Why 97% of Facebook FanPages Don't Work

Every day a larger number of small to medium size businesses embrace social media as a viable marketing strategy...Or is it?
Unfortunately I see many page owners who obviously got very enthusiastic in the beginning and then lost momentum: often they have not added any posts for over a month and their page carries 120 odd likes. As a result you have guessed it, they lost interest and went back to their expensive traditional advertising like the phone book and newspapers, with no indication of their return on investment. In the worst cases they deem social media an utter waste of time and swear it was just a useless fad.
Even if you have 300+ likes, Facebook may not turn out to be a viable means of advertising, so what's the secret? How can you make your Facebook page become much more than just a PR exercise with no positive ROI? How can you make sure that your Facebook page is not sitting there like a brochure that nobody is picking up?
When initiating your social media strategy you must keep in sight this crucial fact: it's a number's game! As you engage with your clients and provide them free value, your ultimate goal is to get repeat sales from them, as well as referrals to grow your fan base. If you keep giving great value to a couple hundred people you will go nowhere fast!
So here are the 7 ways for you to make sure that your daily attendance to Facebook produces more sales AND more viral marketing to grow your account.
1. Create a customized, branded fan page with an incentive for people to click "like". This must include a compelling call to action, not even 2% of page owners have figured this out. This strategy alone increases conversion into fans by 27%, and give you an instant point of difference
2. Switch into "Use Facebook As A Fan Page" and start "liking" other Facebook fan pages in your area, or where you think your target market also hang out.
3. Regularly post on those pages, at least once a week, with free information, tips, or anything that will make you known as a business owner or a good business to deal with. You have to write several non promotional posts before promoting outright
4. Contact other page owners for a joint venture and offer their fans a free voucher, exclusive to them. Then ask your joint venture partner to do the same for you. Having establishes that relationship you will always be allowed to market on that page!
5. Offer your fans a reward for posting about your business on their wall: all their friends will see that on their newsfeed, again it can be a free voucher
6. Use "Notes" for direct marketing offers to your fans. This will be shown on their "Notifications"
7. Join Facebook Groups in your industry or locally, and get more friends that way. Then invite them to "Like" your page
Remember Facebook is meant to be a marketing strategy, not a closed shop conversation with your existing fans that only generates disappointing fanbase growth. Please keep in mind that a Facebook page that has little interaction and only 300 likes is bad PR for your business

Your Call To Action On Facebook

As more business owners recognise the value of facebook as an integral part of their marketing mix, I am pleased to observe that more fan pages are adopting a professional and attractive look.

However, when you get your custom designed facebook page you can still leave your competitors in the dust just by using a well underrated trick.

Have you ever been to a marketing seminar and heard time and time again how important a call to action is for any kind of advertising? Yet if you open the advertising pages of a newspaper you will notice that very few advertisers actually use it...in other words they are wasting precious marketing resources on ineffective, non measurable advertising.

The same applies to your facebook page. There are 2 main calls to action that you can use on your fan page to grow your fan base as well as your email list, plus get more clients through the door. Here they are:

1) A strong call to action for your page visitors to "like" your page. But you cannot expect them to like your page if you are not serving their self interest, the famous "what's in it for me".
"Like our page and get fresh updates on our exclusive facebook fans restaurant offers" or
"Like our page and automatically become part of our VIP customer club to receive regular added bonuses and free offers". This works for beauty therapy, retail, gyms , cafes or any high repeat purchase businesses where customer loyalty is key.

2) Instantly start growing your email list by using an auto-responder "opt in" form. Have something of value to give away in exchange for their email address: "Receive our free report on 7 ways to alleviate back pain in 5 minute per day" could work very well for a chiropractor or a physiotherapist.
If you keep in mind that across all industries, only 5% of browsers are ready to buy now, you have to do something to keep your chances alive in the future. The point of the opt-in form is to increase your chance of initiating a relationship with the non committed visitors.

To help you remember how to structure your welcome page, just go back to the well known "A.I.D.A" advertising formula. It works for fan pages:

A for Attention, by having a well designed custom page with a good headline

I for Interest, tell your visitors what they will find interesting on your page

D for Desire. Create desire for them to like you page or sign up on your "opt in" form

A for Action. Strong call to action " Like our page" with arrows to the "like" button, or "Register to receive our free report or Free Gift voucher"

Facebook Changes Make The Ink Flow... But How Much Does It REALLY Affect Your Business?

Just what everyone has been craving: a good old combat of the titans! Isn't it exciting to watch the heating race between Google+ and Facebook. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerber at the recent F8 Developers conference in San Francisco has revealed and explained the details of the latest changes in Facebook, among rumors and statistics flying around on how much dissent it has triggered and how much it's going to play right into the hands of Google+. I can see bookmakers rubbing their hands! ...
It's great get this kind of entertainment outside the sports arena, but let's get back down to earth for a while and look at it from a small to medium size business owners' perspective. If you have a busy enterprise to run you won't have time to wallow in watching the score between the 2 giants, but you will want to know if you can still effectively market through your fan page, right?...

