,
Thank you very much! I checked out your blog. You had me sold in the first 15 seconds: Finance and Entrepreneurship. That’s the stuff I like to read about! I look forward to your posts.
-Ricardo
nice post,Pat.Also wanted to tell you that you need to correct the link here:
http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/go/ibm-blog/
Ahh, I appreciate that Adam. Thanks! (Fixed)
Hey Pat,
Thanks for the Facebook Fan Page information. That is a good idea about talking about news on Facebook. You are right about people breathing Facebook and it is good for promotion purposes. Thanks you for this great information. I always enjoy reading your blog and reading the insightful ideas that you have.
Anytime Alacia! I’m glad I could provide you with some helpful content. All the best to you!
I have my fanpage up and running. It is: http://www.facebook.com/ExecutiveAssist which is actually of my main business, List 2 Close Assistant. The fan page is just one more marketing tool in your arsenal. You should definitely take advantage of it if you haven’t already.
Hi Serita! Glad to see you changed the url to make it look nicer, and after going over to the page myself, I was glad to see you making use of the landing page too. Cheers!
Thanks for another great post Pat. We’ve had a Facebook fan page since day one and it’s been a big help in driving traffic. We’ve also done like you and tested topics before making them articles. I think a Facebook page is essential in todays internet environment.
Awesome Darryl! If you wanted to, feel free to reply with a link so I and others can visit your page.
Good stuff!
Thanks Pat. Here’s a link to our page. http://www.facebook.com/SlyMiser
I created my FB fan page after reading your guide about a month ago! You can check it out here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Low-Calorie-Dietcom/125922813799. Thanks for your helpful tips. The viral nature of FB is starting to take off as my number of subscribers is steadily increasing every week. Thanks Pat!
Awesome Tory! Keep up the good work. Try posting a status update on your wall, or a question and see if people start to participate.
All the best to you!
Tory,
I noticed that this link is rather long, while others on here are simply facebook.com/. My Facebook business page is like yours, in that it has a string of numbers in the URL. Do you know how to make it like Pat’s or others on here, where it is much shorter and easier to share?
Thanks,
James
It’s nothing to gawk out quite yet….
http://www.facebook.com/InfoBarrel?ref=ts#!/pages/InfoBarrelSuccesscom/178481251502?ref=ts
But, I created a Fan page to my Course, but, I had this set up early so, on every page of every book of my course, I included a “Contact us” footer at the bottom….directing people to go to the Facebook fan page if they have any questions or concerns….
The assumption was that if people would be interested enough to purchase, they’d also be interested enough to join the fan page….just another way to ‘connect’ with customers….
Of course, at the tail end of each book, with provided various social media/email ways for people to connect with us, as well…
Hey Howie, you gotta start somewhere, right? Just talked to Ryan today – thanks again for letting me know about him and everything he’s doing. =)
Great post! I should probably do this for my page!
Definitely! Let me know when it’s setup, or if you need help with anything. Cheers!
@Pat, the number of fans for my FB fanpage for my Virtual Assistant site is growing gradually but for some reason I have not been able to get them to post questions or their own response to the wall. What do you suggest?
Just keep engaging them. Ask questions and get people comfortable with responding. A lot of times people hate to see questions unanswered, so they’ll end up answering it themselves.
Do you do any promotion for your fan page, besides mentioning it here and on twitter?Or is the best way to grow it just to continue to engage with folks and give it time? I have two FB pages:
http://www.facebook.com/moneycrush
and
http://www.facebook.com/PayOffDebtApp
and am trying out a giveaway on the one for the app.
I promote it in lots of places. Here on the blog, on twitter, in my eBook, on guest posts and interviews, and in forums. Having a link at the bottom of my posts in forums has helped the growth of the fan base quite a bit actually. With time though, people will come by, but the more chances you give them, the sooner it will happen =)
http://www.facebook.com/idrawdigital
I’ve had it up for a little while now. It’s a decent way of informing people in my circle of friends about updates to my site, and I’ve received a few new adds from it appearing in the ‘friend finder’ list.
