Tips on Building Up Your Facebook ‘fan’ base,

Many businesses are rushing to build up their Facebook ‘fan’ base, but what’s the value of a fan if you don’t know how to effectively message them and get their attention? Below are a series of very simple tips for how to get your Fan page status updates noticed.

But first, you might be wondering why such tips are even necessary. Aren’t all status updates seen by fans? The short answer is, no. Facebook uses an algorithm to determine which updates and stories will appear in a given person’s newsfeed. While no one knows exactly what this algorythm is (besides Mark Zuckerberg!), it largely depends on how much engagement a particular story receives. So, if you send an update out to your fans and it receives a lot of ‘Likes’ or ‘Comments’, it will be exposed to a much higher % of your fans in their Top News stream and there will therefore be a much higher likelihood that your fans will actually see your post than an update that gets few ‘Likes’ or ‘Comments’. So sending out posts that are highly engaging is extremely important to the success of your Facebook marketing strategy.

TRICK #1: Ask fans to ‘Like’ your update!

This may sound trivial, but it is hugely powerful – when you post an update out to your fans ask them to show their support by clicking on the ‘Like’ button of your post. For example, if you send an update about a new product feature instead of simply saying: “We’re excited to announce the release of our brand new navigation, ” say something like: “We’re excited to announce the release of our brand new navigation. Click the ‘Like’ button if you like this change”. We have tried this over and over again and on average we see 200-300% more ‘Likes’ when we make direct requests like this.

Check out the great engagement with this post-- 29 people indicated they "Like" it, which was likely aided by the direct prompt to do so right in the message!

TRICK #2: Encourage comments by asking yes/no questions

A powerful way to encourage comments is to ask your fans questions when you post an update. But you’ll get a much higher response rate if you ask questions that require very little effort to answer, like yes/no questions. For example, you’ll get far fewer comments if you ask “Tell us what you think of our new homepage design” than if you ask “Do you like our new homepage design – yes or no?”. Of course, if you’re looking for concrete feedback from your fans you may prefer the first approach, but if you are wanting maximum exposure for your post the latter approach will yield a significantly higher number of comments.

TRICK #3: Don’t use the Facebook links box!

You may have noticed that Facebook provides an option to attach a link to your fan page status updates. What you may not know is that you’ll generally get fewer clicks on your link if you use this feature rather than simply including a link in the body of your update.

Don’t do this…

The link button outlined above will attach a link to your post, but its best to avoid using this tool, and just paste the link right into your text.

Try this instead…

Pasting a link you wish to share with your users directly into your message has proven, with testing, to have a significantly higher user click rate!

TRICK #4: If you post your own videos, do use the Facebook video upload

Just as Facebook provides functionality to attach a link to your update, so too does it allow to you attach a video to your post. While we recommend against using this functionality when posting a link, we do recommend that you use the ‘attach‘ functionality to add your own videos to your updates. Why? If you upload your video via the Facebook ‘attach’ functionality it will automatically embed a ‘Like’ button into your video, thus giving you the opportunity to build your fans when people share your video. If you simply link to a video on YouTube or elsewhere there will be no ‘Like’ button automatically embedded in your video.

Try this out…

Upload videos which you have on your computer using this uploader tool– it automatically inserts a “Like” button right into your video!

You get a cool feature with it!

By uploading this video directly into the video uploader tool pictured above, users can now click directly on “Like” within the video as they watch.

TRICK #5: Target your messages to different segments of your audience.

Did you know that you can push out status updates that only specific segments of your fan base will see? For example, if you have a global business and you have an offer that is only relevant to your Canadian customers, you could push out a story that only your Canadian fans will see. Likewise, if you have Spanish speaking fans you could target them exclusively with an update written in Spanish. Right next to the “Share” button in the messaging box is a targeting tool-- while the default targeting is “Everyone,” you can limit the outreach by location, all the way down to city/state and by language.

