Things That Make Them Like Your Business
To have a successful Facebook presence, you first need to ask one question: Why in the world would anyone want to Like your business on Facebook when there are millions of other great pages?
People choose to Like Facebook pages for a wide variety of reasons, but at the end of the day, it all comes down to positive relationships.
Unless you reach out to the people in a business, you never really develop a true liking that sticks. People are the piece that keeps you coming back for more.
You want people to reach out to your business, so you have to spark conversations that get them to interact with you.
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Think for a moment of a business that you like (outside of Facebook) and why you like it. Co-author John is a big fan of his chiropractors, Drs. Seema and Arun Mani in Geneva, Illinois. John doesn’t just like the services his chiropractors perform, but the conversations he has every time he sees them. They connect. They have a relationship. John knows where each doctor went for vacation on spring break and what their favorite part of the trip was. They, in turn, know that his family went swimming at the local water park and had a blast. Replicate the same relationship on Facebook. Get personal.
The Top Five Ways to Engage Your Fans
You should post news on your Facebook Wall on a weekly basis. Some fans will comment on your posts and some won’t. Don’t discount the individuals who don’t post on your Wall. You’ve got to give people time to warm up. And some posts will resonate with some people and not others. Here are some suggestions for getting more engagement your fans:
Use action words. When you first start winning fans, you will get engagement simply by asking for it. Use action words like Visit, Click, Share, Post, Like, Watch, and Tell Us ….
Action words motivate fans to engage. They help make your message stand out from among the thousands of messages people see each day.
Keep your posts short. The many studies done on Facebook engagement reveal that the shorter the posts, the more people engage with them.
To maximize engagement, try to limit your Facebook posts to no more than 85 characters. (About the length of the previous sentence!)
Post when people are on Facebook. Most people engage on Facebook during the morning before work (7 A.M.), right after work (5 P.M.), and late at night (11 P.M.). If you can reach them when they’re online, you have a better chance of getting them to speak their mind.
Make them laugh out loud. People love to laugh. Posting funny thoughts brings out the best in people and gets them talking. If you can get people to laugh, you’ve got engagement.
Ask questions. When someone asks you a question, you instinctively want to answer it. That’s why questions work well on Facebook. Ask away: Who? What? When? Where? How?
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Try to avoid asking “Why” questions. These can be seen as invasive and fans tend to shy away from them.
Imprinting Your Brand
Your brand is one of the most important assets of your business on Facebook. We’re not talking about logos and tag lines, but what these stand for: what your business does, how you’re different from your competition, and why customers should buy from you.
These are the kinds of things you need to instill in your fans. Brands imprint emotions. People see brands and have instant opinions of them. For example, Martha Stewart’s brand isn’t about homemaking per se, but about taking the painstaking time to create a wonderful home. When you use one of Martha’s products, it shows to yourself and to others that you are emotionally invested in making the best living space possible. What emotional reaction do you want customers to have when they think of your brand?
Here are some brands on Facebook you might not be familiar with. Notice how they establish their brand and what they offer their fans. What is likable about them?
Dog Bless You (www.facebook.com/exploredogs). A brand dedicated to championing the selfless acts of others. Their Fan page shares stories of owners and their dogs.
For every 5,000 Likes, they gift a dog to a soldier living with PTSD.
American Association of Medical Assistants. A brand dedicated to passionately serving medical-assisting professionals through education, certification, and networking.
Liking their page (see Figure 10.1) gets you access to exclusive Facebook content such as their posts, contests, and exclusive talks with their leaders. Another key feature of this site is that it enables members to “connect with colleagues.”
Puritan Cleaners (see Figure 10.2). A brand dedicated to not only local dry cleaning in Richmond, Virginia, but to serving the community at large through charitable events. This is the most active dry cleaner in the country when it comes to social media and Facebook marketing. They change their Fan page often with the charitable events they cover.
Like their page and see why they have been selected as one of America’s Best Cleaners.
Figure 10.2: The Puritan Cleaners Facebook page.
Chick-fil-A (www.facebook.com/ChickfilA). A brand dedicated to serving great food and establishing community connections. Like their page and see why their fans love them.
You want people to see your brand on Facebook and the first thing that pops into their mind is, “These guys are the best and that’s why I am a fan.”
How you craft your message represents your brand on Facebook.
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Give visitors reasons to Like you on your Facebook Fan page, such as “We like you. So here are a few reasons to like us …” or “Like us to get access to discounts to some of the best restaurants in your local area.”
What Keeps Them Coming Back
People revisit Fan and Group pages because they’re looking for the latest news, the greatest tips, and because they want to be entertained and feel good. You’re not going to fill these needs if you only post once a month. Instead, you should plan to update your page weekly or daily.
What you post is as important as how frequently you post. Here are suggestions for postings that will encourage people to check out your site regularly:
• Write snappy Wall posts about current events.
• Use large vertical images, which tend to stand out on the Facebook Wall.
• Use videos in Wall posts. Videos stick out of the crowd because they’re highly engaging. The large blue button on the image of the video also stands out.
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You have to start somewhere with engagement. Reach out to your loyal customers and ask them to help you by commenting on a regular basis. Priming the pump with comments gets the conversations started, and frequent updates keep them going.