I don’t really use it for much else, since I’d rather not spam the news update list. I’ve actually had more success with Twitter updates, even though the discussion is limited to 140 characters. I may have to do a bit of both and test it for sure. I also haven’t finished the landing page either, so technically the fan page is in a BETA state.
Yeah, twitter is a great tool as well. I get quite a bit of traffic from Twitter, but as I mentioned in the article, I get higher quality traffic from FB. Both have a viral nature which is awesome though.
If you need any help with the landing page. Let me know. Cheers Drezz!
I get it now! I’ve been spending too much time on my ‘friend’ page and not updating the ‘fan’ page manually, it’s been on auto update the whole time.
Yeah, an auto updated fanpage will be just that, with no real sense of community and no involved discussions. It’s never too late to start chatting it up and updating it every once and a while though!
With your help, I have a growing Fan Page for Engaged Marriage. If you are married or engaged to be married, I think you’ll get a lot of out of the discussions that happen within our cool community.
http://www.facebook.com/EngagedMarriage
Thanks Pat!
Wow! I’m a fan of your page already, but hadn’t been over for a while. It’s grown quite a bit! That’s awesome! I definitely recommend Dustin’s page and his site for any married or engaged couples =)
It’s so funny this was the post for today. I was coming back to your site in search of the bloggers guide to facebook because I’m ready to get my fan page set up, and you just so happened to be revisiting it today. Gotta say thanks for that. I really appreciate the breakdown and comparisons to quality of traffic. You are definitely right in saying that Facebook traffic is going to be of much higher quality than Twitter traffic.
Thanks for the post Pat
Haha! What an awesome coincidence. I think something just told me you were going to come back to SPI today to look for Facebook stuff =)
Anyways, let me know if you need help with anything. Cheers Brandon!
I have a fan page but I haven’t been doing much with it. All I am really doing is feeding my posts to it. http://www.facebook.com/SuburbanDollarFan this was a good motivator though to take more interest in it.
Nice Kyle. Thanks for sharing. I definitely think doing more than just feeding posts would do some good!
I’m going to have to use that line to help promote and spread the word. Nice move. My facebook page is basically a link to my website, although I do have some interaction with a couple of users. My images look nice though.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jewelry-Secrets/283306249502
Nice Richard! You need some more fans (er, they are calling them “likes” now). Are you doing anything to actively get some more?
lol not really, just posting on there everday and trying to get more interaction.
I’m going to step out of the shadows and jump into the conversation today…
I noticed Facebook started sending me weekly summaries of the activity on my page about a month ago. The fifth summary arrived today, including this information:
+12 Fans this week (383 total Fans)
16 Wall Posts, Comments, and Likes this week (14 last week)
516 visits to your page this week(531 visits last week)
This data is not something I requested, and is obviously an automated update. Since they can now automate this kind of information, I’m hoping they wake up soon to the fact that many of us would like to choose which data we see and how often. I agree with you, Pat; it would be nice — no, make that “is essential” — to know when someone has posted on my wall without having to pop over there regularly to check on it.
Since I am a fan of my own page, I do see on my personal wall when someone responds to my fan page posts, but I don’t get feed when a fan initiates a post. Also, it means I must still go to Facebook to get information. If I go to my personal feed, I am far too likely to get sidetracked into someone’s latest photo album!
Have you seen this video on the subject? It discusses this problem. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BAwO1rd_SY
Oh, one other thing, Pat…my site compiles lists of food-related contests. Most of them are recipe contests, but some don’t require recipes at all. When I found this one, I thought of you. Check it out! http://www.contestcook.com/varied.htm#LetsMoveApp
Julie,
Thanks for jumping out of the shadows today! It’s much appreciated.
I’ve been getting those automated emails too for the Insight and analytics, and it’s great! And yes, it leads me to believe they could easily have some sort of notification system for us admins. I mean, why wouldn’t they have that feature. Who knows, it boggles the mind.
