AP 0620: How Do I Encourage Followers to Subscribe to My Facebook Fan Page?

AskPat 620 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 620 AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always I'm here to help you with your online business questions, five days a week.

We've a great question today from John but before we get to John's question, I want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks.com, which makes super simple cloud accounting software for your small business. It's an awesome tool to use. So, as soon as you can try it you'll realize just how much time you can save with your day-to-day paperwork.

For invoicing, for example, you can create and send perfectly crafted invoices, and it literally takes less than thirty seconds. With online payments, your clients will be able to pay you so easily and so fast. There is also automated expense tracking, so you can link your FreshBooks account to your credit and debit cards. You don't have to worry so much about getting all that done because it's all done automatically for you. So if you want to check it out for 30 days for free, just go to Freshbooks.com/askpat and enter “Ask Pat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section. It's all you gotta do.

All right here's today's question from John.

John: Hey Pat, it's good to chat with you. I'm John Von Hoff. I'm the owner of Writers and Authors On Fire podcast. I'm an author with books in two distinctly different genres. One on foot care for extreme athletes and one on pastoral search and then I have my website and podcast. So, how do I get people

So, how do I get people on Facebook to keep subscribing, wanting to befriend me on my personal Facebook page and instead subscribe to my fan pages or my podcast and for my “fixing your feet” book? I hate to just issue an ultimatum out there saying I'm gonna purge my friends. But I got so many that follow me because of my writing on feet, because of my podcast, because of my writing in general, because they went to high school because they're family and it just goes on and on. How can I better work with my fan pages and get people to subscribe over there? I would appreciate any ideas I love your show, thank you very much.

Pat Flynn: Hey John, what's up? Thanks so much for the question. It seems like you have got a lot going on. I think it's obvious to all of us listening and that's okay. When it comes to your personal Facebook page, a lot of people who listen to you on your podcast, a lot of people who find you on your website, wherever they find you they are going to find you on Facebook by looking up your name. Typically, your name will show up, and they'll follow you there and ask to friend you and that is going to be most likely your personal page.

You know I have a lot of friends on my personal page, but also have a lot of people who want to become my friend who discovered me on Smart Passive Income, through some of my other projects. The way that I balance that out, and the way I would recommend balancing it out for you, is you can either message people directly if you know that they're not your friend. You can kinda see and engage that based on, you know a lot of times Facebook will tell you how the connection is there, if they're friends with some of your existing friends you would know, and you would be able to accept them. If not, you might want to message them and tell them, or have some sort of canned response that's maybe a little bit personalized with their name and what not.

You can say, “Hey thank you so much, I'm sorry, but I don't have enough room here on my Facebook page. A lot of you are asking to become friends, and I just wanna make sure I direct you to the right spot.” So you can direct them to each of those pages.
I would recommend that even if your friends and family might be interested in those things, that on your personal page, you can also just talk about some of these other things you have going on but also link to some of these other pages too. I think it's important to have these fan pages, though, and the reason that that's important is because that's where those communities should exist and that's where those people have those interests and shared interests. They can help each other out, it helps grow the community, which ultimately helps grow your brand too.

You can also just mention on each of those platforms, on your podcast, on those blog posts or on these websites, that there is exclusive content there. Just direct people to there instead of just having them potentially search for you on Facebook through your name because that way they go directly to those fan pages. You'll grow those likes there. You'll be able to give specific content just for them that's gonna be there for that particular topic. So, that's what I would do. I would send messages to those who try and friend you. If you don't know who they are, send them that

So, that's what I would do. I would send messages to those who try and friend you. If you don't know who they are, send them that canned message. You could use something like ‘Text Expander', which will allow you to pre-write a whole thing. Then just use a couple of hot keys on your keyboard to then type out that whole thing for you automatically in just a few seconds. I use that for a number of different responses for my email and this would be a great use case for that too.

So again, when people send you a friend request you can say, ” Hey thank you for the friend request, I appreciate it. If I don't know you specifically or if you know me from one of these different places here's a Facebook page that would be better suited for you because it will have content that's relevant to your interests. I'm also active there and there's some exclusive content there too.” Some people might not know when they request to have you as a friend, that you have all these other things going on too. So it might actually be interesting, and you get some people who subscribe to everything.

So, John, that's what I would recommend, and I wish you all the best and keep up the great work. Want to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. For those of you listening, if you have a question that you would like potentially featured here on the show just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page.

I also want to thank today's sponsor once again, which is Freshbooks.com. That link to get it for 30 days for free, you can go to Freshbooks.com/askpat. Make sure you enter “Ask Pat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section.

All right, thanks so much for listening. I appreciate it and here's a quote to finish off the day by Dan Zarella. He said, “Marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed.”

Just don't do that. Take care. See you in the next episode. Bye.