Articles in The 'Growing Facebook Followers' Tag

Grow Facebook “likes” By Using Facebook For Websites

by Melanie Wahl

Unlike in the 1989 Kevin Costner movie, Field of Dreams, where he builds a baseball diamond on the land he used to farm and people lined up for miles, building a Facebook Page won’t automatically attract people to know about and like your business.  Businesses need a strategy before creating a Facebook Page and part of this strategy should address how they plan to attract visitors to their Page and how they plan to convert these visitors to “likes” and then, often considered the most important step is how to convert these “likes” into sales.

Facebook is only a tool to be used to socialize with potential new customers and to keep up a conversation with current customers; this fact is often forgotten or simply misunderstood.  Just having a Facebook Page is not enough.  You need to know what you plan to offer and how you will communicate your message.  When building your page, keep in mind that you want your content to be of a nature that people will want to share.  Is your proposed content something people will want to talk about?  Does it have an interactive component?  These are questions your strategy should be able to answer.

Have you thought of what the main goal is for your Facebook Page?  If it was simply to “have a presence on Facebook” you may need to rethink your strategy.  Much like a company’s mission statement, your Facebook Page should have a purpose (with additional calls-to-action for specific promotions, events, or products added in later).  An example of a Page with a purpose is Starbucks (technically a family of Pages, Apps and Places).  Starbucks’ Official Page (http://www.facebook.com/starbucks/) is in the Food/Beverages category and has the purpose of being a platform on which to talk about and share information about Starbucks’ products.  Starbucks has gone one step further in their goal of sharing their products with everyone and created a minisite (http://www.mystarbuckssignature.com).   

http://www.mystarbuckssignature.com/

This minisite was created with the specific goal of introducing people to Starbucks’ extensive offerings in their products and giving them a way of sharing their favorite flavor combinations with their friends.  The upper right hand section of the page includes an AddThis share button which with a few clicks allows a visitor to share the minisite across the web through their preferred social networks, a Facebook Like Button which allows the minisite to be shared on the wall and in the streams of the person who clicks the button, and a button that integrates the minisite with a Facebook App to help share the designed beverage made on MyStarBucksSignature.com.  More information about the Facebook Like Button Plugin and how to add the Login Button to authenticate your Facebook account can be found here: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/web/.

The three buttons in the upper right of the minisite:

What will appear on a user’s Facebook Wall if that user clicks the Facebook Like Button:

These Wall posts not only build brand awareness, but they show a community around the brand’s products.

The minisite also appears in a user’s search of Facebook for the brand name “starbucks” amidst other Facebook properties even though it does not have its own minisite Facebook Page:

So, let’s recap.  The wrong way to grow your Facebook presence is to jump in without a plan, start posting and commenting without a strategy or response model in place, and to sit idly after making a few sales-y sounding posts expecting people to flock to your site and shower you with “likes” and positive comments.  The right way to grow “likes” of your Facebook Page is to have a strategy in place around the purpose of your company’s presence on Facebook, having a strategy in place that will address your plan to create engaging, shareable, and interesting content, and then creating this content and monitoring/joining the conversations that it sparks.

If you need help developing your social media marketing strategy, Morevisibility would love to set up a call to learn about your business.  Feel free to learn more about MoreVisibility’s Social Media services and be sure to see our social media design portfolio.