Three Ways to Promote Your Facebook Fan Page

Michael Sherman - November 25, 2009

Facebook is becoming more and more powerful everyday and everyone wants to become a part of it.  Here are 3 quick ways to promote your page and build up your company’s fan base.

Step 1 – Invite people from your Facebook friends list. Do you have your personal friends and professional colleagues segmented into lists on your Facebook home page? You can invite these lists as groups to your Facebook fan page rather than sending individual invites. This is the easiest and fastest way to jump-start your fan base. When you click “Suggest to Friends” on your fan page, start typing in the name of your friends list in the filtered friends section; for example, “Social Media Experts.” This will automatically send an invitation to your Facebook fan page to all of your colleagues listed in that category.

It’s possible that it may take a while before you start seeing those known faces pop up in your fan page, because people are busy. If is really crucial for a particular person to become a fan, you can also send them an individual invite. As you add more people to your network, remember to go back to your same lists and send the invite to the new people you have added. The names of those who have already been invited will be “grayed out” and the invite will only be sent to your new contacts.

Step 2 – Find People with Facebook Search.

The updated Facebook Search feature (see the Search bar at the top of Facebook) gives you a view into conversations of your friends and status updates that may even show you who may be looking for the services you offer.

There is even an option to search “Posts by Everyone,” which gives you a glimpse into conversations of people who may not be connected to you. After entering a search term, there will be a display, “Posts By Everyone.” This allows you to view conversations from others who aren’t in your friend lists. Then you can start up a direct conversation with them, telling them what you do and how you may be able to help them and let them know about your Facebook page.

Step 3 – Attract People With Facebook Social Ads

Social Ads provide advertisements alongside your Facebook sidebar which show related actions your friends have taken on the site. These actions may be things like “Mike is now a fan of Mashable”. Would you like to become a fan too?” It is possible to tailor ads to your friends and their interests, which makes it more appealing for them to take action because you are interested as well.

This strategy requires a small budget, but can be effective in finding your target market. It is very important to do a Facebook search with specific keywords in your particular niche to find out if it’s being talked about on Facebook.

If you click on “Promote with an Ad” on your fan page, you can start a campaign.  You can set a daily spending limit of $10, $25, or other appropriate amount. Use your keywords to identify your prospects. If they use those words in their profile, possibly in a job description they could come up in your fan page.

It’s possible to run your Facebook ads for only 4 to 5 days with a $25 per day budget. Then stop the ad for a few weeks and run the same ad again a few weeks later. This allows your fan page to grow in spurts. This can be effective in growing fan bases without spending a lot of money at once.

These are just three easy and quick ways to build up your fan base.  Some require less effort and some require a little more but overall the more faces seeing your business page the better.