If you have a message that you don’t need or want all of your users to see, you can customize who the message will be revealed to, by using the functionality built right in to the message box!

Target your message right down to the city!

You can target you messages by location of your users, as deep as their city, and even the language they speak!

TRICK #6: Make it worth your fan’s while to look out for your updates!

Razorfish published a study awhile ago that asked consumers why they fan and follow brands. The greatest percentage of people, by far, responded ‘for the exclusive deals & offers’. So if you want your fans to watch out for and look forward to receiving your updates, you should reward them from time to time with special offers like coupons, giveaways, contests and more. We’ve seen companies that offer regular deals (e.g. Friday specials or Tuesday giveaways) build highly engaged fan bases.


Original article posted on Wildfire Social Media Blog

Update Your Facebook Page via Email

By The Social Media Guide

Did you know you can update your Facebook fan page via email?

This can be particularly handy if ...

• you are browsing through Twitter on your mobile phone, and see a great tweet (linking to a post) that you would like to share with your fans
• you are at work and something pops into your mind that you want to share on your Facebook page
• you come across an awesome article while surfing the net
• you receive an email from someone that you want to post to your Facebook page's wall
• you don’t have time to log in to your Facebook page
• you don’t have access to Facebook

It is super easy to update your Facebook page's wall via email, and keep all your fans updated and informed.
Posterous is the service that allows you to do this.

If you are unfamiliar with Posterous, it is basically a hosted micro-blogging platform that allows you to make updates to your own Posterous blog, simply by emailing in content.

Posterous allows you to update your blog by emailing content such as,

• links to videos - and have the video automatically displayed
• photos (as attachments) - and have the photos automatically displayed
• music files (as attachments) - and have the music automatically embedded
• links to Google Maps - and have the maps automatically embedded

Posterous also has an autoposting feature that allows you to post (via email) to your other social networks including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Picasa, WordPress.com, etc.

You can post to one, several or all of your social networks.

One post to Posterous goes everywhere else on the web.

For example, you can email your pics to your Posterous blog, and if you have added your Flickr account, they will appear there as well.

The good thing is Posterous now supports posting to Facebook pages.

Setup

First up you need to create an account with Posterous..  please refer to my post Posterous Guide to Dead Simple Blogging for more information.

Once you have logged in, click on Autopost.. then click on Add a Service;

Then click on Facebook Page,

You now need to connect your Facebook account with Posterous.
Click on the  Facebook Connect; button,

Now click on Connect; to allow authorization,

Select your Facebook page from the drop-down menu then click on  Add Facebook Page,

Click on  Allow; to allow constant authorization,

Click on Allow Publishing;

Done!

You have just setup posting to your Facebook page using Posterous.

You can check that this has been added by clicking on Autopost.. your Facebook page will now be visible,

Autopost Email Address

Now scroll down the page a little and take note of the email address to autopost to Facebook; facebook@posterous.com

Highly recommend >> add this email address as a contact in:

• your preferred email client (Gmail, Hotmail, etc)
• your mobile phone's email client

Otherwise you are defeating the purpose of being able to post to your Facebook page via email.. as you might forget this email address!

Update Your Facebook Page via Email

Now to test this out.
Find some content you want to post to your Facebook page and then compose a new email message.. ensuring that you are sending to  the correct email address - facebook@posterous.com,

Now hit  Send ... You have now updated your Posterous blog, AND your Facebook Fan Page,

You will notice that your Facebook profile has NOT been updated.

The reason your Facebook profile was not updated is because it hasn’t been added as a service in Posterous.
If you want to be able to post to both your Facebook Page and Facebook Profile via email.. just add Facebook as a service (following the same instructions above).

Alternatively, you could post to just your profile and not your page.

So there you have it.. posting content via email to your Facebook Page!

The Social Media Guide is a great website with lots of good tips for today's evolving internet landscape. Sign up for their free newsletter and stay up to date and receive daily tips on Social Media tools and strategies.

Original Article Posted: By The Social Media Guide