So let's look at it a bit closer:

• As far as I can see, your updates will still reach your fans, except that their order of appearance might be tempered with somewhat. So far no damage
  
• You used to be able to send a direct message to your fans, a feature that very few marketers have been using for their business. This feature will disappear as of the 30th of September. That is regrettable as it was a more direct way to market your offers, by appearing in your fans' "messages"
• With the upcoming need for a SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate for your fan page you may need to put your Geek at work so your page is easily accessible after the 1st of October...that is inconvenient, except that it's making the use of Facebook more secure, which we all want right? Considering the short notice you would be forgiven to give Mark Zuckerberg some bad press, or a piece of your mind!
  
• If your Facebook page needs customizing this software will ensure a seamless transition for your fan page to be still easily accessible
  
• There are other "minor changes" in the wings, however except for some inconvenience and possible costs, the way you market through your fanpage could be almost unchanged
• If these changes were to create a huge backlash and associated exodus to Google +, then you could fear that the huge market that facebook represents may wither away. In that case you would want to focus your social media efforts on another, less volatile platform. But we are nowhere near that sort of tipping point!
  

So is it time to pack up your fan page and rush to brother Google+? I would say hold your horses, changes of this nature at short notice are sometimes hard to take, but it is probably wise to give it a few days and avoid panic. Let's reassess facebook as a marketing tool once the solutions emerge and see how they make up for the annoying rocker in the boat....
Meanwhile this is a great reminder for the big picture, and how to avoid the "eggs in same basket" syndrome. Use at least 2 social media platforms complementing each other, and always make sure you drive you followers and fans into an "opt-in" form so they become part of your email list. As social media platforms change, your email list remains yours as your best marketing tool.
Keep an eye on our blog for further updates on changes.

Facebook accounts versus Facebook fanpage: what do I choose?

This is a question I get asked a lot: For my business do

I get a facebook account and get lots of friends into it

or do I get a Facebook page and grow my Fans list?

Using the right strategy is not complex, but crucial.

Here are my answers:

Case Number One:

You are an accountant, a lawyer, a consultant, a coach

etc....or any other situation where you are known as a

business person and you are the main reason people

will do business with your company.

In that case you should have a personal account where

you build a Friends list and you become member of

facebook groups within your industry.

This in turn helps you build your following and you can

then direct them to your fan page.

So in many cases in small business you need both an

account under your own name and then a fan page under

your name or your company name.

Case Number Two

If you own or co-own a corporation and people do

business with your company mainly because your

company has a big name in the industry, then you can

go straight to having a page only, under your company

name.

The main restriction here is that a page cannot

be part of a Facebook group. That alone limits your viral

marketing options down the track.

Having a proper social media strategy can sound

complex but it is possible to keep it simple and easy,

with great return on investment.

This is a very brief answer to this question, there

are more elements to it but I just wanted to give you

some clarity here.

Social Media for Business is About Giving, Not Taking

Many organizations – and particularly businesses – still look at social media and wonder, “Where’s the value?” From their perspective, social media fails to deliver the goods. And the bad news is, from their perspective, it probably always will – because the question “What can I get out of social media?” misses the very point of social media.

At the heart of the misunderstanding is the question “Why is social media here?” Consider Facebook, for example. Was Facebook created to help users share their experiences and find like-minded people, or was it created to serve the needs of stalkers? Okay, that question was too simple. But if you change the second option to “to help corporations improve their profits by leveraging the social networks of unsuspecting users”, the answer would be the same.

Harsh, you say? Perhaps. At least from the business’ perspective. But from the average Facebook user’s perspective, corporations who use social networks to reach out only for financial gain are seen as outsiders – just short of “creepers” and “lurkers” (see Urban Dictionary).

By design, social media are venues for giving, not for taking. And to users, a participant’s motives are self-evident.

30 years ago, there would have been less scrutiny on organizations attempting to leverage social media for financial gain – had there been social media. In the ‘80s, it was cool to be a taker. Yuppies flaunted their earnings and their consumption, stocks (and retirement funds) were on the rise, and everyone-who-was-anyone expected to retire by age 55. Takers suffered a setback with stock market crash of 1987, but the mindset rebounded with great resilience, turning a blind eye to the footloose behavior of the ‘90s in favor of more big corporate gains. Then, with the new millennium, came the collapse of Enron, the creation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and a growing public distrust in corporations. To a new generation, “taking” was no longer cool. And it was this new generation that gave birth to social media.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that the current generation is innocent of “what’s-in-it-for-me” behavior. Quite the contrary. After all, this is the generation who brought us Napster (the illegal version) and Limewire. What I am saying is that the spirit of social media – from Myspace to Facebook to YouTube to Photobucket to Wordpress – is about sharing. Users turn to social media to share their ideas, their creations, their social circles, and their influence.

And as long as corporations engage with social media for the same reasons (or ostensibly the same reasons), then engagement can work.

Such examples of corporate sharing aren’t even difficult to find. Philanthropy is an obvious place to start, but stopping there would miss the point of social media. Because money isn’t the biggest asset in the social vault. Knowledge is.

So, start a dialog with your customers. Share your manuals (even on products you no longer support). Develop slide presentations that educate (not sell). Create infographics. Promote responsible behavior (which, for brewers, could include curbing sexism). Make a difference.

In brief, if you want to get something out of social media, you have to stop trying to take.