Promoting your business is easy when you do it smart!

There is no point having a Facebook Page for your business, group, or cause if you don’t promote it. There are countless ways for you to do this. Here are our top tips:

  1. The first tips are ‘no-brainers’ but still worth mentioning:
    1. Follow Facebook’s lead and suggest the page to all your Facebook friends.
    2. Create a Facebook ad. This will help drive traffic to your page and if your content is sufficiently compelling you will build fans. If you find that your ad fails to deliver results, you may need to reconsider what you’re offering.
  2. Point out the obvious. Some people aren’t frequent Facebook users and may not be familiar with how it all works. Make it clear that you want them to click the ‘Like’ button. Feel free to use the below image for your own use. Like My Like Button
  3. Advertise it through your emails.Put an image in your email signature that says ‘Follow us on Facebook’. Over time all your customers will hopefully become fans.
  4. Create a “like box”. Place a “like box” on your website(s) or any other online platforms you use.
  5. Give away coupons. If you are selling a product or service, you can create and give away coupons which your fans can use to get discounts or other bonuses.
  6. Create compelling content. One of the best ways to grow your fan base is with regular posts on your wall. Keep them short and concise. Link to an external page if there is lots of content. People generally scan pages for something that interests them, and big chunks of text in a post tends to put them off. If the topic grabs their interest they will click through.
  7. Frequency is king. Most people don’t look past the first ten entries that appear on their wall. After all, if they have many Facebook friends and all are active posters, they may only see the posts for that particular day, sometimes even only for that hour. This means that if you don’t post frequently, your messages may not be seen by your fans. Posting once a week should be your minimum, and every day is best.
  8. Don’t sell, sell, sell. Facebook is like any other networking platform: you need to develop trust before people will buy from you. In industries such as legal and financial advising this relationship-building process can take even longer because so much is at stake. Don’t try to sell to every person every time you go online. Let the relationship grow.
  9. Engage with your fans. In simple terms this means, when someone leaves a comment on your wall, write back to them. When you start engaging with your fans it will show that you really care about them. They will therefore be more likely to tell their friends about you. Communicating with your fans will also entice others to take part in the conversation which creates a real buzz on your page. The more buzz the more biz!
  10. Ask questions. A good way to spark a conversation is to ask questions. People will answer!
  11. Less tabs are more! Don’t have lots of tabs just because you can. Make good use of them. In general, the less distraction from your core message the better.
  12. Create a custom page. Consider building a custom page that has an irresistible offer, a fun video, or anything else that will entice people to become fans.
  13. Tag! If you come across someone in a photo on Facebook and they are a fan/friend of yours, tag their name to the image. This will then appear on their personal profile and in their friends’ news feeds.
  14. Use @ replies. Just like tagging, you can refer directly to a post on another person’s Facebook page by inserting the @ symbol in front of their name. Your post is instantly visible on their wall plus their name becomes a clickable link so your reader can jump straight to their page. This is a great way to get onto the walls of other people and businesses and possibly share their fan base. Don’t abuse this, however, as you can easily be seen as a spammer.
  15. Shorten your URL. Once you have over twenty-five friends, create a vanity URL. This essentially means you can shorten your Facebook page address to something more memorable. For example, ours is www.facebook.com/tropixel
  16. Make your fans feel special. You can hide certain areas of your website from the general public, making it visible to them only once they become a fan . The more compelling your secret, the better your chances that people will become fans. Offer them some free advice or a coupon code that can save them money.
  17. Schedule your posts. You can write posts ahead of time then schedule their upload using tools such as
    Hootsuite . This is particularly handy if you are going away on holidays and will be offline.
  18. Link to popular sites in your niche. If you send traffic to your competitors they may reciprocate the favour and link back to you.
  19. Use Apps. Utilise thrid party applications such as Twitter to cross-promote content on your other social media platforms or/and websites.
  20. Let Others Spead The Word. With applications like Pay With A Tweet you can get your followers to spread the word about what you are doing.
  21. Use Social Bookmarks. Add social bookmarking tools to your website such as “Add This” to make it even easier to “Like” you and share your great website/content with their friends.