I was thinking of short-cuts today – no reason. Then, I thought of cheat sheets. And wondered if I could write one, period. Facebook was on my mind too so I wondered if I could pen down a cheat sheet for activities to promote a Facebook page or a Facebook App (if anyone is asinine enough to build one – a notable exception is Zynga)
And so, I did. To avoid reading the twaddle that I’ve penned down, download the Facebook Promotion Cheat Sheet here. The brave ones may read on.
1. Create Groups: Create a group highlighting the benefits of your Facebook page or application. Seed the group by inviting folks from your friends list. Try to begin a network effect by asking your friends to invite their pals in turn to join this group or just become a fan of your page/install the application. Note that this may seem like a redundant step because a page already exists. The point of creating these groups is that you can base them on a variety of themes or promotions. For e.g. if you’re Staples, then create groups around the ‘Back to School’ promotions in Fall, the ‘Easy’ button, other local store promos etc.
2. Identify similar groups: Find other groups whose members have strong commonalties with your target demographic. Join those groups and post messages on their walls describing your page and the benefits of joining it and link back to your page.
3. Use Events: Have a virtual web event launching the page on Facebook. Like the groups in #1, seed the same using your friends and ask them to invite their friends in turn.
4. Identify Live-wire members: If you know someone who has more than 1000 friends, send them a message asking them to plug your page for you to their network. Negotiate a fee depending on how many times you want ‘em to message their friends. Again, this is dependent on which demographic you’re going after to get your fans.
5. Email blast: If you have a permission-based list, send out a cool email blast highlighting the benefits of joining your group. Use a tool like Constant Contact or Exact Target – it’ll help you see stats of who’s visited you page. Facebook will provide you the membership stats. Have a call-to-action button somewhere on the email – something like : ‘Join now’ or ‘Become a fan now!”. Don’t forget the color scheme of the promo-email, have it match the colors of Facebook and your page.
6. Simply ask: Ask your close friends to install it and ask them to invite other people to become a fan of your business.
7. Other avenues: Use other platforms to advertise your Facebook page – I’d do Stumble upon, Diggo, maybe even write a Knol. Do more however. Go onto Squidoo and create a page for your ‘Page”. Do the same on Mahalo. And some more on other platforms. Start with the above…hopefully, the page will gain traction and you’ll have hundreds of fans.
Nice post. But, a mere online presence on Facebook won’t serve the purpose of reaching out and impressing your target audience, to beat the competition you need a well designed website with a good search rank and for that you need search engine optimization.
Agreed. Thanks for the input.