Thanks for the vid, and the link to your site too. Very cool!
Cheers Julie!
my god, my FB FanPage has been on my ‘to-do’ list since january! i think after reading this post it’s time to give this task a little more priority! will report back with the link once its done
Great Herbie! Please do send over a link once you get the chance. Good luck!
Hey Pat, I really appreciated this post because although I’ve really, really embraced everything Web 2.0/social media, I simply couldn’t quantify the value of a FB fanpage….until now. Your posts are always worth reading. Thanks for what you do.
Those are very kind words, thanks Marcus. I went full force with FB because I really did want to see if it was beneficial for us internet marketers and bloggers, because no one had really tackled that question before. I’m glad to know my efforts were not lost and I’m now able to provide good information to everyone else at the same time. Cheers Marcus! Thanks!
very on target post
Thanks Steve!
Thanks for the info Pat.I’ll check my fan page to see what I have made
No problem, Patricia!
I am trying to enhance my business FB fan page..
I would like my “landing page ” to have a concise list of services for my Animal hospital….
I was thinking of posting somehow linking a small ad I used in the past (PDF file)…
Any all suggestions on my FB page or website would be greatly appreciated.
Andy Frishman DVM
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/andrew.frishman1
Hi Andrew – I sent you an email with some of the details. Let me know here if you didn’t get it. Cheers!
I’ve also recently set up a fan page for our site. We currently have a small community, but I’m proud of each person who chose to be a fan of our site.
I’m the same way, Julius. It makes me happy because I know each and every one of them consciously took the time to click that button to become a fan (er now, it’s to “like” my page), which means and says a lot.
All the best to you!
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Thanks, Pat! I’ve had my facebook fan page for a couple of months now, thanks to your guide – and it’s really starting to take off…especially since it’s for a website that is local to my town. I had no idea about the insights thing. That’s some awesome information! Here’s the page: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Monroe-Underground/266715086436
Great post! As usual.
Hey Pat,
This was a very timely post as I was trying to figure out the best way to expand my fan page. I currently only have my blog feed going to the page (as well as going to my personal page). I wanted to, like you said, create a community there. Thanks for the follow up article and the original article that I found because of the follow up.
Thanks so much for this post! For some reason I forgot about how you can add an image so easily to a link. That will make it much simpler to post when I have added something new to the shop!
Here is our page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hip-and-Little/66386258175
Also, what do you think of the new Facebook “like” buttons that can be added to websites?
Hi Pat,
I followed your video and created an FB page for my Understanding Graphics blog. I cover topics related to all things graphic … particularly how to make them more effective. Here’s the page: http://bit.ly/b9ryMq.
Thanks for the help. Now I’ll be more able to communicate with my blog readers.
I still need to set up a facebook page, think I’m going to get it done once I change over servers for my site.
*Goes to check the bloggers guide to facebook*
Here’s my scuba diving Fan page link: http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/pages/LEscala/Kenna-Eco-Diving/33107169489?ref=ts
It’s quite a niche and not many fans yet. Any ideas for increasing traffic to it?
Hey Pat
Thanks for all your help with creating our page, your content on here is fantatsic, we have set up two Fan pages on FB been running less than a month so still a lot to do it terms of getting fans but looking nice, see links http://www.facebook.com/siamvillarentals?v=app_4949752878 & http://www.facebook.com/siamrealestate?v=app_10442206389
I mainly plan to use my Facebook Fan Page to build relationships. But I love your page Pat. The fact that you answer all comments is simply amazing. Customer Service is always important and this is your Customer Service. 5 Stars!
I’ve enjoyed reading your blog for a while now, Pat. And I’ve been a fan of your fan page for months now. Thank you so much for sharing your journey. Very inspiring. And informative. Please feel free to check out my facebook fan page for my lifestyle/life-improvement blog, Life Candy. It’s at: http://www.facebook.com/lifecandy